By Simone Zweifel

Printed recipe books in the sixteenth and seventeenth century were often compilations of recipes copied out of already existing books or manuscripts. I use “recipe book” as an umbrella term to bring together Books of Secrets, cookery books, and other recipe books. Johann Jacob Wecker (1528-1586/88), city physician of Colmar in the late sixteenth century, was an important translator and editor of recipe books in the German speaking area. He published, amongst other books, so-called Antidotaria, and translations and editions of Books of Secrets. While the first publications of Books of Secrets were translations into Latin and German of the Secreti del reverendo donno Alessio piemontese, the later ones were augmented versions, compiled from different books.[1] These later versions were issued several times over a long period of time, and some were even translated into French and English.[2] The many editions and translations of the texts indicate their popularity.

The publications of Johann Jacob Wecker, I argue, were not a product of one person alone, but a collaboration of several actors.[3] This can be observed on the basis of the correspondence between him, Theodor Zwinger (1533-1588), Pietro Perna (1519/20-1582) and Samuel Grynaeus (1529-1599). Zwinger was a professor of ethics at the University of Basel and presumably corrector at Perna’s printing shop, while Perna issued most of Wecker’s publications in Basel. Grynaeus seems to have provided Wecker and Zwinger with books containing recipes. These men collaborated to produce and print recipe books in Wecker’s name. Their correspondence is part of the Zwinger Correspondence, which today is held at the Basel University Library. While the correspondence contains around 2350 letters, I looked at a selection of fifty-six letters, of which Wecker wrote fifty-one.[4]

Wecker, of course, needed books to copy from in order to produce the compilations. To obtain such exemplars, he wrote to Samuel Grynaeus:

I am still lacking several secreta theologica for my librum de secretis. I would like to collect several [secreta, SZ] from them, and would like to do it soon. I would send them back to you shortly after [using them, SZ] or pay them.[5]

Wecker thus asked Grynaeus for “recipes” which he could use. It seems that making a “voluminous opus” was important to him. He wrote to Zwinger: “I made the [Book of Secret, SZ] as voluminous as possible. Had I had or known more authors, I would have made it even bigger.”[6] The letters also suggest that Zwinger supported Wecker by correcting and improving his texts: “I owe you special thanks for the very fine and best improvement of my tables”.[7] In addition, it is possible that Zwinger wrote some of the prefaces for Wecker.[8]

Even though only Wecker’s name appears on most title pages of the recipe books I’ve examined, those books were the fruits of a collaboration between Wecker, Perna, Zwinger, and Grynaeus. We do not know if there were even more people involved in the production of Wecker’s texts! What we do know, thanks to the letters that they sent each other, is that the collaboration of several people was the basis for the production of the books in the end published in the name of Johann Jacob Wecker. It is important to keep this in mind when thinking about the “authorship” of early modern recipe books.