Publication date:
16 June 2017Length of book:
320 pagesPublisher
Rowman & Littlefield PublishersISBN-13: 9781442279414
Winner of the Jane Grigson Trust Award 2017 and the Aragonese Academy of Gastronomy’s 2017 Prize for Research
New Art of Cookery, Drawn from the School of Economic Experience, was an influential recipe book published in 1745 by Spanish friary cook Juan Altamiras. In it, he wrote up over 200 recipes for meat, poultry, game, salted and fresh fish, vegetables and sweet things in a chatty style aimed at readers who cooked on a modest budget. He showed that economic cookery could be delicious if flavors and aromas were blended with an appreciation for all sorts of ingredients, however humble, and for diverse food cultures, ranging from that of Aragon, his home region, to those of Iberian court and New World kitchens. This first English translation gives guidelines for today’s cooks alongside the original text, and interweaves a new narrative portraying 18th-century Spain, its everyday life, and food culture. The author traces links between New Art’s dishes and modern Spanish cookery, tells the story of her search to identify the book’s author and understand the popularity of his book for over 150 years, and takes travelers, cooks, historians, and students of Spanish language, culture, and gastronomy on a fascinating journey to the world of Altamiras and, most important of all, his kitchen.
New Art of Cookery, Drawn from the School of Economic Experience, was an influential recipe book published in 1745 by Spanish friary cook Juan Altamiras. In it, he wrote up over 200 recipes for meat, poultry, game, salted and fresh fish, vegetables and sweet things in a chatty style aimed at readers who cooked on a modest budget. He showed that economic cookery could be delicious if flavors and aromas were blended with an appreciation for all sorts of ingredients, however humble, and for diverse food cultures, ranging from that of Aragon, his home region, to those of Iberian court and New World kitchens. This first English translation gives guidelines for today’s cooks alongside the original text, and interweaves a new narrative portraying 18th-century Spain, its everyday life, and food culture. The author traces links between New Art’s dishes and modern Spanish cookery, tells the story of her search to identify the book’s author and understand the popularity of his book for over 150 years, and takes travelers, cooks, historians, and students of Spanish language, culture, and gastronomy on a fascinating journey to the world of Altamiras and, most important of all, his kitchen.
Gourmets and Spanish food historians have long known about the eighteenth-century Franciscan friar, Juan Altamiras, who published a cookbook documenting the then-current state of Spanish cooking. Immediately popular, it ran through several editions even before Altamiras’ death. Hayward has performed an estimable service to the Anglophone world by translating and annotating the original text, making available this seminal work at a time when today’s innovative Spanish chefs have brought their native cuisine to the world stage. Altamiras renders his recipes more as general techniques, assuming readers skilled in kitchen traditions and ready to cope with the absence of precise measures and temperatures offered by today’s kitchen technologies. Hayward’s notes make these antique recipes a bit more accessible. She notes that Altamiras was concerned that his recipes not only tasted good but also succored the sick and infirm. Such insightful glosses bring to life this remarkable and talented friar’s achievement.