“At appropriate times of the year, and when they happen to be cheap, she should buy earth, bamboos, firewood, skins, and iron pots, as also salt and oil. Fragrant substances, vessels made of the fruit of the plant wrightea antidysenterica, or oval leaved wrightea, medicines, and other things which are always wanted, should be obtained when required and kept in a secret place of the house. The seeds of the radish, the potato, the common beet, the Indian wormwood, the mangoe, the cucumber, the egg plant, the kushmanda, the pumpkin gourd, the surana, the bignonia indica, the sandal wood, the premna spinosa, the garlic plant, the onion, and other vegetables, should be bought and sown at the proper seasons.”
A cook of roughly the same moment, setting down the same dish.
[104] ANOTHER MASHED GREEN VEGETABLE _ALTER OLUS MOLLE_ [_EX APIO_] COOK CELERY IN SODA WATER, SQUEEZE [water out] CHOP FINE. IN THE MORTAR CRUSH PEPPER, LOVAGE, ORIGANY, ONION [and mix with] WINE AND STOCK, ADDING SOME OIL. COOK THIS IN THE BOILER [1] AND MIX THE CELERY WITH THIS PREPARATION. [1] _in pultario_. The _pultarius_ is a pot in which cereals were boiled; from _puls_--porridge, pap.
Sources: The passage is from Vatsyayana, The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana: Translated From the Sanscrit in Seven Pa, tr. Burton, Richard Francis, Sir, free to read in full at Project Gutenberg. The recipe is from Apicius, Cookery and Dining in Imperial Rome, also free in full. Both are in the public domain in the United States. The binding above is ours — plum cloth, amphora stamp.