About this item

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.