- Who
- Bartolomeo Platina, De honesta voluptate et valetudine (“On Right Pleasure and Good Health”)
- Where
- Italy ()
- When
- 1474
The first printed cookbook is Bartolomeo Platina’s (Italy) De honesta voluptate et valetudine (“On Right Pleasure and Good Health”). Written in Latin, it appeared in 1474, which is just 19 years after the Gutenberg Bible, the first mechanically printed book. Crowd-pleasing recipes for dishes like “Red Chickpea Broth” and “Date Torte with Almonds and Other Things” would be welcome even in modern kitchens today.
Before Platina’s book was printed, cookbooks circulated in manuscript form and were accessible only to wealthy families.
On Right Pleasure and Good Health is both a recipe book and a manual for healthy living based on the then-current belief in the humoral system of medicine.
The recipes themselves didn’t originate with Platina — he lifted them from Libre de Arte Coquinaria, a 15th-century manuscript composed by the renowned Italian chef Maestro Martino of Como. Perhaps because Platina’s book encompasses not only recipes but also medical advice and his own musings, it proved very popular and was soon translated into numerous languages. His work became a model for Western modes of writing about food and paved the way for the democratization of cookery books.
