Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Preface
- Introduction: Food, substance and symbol
- 1 Diet
- 2 Food and the economy
- 3 Food crisis
- 4 Malnutrition
- 5 Otherness
- 6 Forbidden foods
- 7 Food and the family
- 8 Haves and havenots
- 9 You are with whom you eat
- Conclusion: Choice and necessity
- Bibliographical essay
- Bibliography
- Index
8 - Haves and havenots
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Preface
- Introduction: Food, substance and symbol
- 1 Diet
- 2 Food and the economy
- 3 Food crisis
- 4 Malnutrition
- 5 Otherness
- 6 Forbidden foods
- 7 Food and the family
- 8 Haves and havenots
- 9 You are with whom you eat
- Conclusion: Choice and necessity
- Bibliographical essay
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
PRELIMINARIES
Flamingo. Pluck the flamingo, wash, truss, and put it in a saucepan; add water, dill and a little vinegar. Half-way through the cooking make a bouquet of leek and coriander and let it cook with the bird. When it is nearly done, add defrutum to give it colour. Put in a mortar pepper, caraway, coriander, asafoetida root, mint, rue; pound; moisten with vinegar, add Jericho dates, pour over some of the cooking-liquor. Put in the same saucepan, thicken with cornflour, pour the sauce over the bird, and serve. The same recipe can also be used for parrot.
(Apicius 6.1)My man is a pauper and I am an old woman with a daughter and a son, this boy, and this nice girl besides, five in all. If three of us get a dinner, the other two must share with them only a tiny barley-cake. We wail miserably when we have nothing, and our complexions grow pale with lack of food. The elements and sum of our livelihood are these: bean, lupine, greens, turnip, pulse, vetch, beechnut, iris bulb, cicada, chickpea, wild pears, and that god-given inheritance of our mother-country, darling of my heart, a dried fig.
(Athen. 54e, Alexis)In Graeco-Roman society, there was a large gulf between the haute cuisine of the few and the frugal menus of the mass of the population, rural and urban. Haute cuisine Greek- and Roman-style was marked by variety of foods (home-produced and imported), elaboration, novelty, professionalism and luxury. The diet of the poor and lowly was basic and repetitive, built around the staples of cereals and dry legumes, with simple and cheap additions (in the Greek, opson).
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- Food and Society in Classical Antiquity , pp. 113 - 127Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1999