Interpreting older recipes requires a keen understanding of ingredients. Many dishes cannot be recreated exactly in modern kitchens; once common ingredients may be unavailable or are now known to be toxic. Sometimes, taste preferences have changed, leaving modern eaters to balk at presentations such as highly sweetened meats or cock’s blood in ale.

At other times, the names and nature of ingredients have changed. A cake recipe calling for multiple ground nutmegs, for instance, might seem excessive unless modern cooks understand that in the past nutmegs could be years old by the time they reached market. When so much of a spice’s aromatic compounds were dissipated, cooks sometimes compensated by increasing its bulk in recipes.

Older books’ detailed descriptions and illustrations for once widely available foodstuffs are important resources for translating recipes into modern kitchens. The Grocers’ Hand-Book gives additional glimpses into Philadelphia’s 19th century sugar refining heyday, including discussions of occupational hazards such as skin-burrowing sugar mites.

Lo scalo’s litany of dishes unveils an ecclesiastical gourmandism rarely seen today. As chief steward to the Aldobrandini, a family of Roman politicians and prelates, Lancellotti oversaw immense banquets that Ippolito Aldobrandino (later Pope Clement VIII) and his nephew Pietro hosted for visiting dignitaries.