THE CHEF'S SECRET, the second historical novel by Crystal King, is set in Renaissance Rome, detailing the mysterious life of one of the most famous chefs in history. THE CHEF'S SECRET tells the story of Bartolomeo Scappi, the private chef to four Popes and the author of one of history’s best selling cookbooks. His nephew and apprentice, Giovanni, is on a quest to find out the truth about his uncle and the fifty-year love affair that the chef hid from the world.
THE CHEF'S SECRET is a fictional retelling of the life of Bartolomeo Scappi, who lived in sixteenth century Rome. When his cookbook, L’Opera, was published in 1570, it became the world’s best-selling cookbook for the next two hundred years.
Set amongst the scandal, wealth, and upstairs-downstairs politics of a Roman family, Crystal King’s seminal debut, FEAST OF SORROW, features the man who inspired the world’s oldest cookbook and the ambition that led to his destruction.
On a blistering day in the twenty-sixth year of Augustus Caesar’s reign, a young chef, Thrasius, is acquired for the exorbitant price of twenty thousand denarii. His purchaser is the infamous gourmet Marcus Gavius Apicius, wealthy beyond measure, obsessed with a taste for fine meals from exotic places, and a singular ambition: to serve as culinary advisor to Caesar, an honor that will cement his legacy as Rome's leading epicure.
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