Pub.Cat Books
Cover of The Book of the Cook: a woodcut of a cook stirring a pot over an open fire, with the title in black capitals on a cream ground

Mestre Robert (Rupert de Nola)

The Book of the Cook

The earliest cookery book known to have been printed in Catalan, now rendered into English from the Catalan, complete with a foreword, notes and a glossary.

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Pages
222
Formats
Digital, Kindle, Paperback
ISBN (paperback)
9798162702160
Translator
Clement Ashdown
Original
Barcelona, 1520 (in Catalan)
Language
English

What this book is

In 1520 a Barcelona printer published the first cookery book known to have been printed in Catalan. Its author, Master Robert, called himself cook to King Ferdinand of Naples. His Llibre del Coch was reprinted for decades and translated into Castilian, but the English versions we could find are all hobby translations of that Castilian text. This is the first English translation from the Catalan that we could find.

The book opens with the art of the carver and the duties of a great household: the steward, the cupbearer, the master of the hall and the cook. Then come some two hundred recipes: the spice blends and "crowned" sauces of the court, blancmange and mirraust, almond-milk pottages, rice baked in a casserole, pies, pasties and sweets, dishes for invalids, and a treatise on Lenten cooking with lamprey, sturgeon, tuna, conger and octopus.

Plainly translated for cooks and readers, with the Catalan names kept alongside the English, it is a direct voice from the kitchens of the Crown of Aragon around 1500.

What is original in this edition

  • A new, complete English translation made directly from the Catalan, not from the later Castilian version
  • A new foreword on Master Robert, the book's printings and how to cook from it today
  • More than two hundred reader notes, keyed recipe by recipe, on ingredients, customs and difficult passages
  • A full glossary of Catalan ingredients, measures, utensils and dish names
  • Approximate metric equivalents for the book's Barcelona pounds and ounces
  • A note on the edition explaining exactly how the text was read, checked and translated

How it was made

Translated using cutting-edge AI technology and edited by the publisher.

Illustrations

Thirteen paintings and engravings in the public domain from the era, ranging from The Peasant Wedding to The Bean Eater. Click on any image to view it at a larger size.

Engraved plate of kitchen and carving knives, cleavers, skewers and a knife case, each labelled in Italian
Bartolomeo Scappi, Opera: knives, 1570. Getty Research Institute.
A crowded peasant wedding feast in a barn: two servants carry bowls of food on a door used as a tray while guests eat at a long table
Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Peasant Wedding, 1568. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.
Engraving of a vaulted room beside a kitchen where cooks roll pastry, strain sauces through a cloth and stir blancmange in a pan
Bartolomeo Scappi, Opera: the room beside the kitchen, 1570. Getty Research Institute.
Engraving of a large kitchen with a cook at an open fire, a pot hanging from a chain, shelves of pans and long serving tables set with dishes
Bartolomeo Scappi, Opera: the main kitchen, 1570. Getty Research Institute.
Engraving of a clockwork machine with gears and a weighted drum turning three spits of roasting birds over a fire
Bartolomeo Scappi, Opera: a machine for turning spits, 1570. Getty Research Institute.
An old woman cooks eggs in an earthenware dish over a brazier while a boy beside her holds a melon and a flask of oil
Diego Velázquez, An Old Woman Cooking Eggs, 1618. Scottish National Gallery.
A still life of a basket of pastries and ring cakes, glass jars of preserves, a terracotta flask and round wooden boxes for quince paste on stone ledges
Juan van der Hamen y León, Still Life with Sweets and Pottery, 1627. National Gallery of Art, Washington.
A quince and a cabbage hang on strings in a dark stone window frame above a cut melon, a slice of melon and a cucumber
Juan Sánchez Cotán, Quince, Cabbage, Melon and Cucumber, about 1602. San Diego Museum of Art.
Engraving of a cool vaulted room where three men work milk: one at a table, one beating a bowl and one churning butter
Bartolomeo Scappi, Opera: a cool room for working milk, 1570. Getty Research Institute.
A crowded kitchen table heaped with poultry, fish, bread, vegetables and fruit, with women and men preparing food and a dog in the foreground
Pieter Aertsen, Kitchen Scene, about 1560–65. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.
A crowded town square where a fat figure of Carnival on a barrel jousts with a thin figure of Lent on a cart, with fish, bread and pretzels on display
Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Fight between Carnival and Lent, 1559. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.
A fish stall heaped with salmon steaks, a large cod, carp and other fish, with fishmongers behind the counter and a town gate beyond
Joachim Beuckelaer, Fish Market, 1568. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
A man in a straw hat eats beans from a bowl with a spoon at a table laid with bread, a spring onion, a pie, a jug and a glass of wine
Annibale Carracci, The Bean Eater, about 1584–85. Galleria Colonna, Rome.

Editions

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Digital $6.99

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Kindle $9.99

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Paperback $19.99

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  • 222 pages, black and white
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