The PISTOR was the baker of loaves, the DULCIARIUS the cake baker,
using honey for sweetening. Martial says of the PISTOR DULCIARIUS,
"that hand will construct for you a thousand sweet figures of art;
for it the frugal bee principally labors." The PANCHESTRARIUS,
mentioned in Arnobius, is another confectioner. The LIBARIUS still
another of the sweet craft. The CRUSTULARIUS and BOTULARIUS were a
cookie baker and a sausage maker respectively
The LACTARIUS is the milkman; the PLACENTARIUS he who makes the
PLACENTA, a certain pancake, also a kind of cheese cake, often
presented during the Saturnalia. The SCRIBLITARIUS belongs here,
too: in our modern parlance we would perhaps call these two
"ENTREMETIERS." The SCRIBLITA must have been a sort of hot cake,
perhaps an omelet, a pancake, a dessert of some kind, served hot;
maybe just a griddle cake, baked on a hot stone, a TORTILLA--what's
the use of guessing! but SCRIBLITAE were good, for Plautus, in one
of his plays, Poenulus, shouts, "Now, then, the SCRIBLITAE are
piping hot! Come hither, fellows!" Not all of them did eat, however,
all the time, for Posidippus derides a cook, saying, CUM SIS COQUUS,
PROFECTUS EXTRA LIMEN ES, CUM NON PRIUS COENAVERIS, "What? Thou art
a cook, and hast gone, without dinner, over the threshold?"
From the FOCARIUS, the scullion, the FORNACARIUS, the fireman, or
furnace tender, and the CULINARIUS, the general kitchen helper to
the OBSONATOR, the steward, the FARTOR to the PRINCEPS COQUORUM, the
"maître d'hôtel" of the establishment we see an organization very
much similar to our own in any well-conducted kitchen
The Roman cooks, formerly slaves in the frugal days of the nation,
rose to great heights of civic importance with the spread of
civilization and the advance of luxury in the empire. Cf. "The Rôle
of the Mageiroi in the Life of the Ancient Greeks" by E. M. Rankin,
Chic., 1907, and "Roman Cooks" by C. G. Harcum, Baltimore, 1914, two
monographs on this subject
Cookery, Apician, as well as modern c., discussed in the critical
review of the Apicius book
---- examples of deceptive c. in Apicius, ℞ 6, 7, 9, 17, 229,
230, 384, 429
---- of flavoring and spicing, ℞ 15, 277, 281, 369
---- deserving special mention for ingenuity and excellence, ℞
15, 21, 22, 72, 88, 177, 186, 212, 213, 214, 250, 287, 315, 428
---- modern Jewish, resembling Apicius, ℞ 204 seq.
---- examples of attempts to remove disagreeable odors, ℞ 212-14,
229, 230, 292
---- removing sinews from fowl, ℞ 213
---- utensils, p. 15
Coote, C. T., commentator, pp. 19, 273
COPA, a woman employed in eating places and taverns, a bar maid, a
waitress, an entertainer, may be all that in one person. One of the
caricatures drawn on a tavern wall in Pompeii depicts a COPA
energetically demanding payment for a drink from a reluctant
customer, p. 7
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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