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Gastronomy
Croatian cuisine is
heterogeneous, and is therefore known as "the cuisine of regions".
Its modern roots date back to Proto-Slavic and ancient periods and
the differences in the selection of foodstuffs and forms of cooking
are most notable between those on the mainland and those in coastal
regions. Mainland cuisine is more characterized by the earlier
Proto-Slavic and the more recent contacts with the more famous
gastronomic orders of today - Hungarian, Viennese and Turkish -
while the coastal region bears the influences of the Greek, Roman
and Illyrian, as well as of the later Mediterranean cuisine -
Italian and French.
A large body of books bears witness to the high level of
gastronomic culture in Croatia, which in European terms dealt with
food in the distant past, such as the Gazophylacium by Belostenec, a
Latin-Kajkavian dictionary dating from 1740 that preceded a similar
French dictionary. There is also Beletristic literature by Marulic,
Hektorovic, Drzic and other writers, down to the work written by
Ivan Bierling in 1813 containing recipes for the preparation of 554
various dishes (translated from the German original), and which is
considered to be the first Croatian cookery book.
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