This piece is attributed to Francesco Michele Tramezzino, Venetian printers, as well as friends and publishers of the famed Bartolomeo Scappi on the publishing of his 1570 Opera – The Art and Craft of the Modern Cook – and is worth sharing…
“To the Readers
The main purpose of good authors is usually and properly to compose and publish their work, or to be as useful as possible to the public by offering sound instruction and beneficial precepts, or else by entertaining the Reader in some way either with the subject matter they choose or with their style when they cannot do anything else. It therefore seems to me that absolute glory and true honour are rightly deserved by those who have happily been able to achieve both one and the other of the above purposes; just so, to my way of thinking, it can truly be affirmed has happened with Messer Bartolomeo Scappi, the author of the present work, having taken as his subject a matter so necessary to the body’s health and having dealt with it with as great astuteness as any of the ancients; wherein he has managed, as any person of sound intellect can clearly see from the organization of the work itself, to place just as much utility as pleasure for any man willing to read it and use it as need be in his life. And if our intellect learns things easily and as a result prospers through those sciences that, for the industry of a wise and experienced Master, come to be laid out and expounded to it, so ought one to be certain that the rules and precepts of so excellent an author in that art must delight all of the human senses and must maintain and further enhance perfect health in our body, provided we sustain its proper temperament and furnish it with the wise discourse of reason.
Nothing else, then, Gentlemen, is needed to persuade you to read such a worthy work, since by itself it shows you how very useful its reading will prove to be to you.”
Some endorsement indeed!!!
