Brownies and Byzantium

I order quite a few books from Amazon.  I pretty much have to because it's got to the point where if I stop they will probably report me as missing to the police.  They are continually sending me emails containing titles I might like based on my purchase history to date.  At least I hope that's what they base it on, the only other alternative is that they break into my apartment and scan my bookshelves while I'm asleep.

This is usually a way of bringing books I might like to my attention but occasionally something very weird happens.  Such as yesterday when Amazon suggested I might like to purchase the Baked Chicago's Simply Decadent Brownies Cookbook.  I like brownies, I've even been known to cook occasionally but the reason Amazon sent me this invitation was because they noticed I had purchased a biography of the Byzantine emperor Leo the Wise.

I have to confess I'm struggling to find a viable connection between a collection of brownie recipes and a ninth century Byzantine emperor.  Leo was many things; a philosopher, a law giver, a serial husband but if he had any predilection towards brownies it has been lost to history.  To be fair it has to be admitted that our records for the period are sketchy.  It is entirely possible that Leo spent his leisure time rolling in brownies and smearing them over his naked body.

I'll just pause for a moment to let that disturbing image sink in.

If Leo did indeed have such a brownie fetish it has been lost to history (although the church would probably have found it easier to swallow than his fourth marriage).  It is therefore difficult to understand why Amazon would have used my purchase of his biography to justify hawking me a book of brownie recipes.  Still, in the interests of fairness I thought it only right that I detail the points of connection between the two.

Firstly of course there is chocolate.  Chocolate is integral to brownies and everybody loves chocolate.  I'll bet Leo loved chocolate.  Or at least I'll bet he would have loved chocolate if chocolate had been known in ninth century Byzantium, which it wasn't.  However, based on the chocolate loving attitude of the bulk of the human race I think it is fair to extrapolate a connection between Leo and brownies based on chocolate.

Second there is the reference to Chicago in the brownie book's title.  Chicago is a vast, cosmopolitan port city with a rich history and a reputation for cultural diversity.  So is Constantinople which is where Leo spent the majority of his time.  Coincidence?  Possibly but the connections are starting to stack up.

As for decadent, well call me old fashioned but four wives and an undisclosed number of mistresses doesn't exactly strike me as the soul of old fashioned asceticism.  Leo seems to have been a guy who knew how to enjoy the sweet things of life such as (if they had been available) brownies.

So there we are then.  Amazon may have done a better matchmaking job than I first thought.  All in all though I'm not sure I'd trust them to run a dating website.