In the modern era, Crystal King took this several steps further by constructing an entire novel around fictional characterizations of Apicius, his family and staff, and a glimpse into what his life could have been like inside both his home and his social circles. Pliny the Elder says the following about Apicius: “ Apicius, the most gluttonous gorger of all spendthrifts, established the view that the flamingo’s tongue has a specially fine flavour” (Pliny, Naturalis Historia, X.133 – 77 AD) and “ Apicius, that very deepest whirlpool of all our epicures, has informed us that the tongue of the phœnicopterus is of the most exquisite flavour” (Pliny, Naturalis Historia, X.68 – 77 AD). Marcus Gavius Apicius was clearly an intriguing figure, one whose tastes were respected, and one that many loved to write about in the ancient Roman written record.
In the Roman documentary record, Apicius is referred to several times by writers such as Athenaeus and Seneca he was said to have been an epicure who enjoyed the excesses of life and had food and dining standards that were almost impossible to meet. AD). The surviving written manuscripts of the Apician recipes date much later, however, as the collection that we study and refer to in the modern era was formally compiled and recorded in the Late Roman or Early Medieval period. Who is Apicius? It is assumed that a man named Marcus Gavius Apicius was the creator or original compiler of the oldest surviving collection of recipes in Roman history: De Re Coquinaria (1 st c. King’s 406-page novel is set in the 1st century AD in the household of a wealthy Roman gourmand known as Marcus Gavius Apicius: a name that is synonymous with one of the world’s first recorded cookbooks. If ever there was a book that I wanted to eat or turn into a garment that I could wear forever, this was it.įeast of Sorrow – A Novel of Ancient Rome The book that makes your whole family avoid you for weeks after you’ve put it down because you can’t stop staring off into space or bursting into tears at the dinner table because when that book ended you had to return to reality and say goodbye to those characters and those settings that you adored so much! One such book for me was Crystal King’s “Feast of Sorrow: A Novel of Ancient Rome” (2017). You know the type… the book that whisks you off the planet every time you pick it up and then plummets you into the nine circles of hell after you’ve finished it.
#Sweet patina sauce full
By this I mean that I finally get to set aside my amphorae catalogues and burnt bread photographs for a spell and jump head-first into a juicy fiction novel instead! One that is full of captivating characters, fascinating settings, and storylines that hook me while I’m reading them and then linger long after I’ve put the book down.
Summer itself tends to be a season of elective reading for me as well. Spring and summer truly are my favourite seasons of the year as it usually involves three of my favourite things: gardening, reading, and recreating Roman foods.
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