[Sca-cooks] Another version of Martino this fall

[Johnna Holloway]

Not only is California releasing an edition of Martino
The Eminent Maestro Martino of Como
The Art of Cooking
The First Modern Cookery Book
California Studies in Food and Culture, 14
Edited and with an Introduction by Luigi Ballerini, Translated and 
Annotated by Jeremy Parzen, and with Fifty Modernized Recipes by 
Stefania Barzini
http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/9423.html

But Octavo is releasing a cd version this fall--
A glimpse into the Italian Renaissance kitchen

		Martino, Maestro
Libro de Arte Coquinaria
Rome, 1450-60
The riotous theater of the kitchen, with recipes handed down, jotted
onto cards, or clipped from forgotten newspapers, is perhaps the only
remaining arena in which the manuscript tradition can still be savored.
Adaptation, corruption, suppression, and uncorrected misattribution are
all essential ingredients in the living culture of the recipe. Eclectic
manuscript collections – the precursors of printed cookbooks – provided
the only systematic record of culinary technique before printing was
introduced into Europe. An exemplary work in this genre, contemporary
with Gutenberg and situated on the cutting edge of the New Gastronomy,
is the manuscript Libro de Arte Coquinaria (Book on the Art of Cooking)
by Maestro Martino of Como, sometime cook to the Papal Treasurer.
Martino’s recipes cover meat, broths, stews, condiments, sauces,
pastries, pies, fritters, pancakes, eggs, and fish. In addition to
providing a delectable glimpse into the Italian Renaissance kitchen,
Martino’s work has a particular importance, as it is the major source
for the recipes in the first epicure’s handbook to be published in
Europe, De Honesta Voluptate (On Virtuous Pleasure) of 1473-75 by the
Vatican librarian known as “Il Platina.” Platina’s printed book appeared
in numerous editions and exerted a wide influence; Martino’s work
survives only in a single manuscript, now in the Library of Congress.
This seminal text, in its wonderfully legible humanistic hand, is
reproduced in breathtaking facsimile in this Octavo Edition, along with
a new English translation by cookery historian Gillian Riley, which
brings the cultured savor of this Renaissance masterpiece into a useful
modern idiom. 176 pages, $35.

http://www.octavo.com/products/ODEforthcoming.html#mrtlac

Johnnae llyn Lewis