Rafał Hryszko

The article is a commentary on the Chapter 13 of Lumen apothecariorum, written in 1492 by Quirico de Augustis, a Piedmontese physician and apothecary, who lived at the turn of the 16th century. This chapter was published in Zeszyty Naukowe Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego. Prace Historyczne, vol. 149 (2022), no. 2. At the beginning, the author analyses the content of this chapter, entitled De artificio zuchari (On sugar craft), and characterises the typology of 31 recipes for sweets. Next, he presents the ingredients of sweets manufactured on the basis of these recipes, methods recommended for sugar processing, and the tools used for this purpose. In the next section the author focuses on probable sources of Quirico de Augustis’ inspiration and the impact of his recipes for sweets on other collections of recipes in the 16th century. The final section is devoted to the discussion of the importance of this source in the studies on the early Renaissance Italian and European confectionery. The author emphasises the fact that the first person to specifically address the area of confectionery production and to collect the recipes for different types of sweets in a separate chapter was Quirico de Augustis (in his work entitled Lumen apothecariorum) and not Paulo Suardo (in his work entitled Thesaurus apothecariorum, published in Milan in 1496). Thanks to its numerous editions, translations and citations, Chapter 13 of Quirico de Augustis’ Lumen apothecariorum exerted a great impact on the European confectionery in modern times. The evidence of this impact can be noticed in the fact that all 31 recipes from the chapter De artificio zuchari were included in the Polish version Sekrety Aleksego Pedemontana (The Secrets of the Reverend Maister Alexis of Piedmont), published by Marcin Siennik in Cracow in 1568.

Andree apothecario pro confectionibus et electuariis – confectionery in Poland in the days of Jadwiga  and Władysław Jagiełło between Eastern and Western Europe

The author of the article discusses the issue of manufacturing and production of sweets in Poland at the end of the 14th century. This little-known matter was presented against the background of the changes that occurred in confectionery consumption in Western Europe in the 14th and 15th centuries. The article discusses the ingredients of confectionery products in Poland at the end of the 14th century with a special emphasis on types of sugar and various spices as well as kinds of sweets, divided into the confectes (hard products such as drops and filled candy) and the electuaria (soft products that resembled present-day preserves). The issues of the ways of supplying sugar and transferring the confection manufacturing knowledge in the late medieval Poland were considered separately. The author also focused his attention on confectioners (including Andrzej, the royal apothecary master, on top of the list) and the methods they used for sweets production. The article also tries to answer the questions of who the sweets consumers in Poland were, and on what occasions the sweets were consumed.
 

“De artificio zuchari” – the chapter on confectionery art in Lumen apothecariorum by Quirico de Augustis from 1492

Llibre de totes maneres de confi ts. Book on Diverse Ways of Preparing Confectionery – Old Catalan Collection of Recipes from the 14th Century

Llibre de totes maneres de confits is an anonymous collection of Catalan confectionery recipes from the second half of the 14th century and one of the earliest among those produced in the Christian part of the world during the Late Middle Ages. The only known manuscript is at the Barcelona University Library in the codex entitled Dies fl os de les medicines, pressmark ms. 68. The book contains 33 recipes for various sophisticated desserts made of honey and sugar. The major part of the recipes are instructions on how to prepare candied fruit (chapters I–XVI, XVIII–XXVI and XXVIII–XXIX; 28 recipes in total), stewed fruit (chapters XVII and XXVII) and cakes (chapters XXXI–XXXIII).
The name of the author as well as the circumstances related to its production and purpose remain unknown. The only trace that one could follow is provided in the words of the preface. As has been demonstrated by Joan Santanach i Suñol, they are far from credible since the author of the compilation relied heavily on other texts. The author of the Polish edition believes that the book was in fact written for people already familiar with the principles of culinary art and not for aristocrats to whom the anonymous compiler dedicates his work following a popular convention. Originally, the book may have been didactic in character and intended for future confectionary masters (e.g. apprentices).
The text was published for the first time in 1946 in „Boletín de la Real Academia de Buenos Letras de Barcelona” by Lluís Faraudo de Saint-Germain. The modern Catalan edition of Llibre de totes maneres de confi ts, which is the source text for this translation and the Polish edition, came out in 2003 and was edited by Joan Santanach i Suñol. So far this collection has never been translated in its entirety from the Old Catalan into any modern language and the Polish version is the very fi rst attempt. The text of the translation preserves the peculiar structure of the original with its numerous repetitions and inconsistent use of personal forms.

Culinary literature of the Crown of Aragon toward the end of the Middle Ages – analysis of the sources as well as of the scope and main topics of existing research
The article contains an analysis of the fundamental directions of research devoted to four medieval manuscripts which had been created towards the end of the Middle Ages: Llibre de Sent Sovi, Llibre de totes maneres de potages de menjar, Llibre d’aparellar de menjar and Llibre de totes maneres de confits.
The starting point of the analysis was a critical edition of the individual collections which made it possible to carry out more in-depth studies devoted to the origin of the recipes, their mutual relations as well as their transfer between the manuscripts. A derivative of this research was a linguistic analysis concerning the culinary terminology, which was often conducted within a wider context of studies devoted to the Catalan language.
Another issue which was raised in the study concerned the gastronomical customs operating on the territory of medieval Catalonia. On the basis of these scientific analyses, there appeared some popular publications which popularized our knowledge about the above problem as well as the Catalan culinary literature. Another valuable aftermath of the research consisted in attempts to adapt the medieval recipes to the requirements of the contemporary cuisine.
In the final part of the dissertation the author characterizes concisely the research methods which he had used in the studies on the Catalan culinary literature; he ends the dissertation with a presentation of his subsequent research postulates.