Laudator Temporis Acti

Andrew Dalby, Tastes of Byzantium: The Cuisine of a Legendary Empire (2003; rpt. London: I.B. Tauris, 2010), pp. 31-32:

Not only can we see how Constantinople and its food appeared to outsiders. Occasionally we are told how outsiders and their food appeared to those of the City. The adventurers of the Fourth Crusade, though overawed by their first view of Constantinople as Geoffroi de Villehardouin described it, succeeded in seizing the city and its empire in 1204. This is how the Byzantine historian Nicetas Choniates describes them. 'They revelled and drank strong wine all day long. Some favoured luxury foods; others recreated their own native dishes, such as an ox rib apiece, or slices of salt pork cooked with beans, and sauces made with garlic or with a combination of other bitter flavours.' To this meticulous author, filled with bitter hatred for the destroyers of the world he had known, we owe a first precious record of that favourite dish of the wild warriors of southern France, cassoulet.

Nicetas Choniates, Historia, Pars I, ed. Ioannes Aloysius van Dieten (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1975 = Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae, Vol. 11, 1), p. 594:

κώμαζόν τε καὶ ἠκρατίζοντο πανημέριοι, οἱ μὲν βρωμάτων μαγγανείαις προσκείμενοι, οἱ δὲ καὶ ὴν πάτριον ἐδωδὴν παρατιθέμενοι ἐπιδείπνιον, ἥτις ἦν νῶτοι βοείων κρεῶν διαχαλώμενοι λέβησι καὶ συῶν τεμάχη ταριχηρὰ κυάμοις ἀλητοῖς συνεψόμενα, ὥσπερ καὶ τὸ ἐκ σκορόδων ἐπέμβαμμά τε καὶ σύνθεμα ἐξ ἄλλων χυμῶν δριμυσσόντων τὴν αἴσθησιν.

Translation by Harry J. Magoulias:

Carousing and drinking unmixed wine all day long, some gorged themselves on delicacies, while others ate of their native food: chine of oxen cooked in cauldrons, chunks of pickled hog boiled with ground beans, and a pungent garlic sauce mixed with other seasonings.