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Natural History
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“Which Is the Best Wine”- BOCK
First Edition of Bock on Gastronomy and Alchemy
BOCK, Hieronymus. Teutsche Speiszkammer: inn welcher du findest was gesunden vnnd kranken Menschen zur Leibs narung vnd desselben gepresten von nöten. . Strassburg, Wendel Rihel, 1550.
4to. [19.3 x 15.5 cm], (14), cxv, cxv-cxix leaves. Bound in modern gilt-ruled calf, with several marginal annotations in a slightly later hand. Faded waterstaining to right margin, marginal repair to Aii and Jiii not affecting text, and one word abraded off page on Siii. Worming in lower margin near spine (Vi-Ciii). Generally a fresh and unwashed copy.
$11,500 Very rare first edition of the botanist Hieronymus Bock’s gastronomic treatise, Teutsche Speizkammer, or German Larder, a theme the author asserts has never before been treated in German. Proclaiming both the history and practical application of numerous remedies and healthy foodstuffs, the book ranges in topic from wine (and some wine-snobbery), cheese, bread-baking (rye, wheat and barley), to herbs (ginger, pepper, cardamom, cloves, saffron and others, as well as alchemical and non-alchemical salts). Each section opens with a short description of the material, an assessment of the best kinds available, the names by which it has been known since antiquity, and its medicinal properties. The order in which they appear reflects logical pairings of foods that are commonly eaten together, or that are related, ie salt and bread, bread and wine, vinegar and oil.
Bock notes Plautus’ view of common cooking salt as “the best spice on earth.” He also emphasizes its simplicity by repeating Diogenes’ tart rejoinder to a lavish dinner invitation—that he’d rather ‘lick salt in Athens.” Bock enumerates seven salts used by alchemists (presumably including the medicinally-inclined Paracelsus). These include normal table salt, as the “key” to alchemical experiments, among other compounds: an ammonia salt, an alkalai salt, a urine-based salt, a saltpeter and nitrate salt, a gemstone salt, and a “Tartarus” salt boiled from winestone, and finally, sea-salt (Arabs apparently endorsed the Adriatic variety). While alchemy could have medicinal applications, Bock mainly describes the internal and external cures effected by regular salt. These include salt in honey for gout or a scorpion sting.
Lengthy sections on wine and oil are not limited to the liquids’ medicinal and culinary function, but also describe their uses for artists (oil) and overuse (wine). One of the external applications for oil is to bind the pigments used by painters and sculptors in coloring and varnishing their creations. The chapter on “Which is the Best Wine,” show’s Bock’s eminent pride in the golden “Traminer” (called Gewurtztraminer from the 19th century) produced by “We Germans.” The health benefits of this “sweet smelling and mellow-tasting” wine include the restoration of blood to the extremities. Bock is so pleased with German wine that he eschews the achievements of all other territories: “Italian and other lands may write and say what they will of the fame of their wine.” One of the earliest wine connoisseurs, Bock is also known as the first to mention Riesling—soon after the present publication (in his 1552 Latin Herbal).
Other liquids required digressions, including the section on Ass’ Milk notes that Nero’s wife Pompeia was said to have salved her entire body in it after her bath as part of her beauty regime. A “Nota Bene” annotation in a later hand is appended to the next paragraph—which counters this decadence with the peasant alternative, an herb named “Ass’ head,” which was used to alleviate drunkenness. The final, lengthier chapter, “Von Pancketieren und Schlaff drünken” on overeating and drinking at night before bed also deals with this commonplace complaint.
Bock was one of the foremost German botanists of the mid-sixteenth century, ranked with Brufels and Fuchs. Although he refers to Pliny and other classical authorities in the Teutsche Speisekammer, in his botanical classifications he was able to see connections in real specimens without relying on the classics.
OCLC: BSB
NUC: LC, U. Indiana (Lilly Library)
Also in BL
(1555) NY Academy of Medicine; U. Minnesota (Bio-Med); Wellcome
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