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Thursday 24 November 2005

Does Apicius have a recipe for 'Lentils and Chestnuts'? Why would anyone do this?

Gillian Riley, who is working on the Oxford Companion to Italian Food , asked me this.

Lenticula ('lentils' or 'lentil dish') is the heading of section two in the Apicius chapter on legumes (book 5). However, the three recipes included in this section actually fail to mention any lentils. This is odd -- ingredients are sometimes omitted in the Apicius manuscripts, but you won't find many examples of the same major ingredient being omitted from three recipes in a row. Recipe 1 is for mussels (its title seems to mean 'lentil-dish with mussels'). Recipe 2 is for chestnuts (the title seems to mean 'lentil-dish from chestnuts'). Recipe 3 is for some unstated item which must be boiled, and it certainly makes good sense if this item is lentils (the title means 'lentil-dish another way'). Does this prove that recipes 1 and 2 also require lentils? Not incontrovertibly.

You could make an argument that (a) the heading Lenticula is wrong/misleading/in the wrong place (which certainly happens elsewhere in Apicius); or (b) Lenticula in this heading means a dish that is in some way reminiscent of lentils but need not contain lentils. Against these arguments, the whole chapter really is about legumes. But you can fall back on argument (c) that recipes 1 and 2 have got into the wrong chapter; possibly because they resemble, or come from the same original source as, recipe 3.

All editors and translators up to now (except Vehling) have inserted lentils in all three recipes. Perhaps they are wrong after all? Or is there a good nutritional reason for combining lentils with chestnuts?

Contributed by Andrew Dalby. Posted at 19:57
Edited on: Thursday 24 November 2005 20:01
Categories: IFAQs