Image: Unknown authorUnknown author · Public domain
Opera
- Year
- 1570
- Era
- 16th century
- Origin
- Italy · Europe
- Language
- Italian
- Category
- Italian/Spanish
Opera, compiled by Bartolomeo Scappi and first published in Venice in 1570, is among the most ambitious culinary works of the Italian Renaissance. Drawing on its author's experience as cook to popes and cardinals, it sets out hundreds of recipes alongside menus for grand banquets. Its celebrated engraved plates depicting kitchens, utensils, and equipment provide an unrivalled visual record of sixteenth-century professional cookery.
Cooking from this book
Pasticcio of Pheasant in a Raised Crust
Signature dishFew dishes capture the grandeur of Scappi's Vatican kitchens like his elaborate pheasant pie, encased in a tall, freestanding pastry shell and perfumed with sweet spices. As personal cook to Pope Pius V, Scappi treated such pies as theatrical centrepieces for banquets, and the famous engravings accompanying his volume show the ovens, moulds and implements needed to construct them. The pasticcio has become emblematic of Renaissance courtly cookery and of Scappi's monumental ambition.
An editorial note on a dish associated with this book, written for The Coquinist. It is not a reproduction of the book's recipe.
