Note:
Halfway between a dietetic treatise and a cookbook, De Observatione Ciborum was written in the 6th century by the Byzantine physician Anthimus as a letter to Theuderic, the king of the Franks. Through the descriptions of the aliments, their properties, and the healthiest methods to prepare them, Anthimus shows the uses of the Franks, revealing the differences between them and the Mediterranean peoples and at the same time the similarities, especially in the language and traditional foods and beverages such as tesana, melca, wormwood wine, laredum, or mead, and recording the passage from a culinary culture based on olive oil to one that prefers animal fats.
De Observatione Ciborum is a fascinating reading, in which a peculiar Latin is used as a lingua franca between two non-native speakers, a source that allows the enthusiast of food history to catch a glimpse of a fundamental cultural metamorphosis and understand how the ancient traditions will transform throughout the centuries to become something new though deeply rooted in the past. |
