Llibre del Coch
The Llibre del Coch, or Llibre de doctrina per a ben servir, de tallar y del art de coch cs (ço es) de qualsevol manera, potatges y salses compost per lo diligent mestre Robert coch del Serenissimo senyor Don Ferrando Rey de Napols, is a Catalan recipe book written around 1490 by Master Robert. Its earliest preserved printed edition is from 1520, published in Catalan in Barcelona. It includes mainly recipes from the Catalan cuisine of the time, some of them inherited from the "Llibre de Sent Soví", and some from neighboring countries, such as the Occitan  cuisine and the Italian cuisine, including traditions from different areas dominated by the Crown of Aragon, which at that time was spread to the northeastern Mediterranean, Southern Italy, Corsica and Sicily. Despite not including Castilian recipes, was also very successful in Castile, was translated into Spanish in 1525 and republished in this language several times. It is considered of great value for acquiring a good knowledge about the gastronomy of the Renaissance. This book should not be confused with another lesser known work, which also deals about Catalan cuisine and is called "Llibre del Coch o del Ventre de la  Canonja de Tarragona", written in 1331 by Guillem Clergue, butler of Guerau de Rocabertí . First editions. "Llibre del Coch was" the first cookbook published in Catalan using Gutenberg press. It is also previous to any cookbook printed in Spanish. A printed edition, printed on November 15, 1520, is preserved in the Biblioteca Nacional de Catalunya in Barcelona, being the oldest known copy extant. In the time of King Charles I it was requested its tranlation into Spanish and it was first published in this language in 1529 (or 1525 ) in Toledo . The same year, much of the text was plagiarised  by Diego Granado in his "book Arte de Cocina." Throughout the century at least another five editions were printed in Catalan and seven in Spanish,   There are clues for the printed book of 1520 being a copy of an older text: It is dedicated to King Ferdinand I of Naples, who was king of Naples between 1458 and 1494, and also, and above all, maintains the proportions of Lent preceding 1491. There is no mention at all of the foods forbidden by the Church during Lent, which from 1491 allowed the catholic people the consumption of dairy products (such as  milk and cheese, for example) and eggs. In addition, the original ms. should have been written before Europe's contact with America in 1492, because it does not mention any products from the new continent. Content. The book consists of more than two hundred chapters, and most of them (two hundred and thirty-six) correspond to recipes but, as its full title indicates, begins with chapters devoted to how to cut meat and they are followed by others teaching how to serve different people at the table, such as sharpening, serving water, acting as a butler, waiter, room teacher, cloakroom  attendant, and so on. The last chapter, under the title "Table" contains an index. In this book there is no recipe with mushrooms, so present and prized in today's Catalan cuisine. For some authors, this fact, could be explained as a prevention against possible poisonings. On the other hand, and as a novelty with respect to the ", there" are already two recipes for rice, "rice with meat broth" and "rice in a casserole in the oven", which could be the predecessors of rice in the casserole and the current rice and crust, representing the first rice dishes, as we  now understand the "rice dishes and paellas", described in writing about Catalan cuisine. There are eight recipes aimed specifically at patients. One of the Arabic recipes with an Arabic name, the "alburnia", could be an ancient fig bread today, but with rose water, an ingredient, also of oriental influence, very common in this recipe and in the medieval cuisine of the "Sent Soví". It includes two recipes explicitly titled "a la morisca" and others with a name that also specifies a foreign way of cooking, such as, for example: "bona salsa francesa", "torta a la genouesa xinxanelles a la veneciana  or sopes a la lombarda", Only three recipes are specifying "a la catalana" (the "Catalan way)", perhaps due to a lack of awareness that the other recipes are also Catalan or because these recipes were known elsewhere with this qualifier. No recipe from "Sent Soví" has this label, although they are all Catalan. In general, the Catalan cuisine before the introduction of the American aliments was not excessively different from the roman cuisine. The ingredients used they were reduced, the mixes as well, prioritising the most esteemed and deleting some aliments and mixtures that today would seem us "a bit  akward"; instead the amount of species was increased. The cooking and the table service got refined, showing the bases to serve to table, as it shows this book and others of the same period, for example the handwritten "". Author. We know, because it is written to the title of the book printed that the author was called "mestre Robert" and that he was cook of the "king Ferran of Nàpols", but do not know whether he was born in Nola, to Noya, or some other place, "anybody knows who was this character", "native of Catalonia". The chapter "“De offici de  mestre de Estable”" ( that describes some obligations of the charge: ""Master of horse keepers""), says very clearly:“E de aquesta materia nom curaré més de parlar-ne ara perquè en lo Llibre de Menescalia ja molt largament n'he parlat:...”(“.. about this matter I will be carefull of not speaking now because in the book of Menescalia I have already spoken very lengthily...”), therefore it is obvious to suppose that the author of the “"Llibre del Coch",” and the author of the “Libre of Menescalia” should be the same person: mossen Manuel Dieç, butler of the king Alfons the Magnanimous; at later  date, Mestre Robert de Nola (if he ever existed, for the name could be invented) would have copied the lost original ms., written by Manuel Dieç. (See folio VIIIr or in Wikitexts: Page: Llibre del Coch (1520) .djvu / 9 ) Comparison with the "Llivre de Sent Soví". The "llibre de Sent Soví" is a 14th century, famous Catalan recipes book, though not printed, but handwritten, with extant copies from that century . The author is unknown, since, unlike the of the "Book of the Coch", the author does not sign the book. The differences in the type of cooking are not important . It knows that Robert of Nola he knew the "llibre de Sent Soví" and that he uses some elements and recipes from it. As an innovation, for example, mestre Robert proposes sheep's milk in addition to the goat's milk in any recipe. Regarding the species, in general the "libre de Sent Soví" uses less species than the "Book of the Coch".In the "llibre de Sent Soví" there are only Catalan recipes whereas the "" includes, recipes of neighbouring cultures like those from Italy, France or from Arab countries. but in any of the two books appears any Castilian  recipe, even if the "" was so quickly translated to the Spanish language. In 1491 the Church decided that the Catholics could eat eggs and milk for Lent, but Robert of Nola was not aware of this, thus these ingredients are absent within the Lent's recipes of both books. The style of the "" is more literary. The "llibre de Sent Soví" was not announced to the public until the 20th century, whereas the "" was, in Josep Pla words, "a true "bestseller"", being translated very quickly to several languages and was considered "the book of cooking of the Renaissance". Llibre del