In 1529, an anonymous book called Opera nuova intitolata Dificio di ricette, or ‘New Work called House of Recipes’, was published in Venice. It was a cheaply printed in-octavo booklet, containing miscellaneous recipes to aid and amuse the reader in his or her everyday life. It addressed the readership in an informal tone, and its preface underscored its utility, since it had been published for the ‘benefit of all people’ (‘beneficio universale’). The Dificio di ricette was the first printed book of secrets in Italy, inaugurating more than a century of best-selling print compilations of recipes in Europe, and deeply influencing subsequent works by Alessio Piemontese, Leonardo Fioravanti, Giambattista Della Porta, and others. The Dificio promised to reveal ‘secrets’ to its readers in the form of straightforward recipes illustrated by woodcuts. Among the dozens of magic tricks, cosmetic, culinary, and medical recipes contained in the collection, the reader was presented with ten practical secrets about women's bodies. These recipes aimed to instruct, but also allowed the reader to control the female body, especially where fertility and reproduction were concerned. Thanks to this book, the periodicity, quality, and quantity of menstruation could be regulated, conception assured, and questions about future children answered.

Having served as an inspiration for most books of secrets that followed it, the Dificio continued to be printed well into the nineteenth century.