mentions a kind of date that has to be cooked before it can be eaten.
'The date of Thebais is at once packed in casks, with all its natural heat and freshness; for without this precaution, it quickly becomes vapid; it is of a poor, sickly taste, too, if it is not exposed, before it is eaten, to the heat of an oven.'
In the same chapter he says that
'... those [dates], however, of Egypt, Cyprus, Syria, and Seleucia in Assyria, will not keep: hence it is that they are much used for fattening swine and other animals.'
Might such dates, which will not keep if allowed to dry naturally, have been roasted in later times to preserve them?