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.
