Syntax and formulaicity of recipe books: The case of the Trattato della miniatura

Abstract

The recent interest in artistic recipe books has promoted the development of specialized glossaries and linguistic studies, which have enriched traditional content analysis of these texts with a renewed linguistic appreciation. However, the investigation of the syntactic structures within late artistic recipe books—key witnesses to the gradual evolution toward the more mature textual form of the Renaissance treatise—remains relatively underexplored. This study aims to examine the formulaic structures and syntactic patterns characteristic of the Trattato della miniatura, a sixteenth-century collection of 104 recipes detailing the preparation of colors and the depiction of landscape elements, garments, and flesh tones. Particular attention will be devoted to analyzing the recursive syntactic constructs that structure the main expository sections of the recipes, including titles, incipits, and elements marking the distinct procedural stages. The findings will be compared with existing studies on the language of recipe books to assess the persistence of syntactic features characteristic of the genre and to explore how these elements evolve toward more extensive and standardized structures.