Apicius, also known as De re culinaria or De re coquinaria is a collection of Roman cookery recipes. It is thought to have been compiled in the fifth century AD. Its language is in many ways closer to Vulgar than to Classical Latin, with later recipes using Vulgar Latin added to earlier recipes using Classical Latin .
The book has been attributed to an otherwise unknown Caelius Apicius, an invention based on the fact that one of the two manuscripts is headed with the words "API CAE" or rather because a few recipes are attributed to Apicius in the text: Patinam Apicianam sic facies (IV, 14) Ofellas Apicianas (VII, 2). It has also been attributed to Marcus Gavius Apicius, a Roman gourmet who lived sometime in the 1st century AD during the reign of Tiberius. The book also may have been authored by a number of different Roman cooks from the first century AD. Based on textual analysis, the food scholar Bruno Laurioux believes that the surviving version only dates from the fifth century (that is, the end of the Roman Empire): "The history of De Re Coquinaria indeed belongs then to the Middle Ages".