New Art of Cookery

Reviews / Votes

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. * Booklist * Vicky Hayward, an independent researcher, has done a remarkably good job at not only introducing Altamiras to an English-speaking audience but in providing a thorough and erudite commentary on Altamiras, his cooking, and the times in which he lived.The format Hayward has chosen ... works perfectly in contemplating the difficulty of translating 18th century culinary Spanish into not only the translation of the recipe as originally written, but in transforming it into a modern recipe that could be cooked in today's kitchens, and, most importantly, providing a commentary to better understand Altamiras's original intent and the historical connections and milieu of his writing. This is an admirable achievement.... Hayward's impressive and important achievement is so not only because of the historical importance of this work but for a deeper understanding of Spain's culinary patrimony. It is a contribution to culinary history in general, and like all such historical cookbooks, a delicious way to taste history. This book is highly recommended. * New York Journal of Books * Author Vicky Hayward has added considerable value to her translation by giving guidelines for today's cooks (from experienced chefs) and interweaving the story of eighteenth-century Spanish life, its traditions and culture. It's well done, retaining the spirit and style of the original and making it accessible for the modern cook. * Bookbag * What Hayward finds most surprising about Altamiras's writing is its familiar tone. He begins the book with a friendly confidence. . . .And then he continues with completely contemporary advice. . . . Hayward means for the dishes to be cooked in contemporary kitchens. . . . Her headnotes offer cooking advice and historical context and so they toggle between Altamiras's original versions and Hayward's updated versions for contemporary cooks.... Altamiras is an engaging kitchen companion. . . he is clearly proud of a well-cooked dish. * CHoW Line * New Art is unlike any English cookbook I have come across from the 18th century. Not only are the recipes simple but they utilise ingredients our homegrown cooks shied away from during this time (like tomatoes and garlic). The result is flavoursome food which it is hard to conceive monks would have eaten. Hayward provides a translation of Altamiras' original recipe which is often followed by a little commentary on how this relates to modern Spanish food (and sometimes a wine recommendation, which is always a nice touch in my opinion). Hayward then provides an adaption of Altamiras's recipe, therefore removing the hassle of trying to decipher the archaic language, terms and vague measurements used by 18th century cooks. Not only is this book fascinating but it contains recipes you really will want to cook - the descriptions alone are enough to make your mouth water. * Comfortably Hungry * This beautifully written book is a text for us all, full of good things to cook and eat, and like a fat historical novel, evocative of old ways and new horizons, with a likeable enigmatic personality at its core. -- Gillian Riley, author of The Oxford Companion to Italian Food The pleasures and pitfalls of grappling with historic food are abundant. The worst pitfall is a pedantic word by word, phrase by phrase, rendering of a text written by an intelligent but not literate cook, by an accurate, plodding, stilted academic translator. Altamiras and Hayward do not fall into that trap; he has a skilfully crafted, naif, teasing, friendly, accessible, punning, self-deprecating, sometimes malicious, anti-clerical, pious, tone of voice, part amiable old uncle, part wicked nephew, and Hayward has rumbled him. She gives us far more than his collection of recipes; her deep and gripping narrative uncovers the complex personality behind them, by no means an illiterate convent cook, his life in a Franciscan friary in mid-eighteenth century Aragon, with its secular enlightenment and medieval piety, caught up in the mire of European politics and the unsettling effects of Spain's economic decline. Among the pleasures are the recipes themselves, both of their time, and surprisingly modern, and her comments on the ingredients, the cooking methods, a few lavish but more of them parsimonious, influenced by the local terroir and the gastronomy of the rich, the use of products from the New World - potatoes, tomatoes, beans - the pragmatic blend of old ways and seasonings with modern concepts of diet and healthy living. This beautifully written book is a text for us all, full of good things to cook and eat, and like a fat historical novel, evocative of old ways and new horizons, with a likeable enigmatic personality at its core. -- Gillian Riley, author of The Oxford Companion to Italian Food He is without doubt my favourite Spanish cookery writer .... The recipes in Altamiras's wonderful little collection are fairly simple and represent the everyday cookery of his region of Aragon. -- Ivan Day, Food History Jottings This complete new edition lets us understand the detail of how Altamiras polished recipes, flavours and techniques, and is a timely reminder that today's Spanish gastronomy is rooted in the wealth and subtleties of popular cuisine. -- Pepe Rodriguez, Chef-Proprietor at El Bohio (Michelin-starred restaurants, Toledo) and judge of Spanish Masterchef Altamiras captured the essence of Spanish cooking, its signs of identity and depth. By contextualising the recipes of his small but brilliant book, this edition allows us to enter his kitchen, see through his eyes, and think how cookery may be a reflection on the landscape around us. -- Kiko Moya, Chef-Proprietor at L'Escaleta (Michelin-starred restaurant, Alicante, Spain), "One of the great secrets of modern Spanish cuisine", Black Ink's World's 100 Best Restaurants, 2014 Juan Altamiras's recipes reveal how Franciscan food grew around simplicity, food alms, healthy eating, and the idea of food without frontiers. What makes this edition of his book special is Vicky Hayward's exhaustive multidisciplinary research, which allows us to appreciate the original in full. -- Cayetano Sanchez Fuertes, Order of Franciscan Friars, Historian and archivist of Franciscan life in Spain and the Far East I had heard about Juan Altamiras and his cookbook when I was working on my own book on the food of Spain and was thrilled to find that one of the best journalists writing on the Spanish restaurant scene was doing an in-depth research about the eighteenth-century Franciscan friar's life and times as well as his cooking. Vicky Hayward's own journey in bringing to light the mysteries behind this little known culinary classic makes fascinating reading while she offers us a taste of Altamiras's kitchen with delicious modern versions of his recipes. The book chimes perfectly with the popular desire today to understand the story behind what we eat. -- Claudia Roden, food writer, author of The Food of Spain, The Food of Italy - Region by Region, The New Book of Middle Eastern Food, and The Book of Jewish Food