Tastes of Byzantium: The Cuisine of a Legendary Empire

Historical food. Just what I wanted.

What an interesting book!!!

Don't buy these books from AMAZON as a value purchase. They are exactly the same except published by two different companies and one is paperback. I sent back the "flavors" hard copy. Book gives insight how people ate in Byzantium. Cycles of eating appropriately, "...don't eat black grapes in July." Compilation of letters and research revealing life in the courts, travel, eating and drinking. For those who are interested in the nitty gritty of daily life during this time period and translating name/meanings of food items.

First of all this is not really a recipe book thought does contain some so if you exepect such you will be dissapointed.However it is an intresting read as it goes through the realtionship between food and the byzamntuim empire .

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Ad un impero di transizione corrisponde una cucina di transizione ed è così che Costantinopoli trasporta con i commerci e con la cultura vissuta qualcosa della classicità greco-romana fin in piena età rinascimentale, come il sorprendente uso del garum, che ai contemporanei appariva alieno e fuori dalla storia. E poi la supremazia dei prodotti del mare su tutti gli altri, con tecniche di cottura anche semplici e rapide (molto moderne), l'uso articolato delle spezie (dall'est e dall'India), il vino, anzi l'incredibile varietà di vini (dalle isole greche e dalle colonie), e, su tutto, il cerimoniale complicato da una fisiologia che mescolava assieme teoria umorale greca e calendario cristiano.Una panoramica agevole che procede per la prima metà del libro e che fa parlare i documenti, i protagonisti e i viaggiatori occidentali che visitarono la corte bizantina nell'arco storico che va dal suo splendore alla caduta in mano turca; a cui segue nella restante metà uno stralcio di testi greci tradotti in inglese sulla teoria degli umori bizantina, sulle classificazione dei cibi, sul calendario di dieta cristiano, con l'aggiunta di un frasario greco e di una ricchissima bibliografia.Un gran bel libro di storia, piacevole e ricco di curiosità; un autore, Andrew Dalby, scaltro e smaliziato, nel suo elemento.

A book combining two of my main interests, Byzantine history and food, sounds like a must-read. But I have to confess to being somewhat disappointed on opening the package because of the small dimensions of the book in terms of page size. The thickness may give some hope of compensation by being 277 pages, but Dalby's narrative ends at page 122, the rest consisting of translations of some relatively uninteresting works relating to food, some recipes, a large glossary of Greek food words and in which works they are to be found, a surprisingly large bibliography for such a subject, and the index.Dalby's own narrative reads well, he is a skilful and entertaining writer, but even here there is a little of the padding out with unrelated anecdote, albeit fascinating to me as a Byzantine history nut, and even filling a few pages with a list of emperors and their regnal dates. I fairly whizzed through this part of the book.The translated texts, likely to grab the interest of only serious food history geeks, demonstrate the practice of using foods to balance the "four humours", blood, phlegm, yellow and black bile, with foods having hot, cold, dry and moist qualities. These ideas are not dissimilar to the kind of practices which persist in countries like Iran and India today. One of the texts extends this practice to a yearly cycle of what to eat when, and also considers how many baths one should have in that month and even whether one should or should not have sex.Like an amuse bouche, this book tastes delightful for a brief while, but does not fill the stomach.