“However, their impact wasn’t immediate and it wasn’t till the 18th century that these new ingredients began to be widely used in European cuisine,” said Juan Vicente García Marsilla, a professor of medieval history at the University of Valencia, who curated the exhibition.
Dating from 1324, almost 170 years before Christopher Columbus made his first voyage to the Americas and sparked a new transatlantic trade in foodstuffs, the Book of Sent Sovi is a collection of 72 recipes written in Catalan by an unknown author.
“The recipes in this book tell us how the elites of the epoch ate and reveals a complex cuisine using a surprising number of ingredients, especially the use of spices which seems to us more oriental than European.
And while recipes for stuffed squid are not uncommon in modern Spanish cuisine, Sent Sovi goes one better with one for octopus stuffed with garlic, onion, cloves, mint, coriander and raisins.
Such dishes may be considered staples of the Mediterranean diet but a new exhibition celebrating Spain’s oldest surviving cookbook suggests medieval Spanish cuisine was nothing like its modern successor.
