359 pp. Frontispiece of an Italian chef, and one diagram of a banquet table, from above, set for twenty-four people. Gilt-lettered florally-decorated gray cloth.
Title translation: The King of Chefs; or, The art of eating, after the manner of the Italians, our own and foreign dishes; containing what is necessary to know about ordering and serving a meal, as well as the best methods for creating preserves, spirits, liqueurs, and ice creams. From Don Lindgren at Rabelais Books: "A recipe collection and guide to the Italian peninsula. L'arte di mangiare presumes a certain focus on batters, grains, creams, and sauces, but the seven hundred ninety-six numbered recipes insistently embrace fish (tench, bream, mullet, paraghi, carpione), game, and the full complement of bovidae – not to forget hooves, stomachs, testicles, and tongues."
" One might linger over Fritelle di Erbe Odorose (fragrant herb fritters, no. 293) or a regional Sfogliatine with candied fruit (no. 672)...The indispensable note "salateli allora quanto basta" ("then add salt to taste") recurs, but precision of measurement is enlisted when needed: Scorzonera (salsify) should be cut in eight or ten centimeter lengths (no. 221); Gelato di Crema alla Mandorla (no. 776) requires three hundred grams of almonds to fourteen egg yolks. And, for those who desire the carmine effect, one needs ten grams of the scale insect cochineal to prepare the liqueur Alkermes (no. 767) – which, in turn, will be needed for the Zuppa Inglese (no. 659). A small host of Italian cookery companions appear in the middle half of the nineteenth century with names of their author(s) omitted, evidently as promise that the cuisine advocated therein would be found to be communal, "of the people" – in a word, national – and not, therefore, the concoctions of a chef in the employ of nobility. They might be either men or women, or even both, as in the case of Il cuoco milanese e la cuciniera piemontese (Milan: Lombardi, 1853). Chefs of noble houses, by contrast, advertised their names and co-opted the language of hierarchy. Probably the most successful cookbook of this milieu was that by Giovanni Nelli: Il re dei cuochi: Trattado di gastronomia universale (Milan: Legros, 1868; and reprinted many times); though later followers raised the royal banner, trumping Nelli's The King of Cooks with The King of Kings of Cooks (Jean-Marie Parmentier's Il re dei re dei cuochi [Turin: Bietti, 1895]) and The Emperor of Cooks (Vitalino Bossi's L'imperatore dei cuochi [Rome: Perini, 1894]). An anonymous sovereign, then, is something of a hybrid. Il re dei cuochi (originally published in 1881) appropriates from Nelli the opening phrase of its title and reproduces on its frontispiece the image of a cook holding a saucepan and slotted spoon that had appeared on Nelli's cover (a popular engraving in neither the first nor last of its sightings). It may have been intended as a less expensive alternative to the Trattado. Recipes occupy center stage: general instructions (obligations of the host, table service, preliminary ingredients notes) are dispensed with in twenty-two pages. Thereafter the impression is one of an attempt to embrace the regions of the peninsula, supplemented with a nod to the Mediterranean beyond, with suffixes such as all 'uso toscano, all'uso di Napoli, alla romagnola, alla veneziana, alla cremonese, alla milanese, alla lucchese, alla triestina, alla perugina, alla genovese, alla lombarda, alla tirolese, alla torinese, alla marchigiana; and all' Istriono, alla provenzale, all' uso di Levante." - Don Lindgren, Rabelais Books