The purpose of this book is to satisfy the desires and predilections which many people of gentle birth, including those of the female sex, have: they are forever eager to learn about and understand new and interesting things; they also desire to keep their cupboards well-stocked with many different kinds of preserves, especially the kind which an infinite number of ladies (and others too) have who live in the country in sumptuous magnificence, surrounded by an opulent abundance of things from every corner of the world. Such preserves are conducive to the total restoration and the complete conservation of the human body, without however stressing it beyond its limits. All that remains for such people to do is to be attentive and to acquire a bit of discernment so that they might understand how to preserve any fruit in perpetuity, to wit by changing its form and quality, by destroying any strange or unusual flavour it may possess which is foreign to how it should naturally taste in one's mouth, by causing it to acquire through the use of water a sweetness which makes any natural bitterness vanish and yet preserves some small trace of it which may be evident to the external senses and may be perceived by them as the final satisfaction given by the preserve. Through the use of honey or sugar the fruit becomes capable of taking on whatever one attempts to add to it; thus, the sugar or honey is not added merely to provide sweetness but also in order to preserve the fruit for a long time. Thus, if one tried to keep all the fruits gathered from one's gardens by simply keeping them as they are, they would not last for very long without taint or alteration; this is so because some fruits give off an excess of moisture, others an excess of dryness, and so on each according to its humour.¹ But by changing their state they may be prevented from tainting and be allowed to acquire, as a matter of course, a sweet flavour. The human body is also more sustained by a small amount of such liquids than by any abundance of meats.

There are many people who, because they live in the country, have every possible kind of fruit in extreme abundance; they also have apiaries which are constantly at work making honey. Those, however, who do not have honey have an abundance of must, which they can use as easily as if it were sugar or honey; simply by using fruit must and by following everything we have written down here, one can easily make preserves as effectively and which are as good in quality as those preserved in fine sugar. It may well be that the preserve is not as delicate as one made with sugar, but then one quite often makes preserves at home which are more worthy of esteem than ones which have come from the Levant or from the land of Valencia in Spain, which at present has the acclaim and reputation for preserves of the very highest quality. (In truth, the renowned city of Genoa and the unequalled city of Venice are not indebted to Valencia for anything; in this, just as much as in other matters, it would be odious to make comparisons.) I have often seen the many different types of preserves which ships bring here, and if the preserve was from Valencia, then to tell the truth it was excellent beyond compare. But why should this be so? They have sugar of greater value than we have; also, they are more practised in the labour and manufacture of sugar than we in the Gaulic countries are. Furthermore, in whatever preserves they are trying to make, after the preserves have finished absorbing the sugar, and after all the extraneous moisture has been consumed, they remove the sugar, since it will have gone black from frequent boiling. They remove this sugar completely and put in nice new sugar. This is why their preserves are better than all others.

Those who are always in the cities may perchance think that they know how to do a great many things in order to alleviate themselves of their burdens, but they will quite often find themselves deluded; if it should please them to want to pass over this book lightly and only in spare moments, they will find that they have set for themselves a task which they will regret ever having taken on. Similarly, there are many people who do not have the benefit of an apothecary or a spicer nearby, to whom they might go to get their preserves made. Yet even if they do, all too often they will willingly enter into the hands of some master or his young servant who thinks that he knows how to do many things, but most often knows nothing at all, and so ruins the preserve and burns the sugar or the honey to such an extent that one is forced to throw the preserve into the garbage.

In order to do away with such inconveniences, as quite often occur, even though they may be few in number, read this book very carefully and visualize whatever preserve it is you are trying to make. Do this, if you desire to succeed, as thoroughly and as precisely as you will see described here in writing. You will then not find it to be any different from those they bring to France from Spain or the Italies, whether in quality or in appearance. But if you should try to scrimp on the sugar, your preserve may still truthfully be called a preserve in flavour; but this cannot be done and satisfy the mouth as much as the ear, for just as there is no scrimping on oil when one uses it to make a salad, so too there should be no scrimping on sugar.

Then, once you have made a preserve which is of good quality, its appearance will augment its flavour and quality. But for whoever is not satisfied by this, or for those who have no skill in properly putting the sugar or the honey to work, we have included a way of making a certain liquid which the redoubtable and ancient Romans used and which they called defrutum. It is nothing more than must cooked until it resembles honey. Even though the Romans had great and inestimable skills, they still took delight in using a liquid which was the result of their labours in the cultivation of their fields; but this was more than fully recounted by Marcus Varro²ad Fundaniam.³ It is most probable that during harvest time someone will try to make this defrutum so that they may be secure for the whole year in the absence of sugar or honey—indeed, there are many who like preserves made with defrutum better than ones made with honey.

And so, for the benefit of those lords who are familiar with one the faculties of the art of medicine (at least one to which no fault has been attributed), as well as for those who neither have knowledge of medicine nor are members of any faculty, and for those people who are able to remain far removed from the totally ignorant, I have tried to give in our language the method for preserving fruits in liquid decoctions. And should some people find this work displeasing, an even greater number will take pleasure in it.