?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 800 - $ 1,200
Peña y Valle, Ventura de (fl. circa 1832) Tratado General de Carnes, que comprende todo lo concerniente al conocimiento de sus clases, especies y calidades, a su fomento y uso.
Madrid: Miguel de Burgos, 1832.
First edition, quarto in two parts with index, illustrated with folding plate featuring an engraved illustration of a cow's skeleton with explication in type below; bound in full contemporary tree calf, gilt spine and label, marbled endleaves; text leaves with scattered spotting, 8 1/4 x 5 1/2 in.
In this unusual work dedicated to the subject of meat, the author notes that he has been studying the field for twenty-six years. In the first part, he begins by defining the word food, explaining the word meat, and describing consumed animals, their pastures, species, and other details, including descriptions of new world animals like llama and vicuna, as well as fish. The second part deals with laws regarding food safety and meat spoilage, the meat economy and industry, and a discussion of how animals are killed and butchered. He wraps up with chapters on "rare foods." Peña y Valle notes that just as in Europe, people who live in other places like Asia, Africa, and the Arabian Peninsula mainly eat bread, meat, milk, eggs, vegetables and fruits, with the addition of rice and dates in Asia. He is also interested in what he calls more extravagant dishes consumed outside of Europe, and mentions snakes, goats, camel, wild buffalo, gazelles, tigers, panthers, leopards, elephants, and other game and dishes consumed throughout the world, including the Americas, the Arctic, and the regions mentioned above.
