Cooking Apicius

Inspired by the scholarly edition of Apicus that the author and Christopher Grocock published earlier with Prospect Books, Sally Grainger has gathered, in one convenient volume, her modern interpretations of 64 of the recipes in the original text. This is not ‘recipes inspired by the old Romans’ but rather a serious effort to convert the extremely gnomic instructions in the Latin into something that can be reproduced in the modern kitchen which actually gives some idea of what the Romans might have eaten. Sally Grainger, therefore, has taken great pains to suggest means of replicating the particular Roman taste for garum, fermented fish sauce. It is not too far removed from the fish sauces of the Far East and any reproduction of Roman cookery must depend on getting this particular aspect right. Not all the recipes are for mad Roman luxuries such as lark’s tongues and boar’s bottoms, she has taken care to include perfectly do-able and affordable dishes such as cucumber with mint dressing, duck with turnip, roast lamb with coriander, carrots or parsnips in a cumin-honey glaze, almond and semolina pudding, and deep fried honey fritters.