Ancient Roman Cookery

I have just given an illustrated talk on ancient Roman cookery to the Mere Historical Society (https://www.merehistoricalsociety.org.uk/). What is known about ancient Roman cookery is considerable: the cookery book under the name of the celebrated first century AD gourmet Apicius, the fragment of a cookery book in the Heidelberg papyrus, references in agricultural writers such as Cato and Columella, archaeological evidence of foodstuffs such as seeds, pollen and bones. There are also gaps in such knowledge: what should be the quantities of the ingredients, how modified are modern foodstuffs compared with their ancient counterparts, why have so many the dessert recipes been lost, how might the dishes have be presented. The talk was based on nearly fifty years of writing, researching and experimenting in the kitchen and allotment (https://www.abebooks.co.uk/9781897959398/Roman-Cookery-Ancient-Recipes-Modern-1897959397/plp).