Context

Many ancient literary works about food provide not so much instruction about how to prepare a dish, but instead emphasis on the origins and qualities of the various ingredients. The knowledge that these gourmet authors had was theoretical rather than practical and the recipes that these books contained were obtained from the cooks. The Apicius text has no emphasis on the source or even identity of ingredients and there is no narrative or general information as we might expect if the text had been read by gourmets. It simply would not satisfy an educated Roman looking for information about the food he could expect to eat.