''Le Viandier'' (often called ''Le Viandier de Taillevent'', ) is a recipe collection generally credited to Guillaume Tirel, alias ''Taillevent''. However, the earliest version of the work was written around 1300, about 10 years before Tirel's birth. The original author is unknown, but it was common for

medieval In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the 5th to the late 15th centuries, similarly to the post-classical period of World history (field), global history. It began with the fall of the West ...

recipe A recipe is a set of instructions that describes how to prepare or make something, especially a dish (food), dish of prepared food. A sub-recipe or subrecipe is a recipe for an ingredient that will be called for in the instructions for the main r ...

collections to be plagiarized, complemented with additional material and presented as the work of later authors. ''Le Viandier'' is one of the earliest and best-known recipe collections of the

Middle Ages In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the 5th to the late 15th centuries, similarly to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and ...

, along with the Latin-language '' Liber de Coquina'' (early 14th century, believed to contain recipes from France and Italy), the Catalan '' Llibre de Sent Soví'' (c. 1320), and the English ''

The Forme of Cury ''The Forme of Cury'' (''The Method of Cooking'', from Old French , 'cookery') is an extensive 14th-century collection of medieval English recipes. Although the original manuscript is lost, the text appears in nine manuscripts, the most famou ...

'' (c. 1390). Among other things, it contains the first detailed description of an entremet.

Manuscripts

There are four extant manuscripts of ''Le Viandier''.; Scully 1988 is the first edition to collate all four extant manuscripts; an English translation of the 220 recipes is included. The oldest, found in the Archives cantonales du Valais (

Sion, Switzerland Sion (, ; former ; ) is a Switzerland, Swiss List of towns in Switzerland, town, a municipality, and the capital of the Cantons of Switzerland, canton of Valais and of the district of Sion (district), Sion. it had a population of (known as '' ...

), was written in the late 13th or very early 14th century, and was largely overlooked until the 1950s. It is this manuscript that calls into question the authorship of Tirel, but a portion of it is missing at the beginning, so the title and author given for this earlier work are unknown. A manuscript from the 14th century housed in the

Bibliothèque nationale de France The (; BnF) is the national library of France, located in Paris on two main sites, ''Richelieu'' and ''François-Mitterrand''. It is the national repository of all that is published in France. Some of its extensive collections, including bo ...

(Paris) was formerly thought to be the oldest. The version in the Biblioteca Vaticana (Vatican City), is from the early 15th century. The fourth extant version is in the

Bibliothèque Mazarine The , or Mazarin Library, is located within the Palais de l'institut de France, or the Palace of the Institute of France (previously the Collège des Quatre-Nations of the University of Paris), at 23 quai de Conti in the 6th arrondissement, on t ...

(Paris) and also dates to the 15th century. There was a fifth version from the 15th century in

Saint-Lô Saint-Lô (, ; ) is a Communes of France, commune in northwest France, the capital of the Manche department in the region of Normandy (administrative region), Normandy.Jérôme Pichon and Georges Vicaire in their 1892 monograph, ''Le Viandier''; however, the Saint-Lô manuscript was destroyed by fire caused by heavy bombing on 6 June 1944, during the

invasion of Normandy Operation Overlord was the codename for the Battle of Normandy, the Allied operation that launched the successful liberation of German-occupied Western Europe during World War II. The operation was launched on 6 June 1944 ( D-Day) with the ...

. In the Valais manuscript there are about 130 recipes. There are variations from manuscript to manuscript, both in their original form and in what has been preserved or lost over the centuries.

Haute cuisine

''Le Viandier'' was one of the first "haute cuisine" cookbooks, offering a framework for its preparation and presentation at table. Taillevent divided the book into various sections, including sections specific to the preparation of meats, entremets, fish, sauces, and other recipes. The cookbook shows that cooking times were expressed in a number of prayers that were said. Taillevent also goes into detail on the spices that should be used for various dishes. According to Taillevent, there are three themes in haute cuisine; the use of spices, the separation of preparation for the meat and fish dishes from the sauces, and the way a dish should be presented. These were all carefully outlined in ''Le Viandier''. To further this idea of "medieval haute cuisine", Taillevent also mentions how much emphasis was placed on presentation by noting that often dyes were used to color sauces and meat roasts were covered with gold and silver leaf.

Print

About 1486, ''Le Viandier'' went into print without a title-page date or place, but this was undoubtedly Paris. The 1486 version contained an additional 142 recipes not found in the manuscripts. Twenty-four editions were produced between 1486 and 1615.

References

External links

Vatican Manuscript text
at the

University of Giessen University of Giessen, official name Justus Liebig University Giessen (), is a large public research university in Giessen, Hesse, Germany. It is one of the oldest institutions of higher education in the German-speaking world. It is named afte ...

James Prescott's 1989 translation of the Vatican Manuscript
on Chez Jim Books {{DEFAULTSORT:Viandier 14th-century books Medieval cookbooks French cookbooks

Manuscripts

Haute cuisine

Print

See also

References

External links