Libro de Cozina (Libre del Coch)
- Year
- 1525
- Era
- 16th century
- Origin
- Spain · Europe
- Language
- Spanish/Catalan
- Category
- Italian/Spanish
Libro de Cozina, the Castilian translation of Robert de Nola's Catalan Libre del Coch, holds the distinction of being the first cookbook printed in Spanish. Compiled from the kitchens of the Aragonese court of Naples, it transmits late medieval Catalan-Italian culinary practice across the Iberian Peninsula, preserving recipes for sauces, pottages, and banquet dishes that reflect the Mediterranean exchange shaping Renaissance courtly cookery.
Cooking from this book
Manjar Blanco
Signature dishThe dish most often linked to this early printed Iberian cookbook is manjar blanco, a pale, delicate pottage of pounded chicken breast cooked with rice flour, almond milk and sugar. Beloved across medieval European courts, it became emblematic of the refined Aragonese and Neapolitan kitchens that Ruperto de Nola served. Its presence here, in the first cookbook printed in Spanish, helped fix manjar blanco in the Hispanic culinary imagination for centuries to follow.
An editorial note on a dish associated with this book, written for The Coquinist. It is not a reproduction of the book's recipe.
