[Sca-cooks] What cookbook is this?

[James Prescott]

There's a bit about the author in the French Wikipedia:

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jodocus_Willich

I have failed to find any English translation.


Abebooks says of one copy:

Book Description: Zurich, Jakob Gessner, [1563]. [bound with:] [GESSNER, 
Conrad]. Sanitatis tuendae praecepta cum aliis, tum literarum studiosis 
hominibus, & ijs qui minus exercentur, cognitu necessaria. Zurich, Jakob 
Gessner, [?1561]., 1563. Two works in one vol., 8vo, pp. [xvi], 227, 
[29]; 23; occasional light staining; a very good copy in a contemporary 
vellum wallet-binding, a trifle spotted, and shrunken; from the library 
of the Swiss physician Johann Lorenz Löeli (or Löelig), with his 
ownership entry dated 1694 on title, several marginal annotations in his 
hand and his armorial engraved bookplate on front paste-down. I. FIRST 
EDITION OF A GASTRONOMIC TREATISE BY THE GERMAN PHYSICIAN, THEOLOGIAN, 
AND POLYMATH, TOGETHER WITH ONE OF THE EARLIEST TREATISES ON SWISS 
CHEESE. The work was edited posthumously by Willich’s brother-in-law 
Wolfgang Justus, and has a preface by Conrad Gessner. Willich 
systematically treats the equipment of a kitchen, various foodstuffs and 
kitchen products, such as marzipan, cakes, meat, lard, dairy products, 
eggs, vegetables, fruit, grain, rice, oils, honey, sugar, mushrooms, 
spices and herbs. On many occasions the vernacular German words of the 
foodstuffs are given. There follow a few chapters on cooking fish, with 
some thirty species listed in Latin and German. The next chapters deal 
with poultry, birds, bread, and nuts. Besides preparation methods from 
antiquity, Willich gives several ‘modern’ recipes, for example tongue 
cooked with grape or cherry juice, spiced with juniper berries, a recipe 
from Breslau in Silesia.Jacob Bifrons, from the Romansch-speaking part 
of Switzerland, presents with his De operibus lactariis (pp. 220-7) a 
very early treatise entirely devoted to cheese production in the 
Engadin. Bifrons describes the production, storage, and ripening 
process, providing exact measurements of the ingredients. II. Second 
edition (first, 1556) of Gessner’s work ‘on hygiene, the use and abuse 
of cosmetics by women, and against the superstitious belief that 
bloodletting should be performed according to astrological indications’ 
(Wellisch p. 81). Originally written for Johann Wegmann, a Zurich 
councillor, as a present for the carnival season of 1556, Gessner 
comments on texts from Pliny, Cicero, and Celsus, and adds his critical 
notes on the luxuries of his contemporaries.I. Adams W188; B.IN.G. 2059; 
Bitting p. 499 (‘the book is rare’); Cagle 1234; Durling 4740; Simon, 
Bibliotheca Bacchica II 708; VD16 W3223; Vicaire 875; Wellisch A.58; not 
in Wellcome.II. VD16 G1709; Wellisch A41.2; see Adams G555, B.IN.G. 925, 
Durling 2073, Simon, Bibliotheca Bacchica II 309, Vicaire 401, and 
Wellcome 2803 for the first edition; not in Cagle. Bookseller Inventory 
# S734



There's a bit about Gessner here:

http://www.euppublishing.com/doi/abs/10.3366/jsbnh.1975.7.2.151


Thorvald



On 2013-02-26 09:16, Christiane wrote:
> I was poking around Google when I stumbled across this:
>
> http://books.google.com/books?id=ujYhXYQixeIC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false
>
> It appears to be a scanned copy of a book printed in 1563, covering magic, diet, recipes, etc. My extremely limited Latin isn't up to the task of really figuring out what this is all about (and the glosses seem to be in Greek, which I don't know at all).
>
> Anyway, enjoy. I'd love to know more about this book.
>
> Adelisa