Epulario, or The Italian Banquet
- Year
- 1598
- Era
- 16th century
- Origin
- England · Europe
- Language
- English
- Category
- Italian/Spanish
Epulario, or The Italian Banquet is the English rendering of the Italian Epulario attributed to Giovanni de' Rosselli, first issued in London at the close of the sixteenth century. As one of the earliest Italian cookery texts made available to English readers, it offered recipes for banqueting dishes, sauces, pies, and elaborate set pieces, marking a notable moment in the transmission of Renaissance Italian culinary practice into Tudor England.
Cooking from this book
Pie of Live Birds
Signature dishFew dishes capture the theatrical spirit of Renaissance banqueting like the pie filled with live birds, which Epulario famously brought to English readers in 1598. A hollow crust is baked, then secretly filled with songbirds that take wing when the lid is lifted at table. This showpiece, often credited as the source of the nursery rhyme about four and twenty blackbirds, exemplifies the Italian taste for spectacle that the book introduced to Elizabethan kitchens.
An editorial note on a dish associated with this book, written for The Coquinist. It is not a reproduction of the book's recipe.