ricate of culinary operations.

There may have been two chief reasons for concealing necessary
information. Apicius, or more likely the professional collectors of
the recipes, may have considered technical elaboration of the formulae
quite superfluous on the assumption that the formulae were for
professional use only. Every good practitioner knows, with ingredients
or components given, what manipulations are required, what effects are
desired. Even in the absence of detailed specifications, the
experienced practitioner will be able to divine correct proportions,
by intuition. As a matter of fact, in cookery the mention in the right
place of a single ingredient, like in poetry the right word, often
suffices to conjure up before the gourmet's mental eye vistas of
delight. Call it inspiration, association of ideas or what you please,
a single word may often prove a guide, a savior.

Let us remember that in Apicii days paper (parchment, papyrus) and
writing materials were expensive and that, moreover, the ability of
correct logical and literary expression was necessarily limited in the
case of a practising cook who, after all, must have been the collector
of the Apician formulae. This is sufficiently proven by the _lingua
coquinaria_, the vulgar Latin of our old work. In our opinion, the
ancient author did not consider it worth his while to give anything
but the most indispensable information in the tersest form. This he
certainly did. A comparison of his literary performance with that of
the artistic and accomplished writer of the Renaissance, Platina, will
at once show up Apicius as a hard-working practical cook, a man who
knew his business but who could not tell what he knew.

Like ever so many of his successors, he could not refrain from
beginning and concluding many of his articles with such superfluities
as "take this" and "And serve," etc., all of which shows him up as a
genuine cook. These articles, written in the most laconic language
possible--the language of a very busy, very harassed, very hurried
man, are the literary product of a cook, or several of them.

The other chief motive for condensing or obscuring his text has a more
subtle foundation. Indeed, we are surprised that we should possess so
great a collection of recipes, representing to him who could use them
certain commercial and social value. The preservation of Apicius seems
entirely accidental. Experienced cooks were in demand in Apicii times;
the