L’Art de cuina dels trinitaris: del convent al banquet is an 18th–19th century manuscript that goes beyond traditional recipe books: it brings together everyday monastic dishes with elaborate banquet preparations, reflecting the shift toward a new gastronomic and social culture

The Collection 7 Portes de Receptaris Històrics de Cuina Catalana is an initiative launched in 2013, with the support and co-funding of the “La Caixa” Foundation and Editorial Barcino, both of which have been instrumental in its development and consolidation. The aim is to compile and provide access to the most significant cookbooks and gastronomic texts from Catalonia, spanning from the Middle Ages to the present, establishing itself as a key reference for researchers, professionals, and food enthusiasts.

The collection offers a journey through more than seven centuries of culinary history, illustrating how Catalan cuisine has evolved alongside the country's broader historical context. Through the study and critical edition of manuscripts, many previously unpublished or difficult to access, this project seeks to preserve, contextualize, and share a unique gastronomic heritage. It helps keep Catalonia’s culinary memory alive, reinforces its standing as one of the world’s most influential cuisines, and ensures this knowledge is passed on to future generations.

"L’Art de cuina" is a manuscript treatise that has remained unpublished until now. Its anonymous author identifies himself as a Trinitarian, a religious order with two branches—shod and barefoot—which has been little studied in our region.

Unlike other monastic cookbooks that provide detailed descriptions of basic principles of order, cleanliness, and other general notions of practical cooking, the cook who wrote this work is more ambitious in his goals. In addition to offering ordinary recipes for a religious community or for the sick and convalescent, he dares to devise and prepare even banquets for festive occasions and prominent figures, accustomed to multiple courses served in a single meal.

This aim of cooking to satisfy a wide variety of diners is a reflection of the social change and gastronomic paradigm shift occurring at the turn of the 18th to the 19th century, with the introduction of new culinary fashions, table customs, and the emergence of bourgeois cuisine and public dining establishments.