Andrew Dalby is a historian and linguist. Languages in his repertoire include Sanskrit, Pali, French, Latin, Greek, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish, German, and Burmese. He is the author of several books, including The Classical Cookbook (1996), Dangerous Tastes: the Story of Spices (2000), Language in Danger: The Loss of Linguistic Diversity and the Threat to Our Future (2003) and Bacchus: A Biography (2003). He studied classics and linguistics at St John's College, Cambridge, and gained a PhD from London University.

Preface
An Introduction to Byzantium
Tastes and Smells of the City
Foods and Markets of Constantinople
Water and Wine, Monks and Travellers
Rulers of the World
The Texts
The Eight Flavours
Categories of Foods
Humoral and Dietary Qualities of Foods
A Dietary Calendar
Instructions and Recipes
A Phrase-Book of Byzantine Foods and Aromas
Bibliography
Index

A detailed revelation of what was eaten in the court of the Eastern Roman Empire, accompanied by colourful descriptions of the sights and smells of Constantinople and its marketplaces.
For centuries, the food and culinary delights of the Byzantine empire - centred on Constantinople - have captivated the west, although it appeared that very little information had been passed down to us.
Tastes of Byzantium now reveals in astonishing detail, for the first time, what was eaten in the court of the Eastern Roman Empire - and how it was cooked. Fusing the spices of the Romans with the seafood and simple local food of the Aegean and Greek world, the cuisine of the Byzantines was unique and a precursor to much of the food of modern Turkey and Greece.
Bringing this vanished cuisine to life in vivid and sensual detail, Dalby describes the sights and smells of Constantinople and its marketplaces, relates travellers' tales and paints a comprehensive picture of the recipes and customs of the empire and their relationship to health and the seasons, love and medicine.
For food-lovers and historians alike, Tastes of Byzantium is both essential and riveting - an extraordinary illumination of everyday life in the Byzantine world.