Image: Martino di Rossi · Public domain
Libro de Arte Coquinaria
- Year
- ms
- Era
- Undated
- Origin
- Italy · Europe
- Language
- Italian
- Category
- Italian/Spanish
Libro de Arte Coquinaria, compiled in the mid-fifteenth century by Maestro Martino of Como, cook to the Patriarch of Aquileia, marks a decisive transition from medieval to Renaissance cookery. Surviving in several manuscript witnesses before reaching print, it abandons heavy spicing for clearer flavors, introduces precise quantities and timings, and supplied much of the material later absorbed by Bartolomeo Sacchi (Platina) into De honesta voluptate.
Cooking from this book
Biancomangiare
Signature dishThe dish most often linked with Maestro Martino's manuscript is biancomangiare, an elegant white pottage of pounded capon breast, almond milk, rice flour and sugar. Pale, perfumed and faintly sweet, it was a banquet centrepiece for noble Italian tables of the Quattrocento. Martino's treatment marks a turning point between medieval and Renaissance cookery, refining the older European tradition with a lighter hand and a clearer sense of taste, texture and visual restraint.
An editorial note on a dish associated with this book, written for The Coquinist. It is not a reproduction of the book's recipe.
