New Art of Cookery

June 1, 2017
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.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)