Texts for Culinary Biographies

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Two extracts from Culinary Biographies edited by Alice Arndt (2005)

Cato

Marcus Porcius Cato (born 234 BC), Roman politician, was the author of a farming handbook and collection of recipes, De Agri Cultura, the earliest surviving work of Latin prose. He is sometimes called “Cato the Censor” and sometimes “Cato the Elder” to distinguish him from a descendant, an opponent of Julius Caesar [...]

Evidently composed to assist a farm owner and a vilicus (farm manager, usually a slave) and drawing on Cato’s own experience, De Agri Cultura gives instruction on the making of olive oil and wine and the growing of cereals, fruit and other crops. Cato sometimes focuses on a property near Rome (like his own at Tusculum) which would sell produce at city markets, sometimes on a larger slave-run farm in the Sabine hills (like his own at Venafrum), where the aim will be to make a profit from olive oil. He writes what comes to his mind, as if he were giving advice verbally: choosing, staffing and equipping a farm; land use; farm work through the year; essential religious rites; terms of trade for using builders and hired hands.

Among the most interesting sections of De Agri Cultura are the recipes for conserves, flavoured wines, bread and cakes. These recipes are in a Greek tradition; some, perhaps, are taken from a Greek cookbook. They include a famous, very complicated recipe for placenta, which in Latin means a kind of baked cheesecake; seven other recipes for cakes, including libum which was often used as an offering to the gods; one recipe for panis depsticius “kneaded bread” and four for puddings and porridges; instructions for flavoured wines and for adjusting the flavour of wine; instructions on the use of preserving salt; four recipes for conserving olives and lentils, including an excellent epityrum (olive relish).

Bibliography

A. E. Astin, Cato the Censor. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978.

Cato, On farming edited and translated by Andrew Dalby. Totnes, Devon, UK: Prospect Books, 1998.

E. F. Leon, “Cato's cakes” in Classical journal vol. 38 (1943) pp. 213-221.

K. D. White, “Roman agricultural writers I” in Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt edited by Hildegard Temporini. Part 1 vol. 4. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1973.

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Johann von Bockenheim

Johann von Bockenheim was the author of a fascinating and unusual cookery book, compiled around AD 1440. One of the two manuscripts is in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris; the other (which seems closer to the original) is in a private collection in London. His work was practically unknown until the Latin text was published by Bruno Laurioux in 1988. Laurioux's edition includes full discussion, information on variation between the manuscripts, and an important index-glossary. There is now a translation into Italian based on Laurioux's text [...]

The second remarkable feature of this cookery book is the care taken by the author to indicate for which sorts of guests each recipe is best suited [...]

The reader finds that over half the recipes are said to be suited to people from a specific region of Europe. For example, no. 5, boiled beef, concludes: “It will be good for Germans.” No. 20, small birds parboiled and roasted with a juniper sauce, “will be good for Frisians and Slavs.” No. 26 is pepper sauce to serve with peacock, a classic combination which is mentioned in passing in many medieval texts: this recipe, according to Bockenheim, “is good for Romans.” No. 37 is headed “Another pie for Hungarians and Bohemians.” Laurioux has shown that a few of these recipes are really linked with the typical cuisine of the places named by Bockenheim: for example, no. 22, vigitelli de porco, recommended “for Romans,” is a version of a typically Roman dish now called fegatelli di maiale.

An additional large group of recipes is said to be suitable for specific social groups. No. 14, for a spit-roasted hog with an elaborately spiced stuffing, “will be for the rich.” No. 19, for piperatum nigrum (stewed kid in a black pepper sauce), is “for men of power.” No. 38, for hard-boiled eggs in a sauce, “will be good for clerics and monks.” No. 45, for farm goose, “will be good for citizens.” Some of Bockenheim’s recommendations deal with people whom a papal cook might not have been expected to encounter professionally. No. 47, for roast fowl, is recommended for “freebooters on campaign.” No. 49, an egg dish flavoured with orange, “will be for pimps and lecherous women,” while no. 50, a sweet made with almond milk, “will be good for prostitutes.” This unexpected and challenging feature of Bockenheim’s cookery book was recently the focus of a study by Luigi Ballerini. In the last section of his paper Ballerini raised the special problems of recipe no. 50: what are the “sponges” used during the cooking process? Why is the finished dish recommended for prostitutes? [...]

Bibliography

Luigi Ballerini, 'Food for the bawdy: Johann of Bockenheim's Registrum coquine' in Gastronomica vol. 1 no. 3 (2001) pp. 32-39.

Giovanna Bonardi, translator: Giovanni Bockenheim, La cucina di papa Martino V. Milan: Mondadori, 1995.

Bruno Laurioux, 'Le registre de cuisine de Jean de Bockenheim, cuisinier du Pape Martin V' in Mélanges de l'Ecole Française de Rome vol. 100 (1988) pp. 709-760.

Extracts from work by Andrew Dalby published in Culinary Biographies edited by Alice Arndt (2005).

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