APICIUS. The proverbial gastronomer Apicius (M. Gavius Apicius, c. 25 B.C.E–c. 37 C.E.), who lived at the time of the emperor Tiberius, gives his name to the most complete cookbook that has come down from antiquity, one that reflects an ancient Roman cuisine that survives, in part, in early-twenty-first-century Italian traditional practice and that has also shaped European cookery, whenever cooks—or their employers—wished to touch base with ancestral foodways. The book, De re coquinaria (On Cookery), is actually the product of a Late Antique compiler, writing about 400 C.E., who drew from an agricultural treatise, a work on household economy, and a Greek study of dietetics, in addition to two genuine publications by Apicius: a general cookbook plus a more specialized one on sauces. Over the years, scholars have been able to establish the true name of Apicius; in the past he was known as Apitius Caelius. Because of...