Sugar versus Honey in Byzantine Recipes (2017)

This paper discusses the use of salt, vinegar, honey, and sugar in some Byzantine and Arabic-Islamic recipes in cooking and pastry-making as well as for food preservation and in medical preparations. It draws mostly on information provided by Byzantine sources and Arabic translations for any comparison. The research focuses on some examples of salty/sour and sweet culinary and medicinal recipes, common or similar Arabo-Byzantine products like iṭriya, garos/murrī, zoulapion mishmishiyya, and libysia. The paper starts with Galen's Syrian mēloplakous, continues with salty and sweet liquid preparations as well as preserves of roses and fruits. It concludes with a discussion of two exemplary Arabic delicacies more widely known in twelfth-century Byzantium, two foods with extreme opposite but equal flavored tastes: a sweet and a salty Arab product, paloudakin or apalodaton (fālūdhaj), which was the most typical sweet the Byzantines borrowed from the Arabs, and libysia, the especially flavorful salted fish from Egypt.

Pharmaceutical Historian, 2023

Graeco-Roman medicine bequeathed empirical observation as the paradigm for interpreting diseases due to natural causes. Th e eff ectiveness of those treatments has since been investigated. However, magical aspects of treatment largely persisted in European medicine until the end of the eighteenth century. To understand why it is important to know how ancient medical recipes and procedures were used in practice. Th is article analyses a recipe for diffi cult labour recommended by Aspasia, a Byzantine physician from the sixth century CE. It explores the eff ectiveness of the procedures used and breaks down characteristics of the materia medica by use of modern phytochemical studies.

"Symbolae Philologorum Posnaniensium Graecae et Latinae", 2017

The following article attempts to address two issues. The first one concerns dietetic characteristic of barley flour, which was a very popular product used both in Graeco-Roman and Byzantine culinary art and medicine. The second one deals with the therapeutic role of this product: different forms of remedies made from it, its effects on the human body, and various health problems cured by an application of medicines containing aleuron krithinon. To address these questions we study ancient and Byzantine Greek medical sources written between the 1st and 7th century AD by Dioscurides, Galen, Oribasius, Aetius of Amida, Alexander of Tralles, Paul of Aegina, and the anonymous author of the treatise entitled De cibis.

Greek Roman and Byzantine Studies 62, 2022

Full publication of P.CtYBR inv. 1443, a papyrus with parts of a collection of medical recipes which may derive from Tebtunis and its temple library.

and the ideas about herbal therapy (III.). I have then isolated for a more detailed sudy a recipe on hepatic problems. This has meant examining the role of the liver in contemporary physiology and the general approach to its treatment (IV.), prior to the extensive discussion on the materia medica and the rationale of the recipe itself (V.).

Progettazione grafica: BrucoMela Design.

Symbolae Philologorum Posnaniensium Graecae et Latinae, 2016

BARLEY FLOUR (áLEUROn KRíTHInOn) IN ANCIENT ANd EARLY BYzANTINE MEdICINE (I -VII C. Ad) abstraCt. Jagusiak krzysztof, kokoszko Maciej, Barley flour (áleuron kríthinon) in ancient and early Byzantine medicine (I -VII c. AD) (Mąka jęczmienna [áleuron kríthinon] w medycynie antycznej i wczesnobizantyńskiej [I -VII w. n.e.]). The following article attempts to address two issues. The first one concerns dietetic characteristic of barley flour, which was a very popular product used both in Graeco-Roman and Byzantine culinary art and medicine. The second one deals with the therapeutic role of this product: different forms of remedies made from it, its effects on the human body, and various health problems cured by an application of medicines containing aleuron krithinon. To address these questions we study ancient and Byzantine Greek medical sources written between the 1 st and 7 th century Ad by dioscurides, Galen, Oribasius, Aetius of Amida, Alexander of Tralles, Paul of Aegina, and the anonymous author of the treatise entitled De cibis. keywords: ancient medicine; Byzantine medicine; common barley. 1 The literature on natural history of barley is abundant. Here we give only some examples of it, focused on Europe and Mediterranean Area. Cf.

Studia Ceranea

The article is aimed at indicating and analyzing connections existing between De re coquinaria and medicine. It is mostly based on the resources of extant Greek medical treatises written up to the 7th century A.D. As such it refers to the heritage of the Corpus Hippocraticum, Dioscurides, Galen, Oribasius, Anthimus, Aetius of Amida, Paul of Aegina, to name but the most important. The authors of the study have tried to single out from De re coquinaria those recipes which have the tightest connections with medicine. They are: a digestive called oxyporum, two varieties of dressings based on fish sauce, i.e. oxygarum digestibile and oenogarum, herbal salts (sales conditi), spiced wine (conditum paradoxum), honeyed wine (conditum melizomum viatorum), absinthe (absintium Romanum), rosehip wine (rosatum), a soup (or relish) pulmentarium, a pearl barley-based soup termed tisana vel sucus or tisana barrica, an finally nettles. In order to draw their conclusions, the authors of the article pr...

Journal for the Study of Judaism, 2019