I have always been fascinated by the thought of what people used to eat in the past. My interest in this was once more aroused when I was researching my book Gastronomy of Italy, since I had to consult many cookery books written though the centuries to see what ingredients were used. So, for this book, I decided to include a menu from each of the four periods which contributed most to modern Italian cooking, plus one ‘Futurist’ menu.
The first menu, because it is the earliest, had to be from the only book of Roman recipes, De Re Coquinaria by Apicius. It is not known for certain whether Apicius was in fact the author of the book, or whether it was a later compendium of recipes attributed to Apicius.
It was during the Saracen-Sicilian period, some four centuries later, that the foundations of European cooking were laid. The Saracens brought to Italy many spices and vegetables, some of which had previously been known to the Romans. And, even more important, it was in Sicily that these new foods and new methods of cooking came into contact with the indigenous produce and the methods of the earlier civilisations of the Greeks and the Romans. Unfortunately very little writing about cookery has survived from this period, and so I jumped 1,000 years from the Roman era to the Renaissance.
In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the great awakening of the mind in Italy was many-sided. Cookery, such an intrinsic part of human life, could not be overlooked, and cookery books began to be written at that time. The recipes in these books have totally captivated me, and I have adapted a certain number to our palates and habits, as you will see throughout this book. I have been fascinated by the similarity of some recipes to modern ones, thus being able to retrace a few favourites to their original source.
These Renaissance cookery books were written by chefs or stewards of grand houses, or of the Vatican, who wrote about the ingredients, how to deal with them, the layout of the kitchen and of the table, the linen, the service, in fact everything connected with cooking and eating. Some books also include menus of the dinners that were prepared for visiting monarchs, ambassadors and prelates. One such is the menu of the dinner prepared by Bartolomeo Scappi for his master, Cardinal Lorenzo Campeggi, who was entertaining Charles V ‘when his Caesarean Majesty entered Rome in April 1536’. Campeggi’s villa was in Trastevere, which was then a suburb of Rome. Many important Romans used to have splendid villas in the suburbs where eminent visitors to the Pope would spend the night before their audience with His Holiness. Not that these dinners were an ascetic preparation for the awesome meeting of the morrow. Rather, they were a celebration of the excellence and opulence of their host’s table, as Scappi’s menus testify.
Another fascinating chronicler of glorious meals was Cristoforo di Messisbugo, steward to the fabulously wealthy Cardinal Ippolito d’Este, a brother-in-law of Lucrezia Borgia. Messisbugo’s book is not only a recipe book but also an important contribution to social history. He is considered the founder of haute cuisine, which France later made its own. I find his recipes rather complicated, however, and I prefer to work from the Opera of Scappi.
My other favourite Renaissance writer is Bartolomeo Stefani, chef to another rich and powerful family, the Gonzagas of Mantua. Stefani’s simplicity, and his use of herbs in preference to spices, make him a very modern cook, with a light, fresh approach. You will find my adaptation of his pudding, torta bianca alla bolognese, here.
The other important period in Italian gastronomy was at the time of Bourbon Naples. Naples became a great cultural centre when the excavations at Pompeii began, in the middle of the eighteenth century, and for some 100 years thereafter it was a Mecca for musicians, literati, artists and young aristocrats from all over Europe. Its joie de vivre, its climate and the beauty of its position conspired to make Naples a magnet for the erstwhile jet-set. In 1820, when King Ferdinand entertained the Emperor and Empress of Austria and Prince Metternich, a party was thrown at Capodimonte for 1,000 guests. As Sir Harold Acton writes in his book The Bourbons at Naples, ‘There were relays of banquets with the rarest fish and the most exquisite viands served in abundance, and any foreign wine asked for was obtainable. The Viennese guests were in ecstasies over Neapolitan sfogliatelle, a fine-flaked pastry melting in the mouth, “such stuff as dreams are made on”.’
One reason why Naples has contributed much to my cooking (another being my love of Naples) lies in three cookery books written with a strong emphasis on the cooking of the south. They are Il Cuoco Galante by Vincenzo Corrado, published in 1778, L’Apicio Moderno by Francesco Leonardi, published in 1790, and Cucina teorico-pratica by Ippolito Cavalcanti, published in 1847. Corrado’s book has a fascinating section on vegetables, with some perfect recipes, and one on timballi and pasticci. In fact the recipe for the main course in the Neapolitan menu comes from this section. Leonardi’s work is a vast encyclopaedia in six volumes, ranging from the history of Italian cooking to many recipes from foreign countries. He spent some years in Paris and in Russia, where he became chef to Catherine the Great. Cavalcanti was a wealthy aristocrat, but nonetheless he wrote a book that was not only for the rich, incorporating as it does much wise advice and many simple recipes.
The next period, and locality, which I consider fundamental to Italian cooking is the nineteenth century in northern Italy, or more precisely in Piedmont and Lombardy. The cooking of these two regions was greatly influenced by Austria, which dominated Lombardy for more than half a century, and by France. Everything French was the dernier cri, to the extent that the wealthy Milanese, who used to spend periods of the year in Paris, would take their chefs to learn haute cuisine directly from French masters. Fortunately we have quite a few books written at the time, one by Giovanni Vialardi, who was chef pâtissier to the first king of Italy. But the most important book written then, and still considered the Italian masterpiece in this genre, is La Scienza in Cucina e l’Arte di Mangiar Bene by Pellegrino Artusi. This book, which by 1963 was in its 800th edition, is still the best-selling cookery book in Italy. It is indeed a joy to read as well as to cook with, and quite a few of my recipes are derived from Artusi’s.
I have taken gastronomic liberties with most of the recipes I have chosen, to make the dishes more feasible and more acceptable to modern palates. But whenever I have added or substituted an ingredient I have always kept in mind the period when the recipes were originally written, and never brought in any ingredient that was not used at the time.
Squid in the Pan (in Loligine Patina)
Roast Pork with Coriander (Porcellum Coriandratum)
Purée of Celery (Aliter Olus Molle)
A Lenten Spinach Pie (Torta D’herbe Da Quaresima)
Stewed Fish (Pesce in Potaggio)
Ricotta and Cream Cake (Torta Bianca Alla Bolognese)
An Eighteenth-Century Southern Italian Dinner for 6
Mussels Italian Style (Cozze All’italiana)
Baked Macaroni with Chicken Breast and Prosciutto (Timballo Di Maccheroni Alla Pampadur)
Apple Snow in a Ring (Mela in Tortiglié)
A Nineteenth-Century Northern Italian Dinner for 8
Vegetable Soup (Zuppa Alla Santé)