PLATINA. A noted humanist of the Italian Renaissance, Platina, born Bartolomeo Sacchi (1421–1481), is distinguished for culinary historians as the author of the first work on cookery ever printed: De honesta voluptate et valetudine, first in Rome c. 1470, without printer or date, then in Venice in 1475. Translation of the Latin title helps to define a central premise of the revolution in thought that broke with medieval traditions in fifteenth-century Italy. "On honest [meaning 'legitimate'] pleasure and good health" speaks of Platina's allegiance to new understanding and validation of the philosophy of Epicurus brought about from the 1430s by Lorenzo Valla, recognizing that rather than hedonism, it celebrated the creator's love for humans in sensory endowments if these were enhanced through self-control and moderation.

In addition to an Epicurean orientation, Platina underscored his devotion to another Greek...