Dissertazione del signor Tissot sul pane, sull'economia, e cultura de' grani, e sul pane di pomi di terra &c. in confutazione di una dissertazione del signor Linguet contro l'uso del pane, e del grano: si aggiunge la dissertazione medesima tradotta dal francese, con note &c. ed altri trattati del sign. Antonio Matani, e del sig. Parmentier sulla panizazione, e sul pane di pomi di terra &c.
Napoli: presso Giuseppe Maria Porcelli, 1781. Item #1442 12mo. 160 x 90 mm., [6 ¼ x 3 ¾ inches]. iv, 151 pp. Bound in contemporary leather backed marbled paper boards and tips; marbled paper boards faced, with some signs of minor water staining to upper cover, joints rubbed, but sound and not unattractive. First Italian edition, followed by a Venetian edition printed by Bassaglia in 1782. This work contains three important contributions to the discussion of the cultivation of grain, the production of flour, and the potential for the use of “pomi di terra” or potatoes as an alternative source for the production of bread. Tissot, a noted Swiss physician and author of books and pamphlets on nutrition and health sought to encourage the cultivation of potatoes and offered it as a way to increase the bread supply during periods when drought, insects or disease damaged the grain crops. Tissot’s essay was original published in 1779 and Simon Nicolas Linguet, the French philosophe and later conservative advocate, immediately replied with a counter argument suggesting that the potato had no known nutritious elements and should not be used as a substitute for wheat flour in the bread making process. Linguet’s essay is followed by short essays on the subject by Antonio Matani and Antoine Parmetier on the baking of bread with both flour and potato and an essay on the economics of bread making by Adam Smith.
OCLC cites copies of the Naples edition at Harvard only. For the Venetian edition of 1782 OCLC cites copies at Berkeley, Yale, Duke and Kansas. Maria Paleari Henssler. Bibliografia Latino-Italiana di Gastronomia, I. pp. 725. Lord Westbury, Handlist of Italian Cookery Books, p. 215.
Price: $975.00