Beaver tail, bear paws and squirrel meat: Olomouc exhibition presents historic cookbooks
Beaver tail, bear paws or squirrel meat - these are just some of the ingredients from historic recipes currently on display at the Olomouc Research Library. The exhibition presenting unique cookbooks from the Middle Ages until the 1930s will run in the Moravian city until November.
Some 27 unique cookbooks can be seen at the recently renovated exhibition space in the Red Church. The titles on display were selected from several hundred volumes by historian and curator Petra Kubíčková.
“The very oldest printed cookbook in our collection is the platinum De honesta voluptate from 1503. It is a Renaissance cookbook written in Latin and contains more than 250 recipes.”
The cookbook, first ever to be published on a mass scale, was written by Italian author Bartolomeo Platina in 1465. It first came out in Rome around the year 1470. Over the next century, it was frequently reprinted both in the original Latin and numerous European languages.
Visitors to the Red Church in Olomouc can also admire one of the world’s smallest cookbooks, published in Vienna in 1906. It measures only 24 by 24 millimetres and contains over a hundred recipes, says Ms. Kubíčková:
“I'm afraid it's not the most practical format. The cookbook has a loop at the top of the binding, so maybe the loop was used to attach it to a chain. So a cook or a chef could wear it around his/her neck and flip through it.”
The exhibition also includes a selection of rather unconventional recipes, which offer, for instance, instructions on how to cook a beaver tail or mushed veal brains.
“There is also squirrel meat prepared in various ways, mostly in the form of patties or recipes involving capon, a young castrated rooster. You can make treats out of anything, although I have also come across recipes that specifically say: Cook this for your enemy."
This particular note, Ms. Kubíčková says, was written on a recipe for a savoury cake with baked eels.
Another interesting item on display is the first cookbook in German ever to be written by a woman, Anna Wecker’s Ein Köstlich new Kochbuch or A Delicious New Cookbook. What’s also interesting is that unlike other cookbooks of the time, Wecker’s work wasn’t intended for aristocratic households but for simple, home-style cooking. The item on display is the last rare edition printed in Basel in 1667.
The oldest Czech printed cookbook from the Olomouc Research Library archives is the Alchemist’s Art of Cooking by Czech nobleman Bavor Rodovský of Hustiřany, written in 1591. Meanwhile, Moravian cuisine is represented by the Czech-language culinary handbook Co hrdlo ráčí or To One’s Heart’s Content from 1831.
The exhibition also presents the legendary book of recipes by Magdalena Dobromila Rettigová A Household Cookery Book from 1862. The book is still being reprinted and a copy can be found in many Czech households.
