DE RE COQUINARIA KNOWN AS THE OLDEST COOKBOOK TO SURVIVE DATING BACK TO THE ANCIENT ROMAN TIMES

Ever pondered what people in the past consumed for sustenance? In the past, salt, sugar, and the bulk of spices were valuable commodities that were hard to obtain in daily life and undoubtedly unavailable to the vast majority of people. What did the majority of ancient people cook if they lacked access to the ingredients we now take for granted?

We can get an idea of what an ancient diet could have looked like from the De Re Coquinaria cookbook. The De Re Coquinaria is thought to have been written sometime between the first and fifth centuries CE; however, its exact beginnings are difficult to determine. It has been ascribed to "Apicius," a name that might allude to an unidentified person, Marcus Gavius Apicius, the ancient Roman gourmet, or perhaps a collection of anonymous Roman cooks.

In 1926, Joseph Dommers Vehling translated the recipe book into English. The significance of meat in the Roman diet is among the cookbook's most important lessons. In the book's preface, Vehling noted that "cruel means of slaughter were frequent."

Additionally, he observed a change in the recipes themselves, particularly the move away from beef-focused dishes and toward ones that featured chicken and pig. "The ancient bill of fare and the ancient ways of preparation were fully dictated by the supply of raw materials—precisely like ours," Vehling commented wisely. By using portions of food materials that Vehling considered substandard at the time he published his translation of the cookbook, the Romans were also notably low-waste.

The "waste nothing" ethos of the ancient Romans may have been linked to another intriguing custom. "Cooks were admired then if they could conceal a common food item such that diners had no idea what they were eating," according to How Stuff Works. The need to mask the flavour of spoiling—which would have happened if the Romans were using food portions that are perhaps better left alone—is probably where this came from.

However, there are many different dishes in the real recipes, some of which might be easier to duplicate now than others. For instance, the cost of producing a typical seafood stew that includes sea crab, fish, lobster, cuttlefish, ink fish, spiny lobster, scallops, and oysters may have increased over time. Importantly, the recipes in De Re Coquinaria don't include measurements because, to the ancient Romans, cooking was primarily done by feel, scent, and tradition.