Full title: The Secrets of the reverend Maister Alexis of Piedmont, containing excellent remedies against diverse diseases, wounds, and other accidents, with the maner to make distillations, parfumes, confitures, dyings, colours, fusions and meltings, a worke well approved, necessarie for everie man. This source is both a recipe book and a book of secrets, in which the lists of ingredients are incorporated in a set of instructions. It was compiled by Girolamo Ruscelli and published under the pseudonym of Alessio Piemontese. It contains artisanal recipes and predominantly medical remedies. This source is both a recipe book and a book of secrets, in which the lists of ingredients are incorporated in a set of instructions. It contains artisanal recipes and predominantly medical remedies. The first edition appeared in 1557 and by the eighteenth century over 69 different editions had already appeared of the original Italian version. This edition consists of four parts, of which the first part and the second part contain the vast majority of the artisanal recipes.
For more information, see:
Ferguson, J. The Secrets of Alexis. A Sixteenth Century Collection of Medical and Technical Receipts. Proceedings of the Royal Society, December 1930, Vol. 24(2), pp. 225-46.