01-28-2008, 12:09 PM
The measurements in the cookbook or the edition? I don't have the recipe book (I implicitly trust Sally Grainger not to produce bad redactions, but I already have the Classical Cookbook, Junkelmann'sa 'Füllhorn', the execrable Peschke/Feldmann and several others, and prefer to do my own).
I got as far as the language chapter last night (the joys of insomnia and facing a class on three hours' worth of sleep at 8 am are overrated). I'm not much of a philologist, but I found it interesting and easy to follow. The analysis of measurements is also interesting - I have to see if it holds up, but since I've never been able to discern any system in the Apician corpus, it sounded convincing at first sight.
What I liked most was the way they looked at the entire surviving culinary literature tradition. It's an excellent book to get into serious study. Plus, I seem to recall this being the first proper bilinguial editiuon in English for a while. Germans have been lucky in that the reasonably good and gloriously affordable bilingual Reclam edition Apicius has been out there for years.
Now, there is one beef I have with the book. I want it in paperback. I hate having cookbooks that are so expensive you don't dare take them into the kitchen. They already did this with the Ni'Matnama Manuscript and Perry's Medieval Arab Cookery, and now Apicius. :?
I got as far as the language chapter last night (the joys of insomnia and facing a class on three hours' worth of sleep at 8 am are overrated). I'm not much of a philologist, but I found it interesting and easy to follow. The analysis of measurements is also interesting - I have to see if it holds up, but since I've never been able to discern any system in the Apician corpus, it sounded convincing at first sight.
What I liked most was the way they looked at the entire surviving culinary literature tradition. It's an excellent book to get into serious study. Plus, I seem to recall this being the first proper bilinguial editiuon in English for a while. Germans have been lucky in that the reasonably good and gloriously affordable bilingual Reclam edition Apicius has been out there for years.
Now, there is one beef I have with the book. I want it in paperback. I hate having cookbooks that are so expensive you don't dare take them into the kitchen. They already did this with the Ni'Matnama Manuscript and Perry's Medieval Arab Cookery, and now Apicius. :?
Der Kessel ist voll Bärks!
Volker Bach
Volker Bach
