Today in 1498, De re coquinaria (On the Subject of Cooking), the earliest known cookbook in the West, was first printed in Milano by Guillaume le Signerre.
The cookbook has been attributed to Marcus Gavius Apicius, a Roman gourmet who lived sometime in the 1st century CE during the reign of Tiberius. Or, it may have been compiled in the 5th century CE.
Here’s the earliest known recipe for lamb stew: Put the pieces of meat into a pan. Finely chop an onion and coriander, pound pepper, lovage, cumin, garum, oil, and wine. Cook, turn out into a shallow pan, thicken with wheat starch.
The New York Academy of Medicine:
Our manuscript, transmitting a 4th– or 5th-century compendium of culinary and medical recipes compiled from a number of 2nd-century Roman sources, packs a powerful wow factor. It contains 500 Greek and Roman recipes from the Mediterranean basin. A handful may date as early as the 4th century BCE…
Our manuscript was penned in several hands in a mix of Anglo-Saxon and Carolingian scripts at the monastery at Fulda (Germany) around 830 CE. It is one of two manuscripts (the other at the Vatican) presumed to have been copied from a now lost common source.