Two

A Wedding Announcement

How did the coupling of cheese and pears occur? Documents take us back to the late Middle Ages, when the occasional pairing of the two products in the last course of a meal turned into a solid and durable marriage.

Oncques Deus ne fist tel mariage

Comme de poire et du fromage

Checking Google for “cheese + pears” is the fastest way to verify the presence of this combination in the gastronomic culture of today. Even if we limit ourselves to the major European languages, there are more than two million entries, with particular density in French, Italian, and English. The innumerable mentions, found in cookbooks and restaurant menus, range from commercial proposals to dietary suggestions, considerations of usage, manners of speaking. One even discovers that “in October 2007, in conformity with this ancient peasant saying” (precisely our proverb), a town in the Friuli region that is famous for its cheese production and a town in Emilia that produces pears were officially designated twin cities.

This pairing emerges as a full-fledged conscious and linguistic commonplace before becoming a gastronomic one. Or rather, it was so firmly established in the realm of food as to become an obvious mental reference and an automatic association of words.

Let us ask, then: How far back does the pairing of cheese and pears go? Are there indications or historical documents that can attribute parentage? It would seem unrelated to ancient usage. Romans ate fruit at the end of a meal, eventually accompanied by a sweet. One has to wait for the Middle Ages, in fact the late Middle Ages, before finding it associated with cheese.

The oldest evidence appears to date back to thirteenth-century France, and we find it, almost by chance, in a proverbial expression: Oncques Deus ne fist tel mariage / Comme de poire et de fromage (Never did God make a better marriage than the one between pears and cheese), a proverb no longer in use but still listed in the inventory of traditional French sayings.

Before we slide into an indissoluble relationship, blessed by God, moreover, we should point out that the initial pairing of cheese and pears was probably fortuitous, thanks to the occasional cohabitation of the two protagonists within the same convivial space. Both, as it happens, were preferably placed in the last phase of the meal, for reasons concerning either questions of taste or dietary science, which, in the Middle Ages, guided alimentary and gastronomic choices according to Galen’s medical precepts (a subject to which we shall return). These precepts determined the techniques of cooking, the criteria of pairing, and even the order of service. One precept generally observed, even if proposed in different ways by different authors, was to begin a meal with “aperitivi” (from aprire, to open), foods that disposed the stomach to receive the foods to follow, and to conclude the meal with foods noted for their “sigillatoria ” or sealing qualities, capable of closing the stomach so as to facilitate the digestive process. Precisely for this reason Bartolomeo Sacchi, known as il Platina, a humanist and gastronome of the fifteenth century, considered it beneficial to eat cheese at the end of the meal “because it seals the mouth of the stomach and calms the nausea caused by greasy foods.” Already described a few centuries earlier by the Regimen Sanitatis of the Salerno school, this action of cheese, confirmed for centuries by dietitians, gave rise to alimentary customs still practiced today, not to mention widely known proverbs, that do not regard a meal as ended “until the mouth tastes of cheese.” In this connection, we would point out, as did Jean-Louis Flandrin, that proverbial traditions often take root in premodern dietary culture, and even when the scientific bases on which they rest were lost, their practical prescriptions were conserved.

The pear was also preferably placed at the end of a meal. “You must know,” wrote Aldobrandino of Siena, one of the most celebrated physicians in thirteenth-century Europe, “that all pears shrink the stomach if ingested before a meal and relax it after a meal, because being heavy, they push the food to the bottom of the stomach.”

These two foodstuffs thus found themselves sharing, with diverse functions (dissolving food, sealing the stomach), the same position in the strategy of a meal. In the sixteenth century, Domenico Romoli wrote that at the end of a good drinking party (or at the end of a good meal) one should have “quince pears and cooked pears or a bit of good cheese because the sealing property of these substances soothes the mouth of the stomach.” From this arose a kind of de facto conjoining of pears and cheese—encouraged and in a way imposed by convivial custom during the centuries of the late Middle Ages and early modern era—which anticipated the simultaneous serving of various foods at each course. It remained for guests to choose, according to their individual tastes, which foods to eat among the many offered together during the meal. For the last course, pears and aged cheese arrived together.

This mode of presenting courses, which provided the possibility of freely choosing one food over another, did not always result in lasting associations; often it was limited to simple alternatives dictated by personal taste. The combination cheese/pears, while in certain cases established to the point of being codified, in others continued to be accidental and, so to speak, “unhitched.” This can be seen in Spain, as demonstrated by some seventeenth-century texts. In 1616 the dissertation of Sorapán de Rienos on Castilian proverbs of a medical and dietary nature claimed that cheese can be eaten at dinner as a dessert in place of fruit (en lugar de las frutas). Similarly, the treatise of Andrès Ferrer de Valdecebro (1620–1680) dedicated to the Why of Everything asks, “Why do cheese or pears go well together at the end of a meal?” (Note the disjunctive particle or.) Reply: “Because [cheese] is so heavy it falls to the bottom of the stomach and draws food there, which is where the best digestion takes place.... The pear has the same efficacy.”

In France, on the other hand, out of occasional cohabitation arose a solid marriage, blessed by God Himself, as we are assured by the thirteenth-century proverb quoted earlier.

Another French adage places cheese and pears together, this too of medieval origin. Unlike the first, it continues to be used today: “Entre le fromage et la poire / chacun dit sa chanson à boire” (between the cheese and the pear each person sings his own drinking song). As explained by seventeenth- and eighteenth-century collections, this expression signifies the end of the meal when everybody starts to feel jolly and is ready to laugh,” as Caillot writes. From this, in time, the first part was selected, with the terms inverted: “between pears and cheese” remained a way of referring to the relaxation that comes when the meal is nearly over, when “between cheese and pears” the conversation is most cheerful and carefree, the rapport between guests is most congenial, when, as D’Hautel’s dictionary explains, one can finally “speak of a marriage”—a curious variant that recalls the idea of the pear/ cheese marriage, turning it around with a kind of psychological transference onto those who enjoy these foods.

Pears and cheese in this case are simply indicators of the convivial space in which they are served and eaten. The heartier dishes have by then left the scene, and we are in the phase that modern language calls dessert. “One says between pear and cheese at the moment of dessert when pleasant things are said,” a mid-nineteenth-century dictionary explains.

Even in Italy, the custom of serving cheese and pears at the end of a meal was accompanied at times by the image of well-satisfied and relaxed conviviality. The idea of amiable conversation between pear and cheese is very precisely evoked by Michelangelo Buonarotti when, in one of his poems, he described the moment at table when “venner le frutte, il formaggio e ’l finocchio / le pere cotte con qualche sfogliata / poi quivi stetter lungamente a crocchio / a ragionar” (there came fruit, cheese, fennel / cooked pears with some pastry / then everybody lingered to munch / to converse).

Beyond occasional contexts, it is above all the gastronomic pairing of cheese and pears that took hold in Italy with a persistence and regularity that might be considered even greater than in France (which could justify the Italian paternity attributed by many today to this alimentary custom).

Both in literary and in documentary sources, the first evidence of the pairing of cheese and pears goes back, in Italy, to the fourteenth century. The oldest attestation is perhaps in the simple verses attributed to Francesco Petrarch: “Addio, l’è sera / Or su vengan le pera / Il casco e ’l vin di Creti” (farewell, it is evening / now come pears/ cheese and wine from Crete).

More to the point (and botanically more informed) is the reference found in a long composition “on the nature of fruits” by Piero Cantarini, a lesser Sienese poet who lived in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. “Pears I bring you of every kind,” writes the author: spinose, caruelle e sementine, rogie e anche robuiole in grande schiera; sanichole, zuchaje e cianpoline, durelle e vendemmiali,¹ el cui sapore col formaggio si ghusta [harvest pears, whose flavor is enjoyed with cheese], e le rugine.” Almost the recommendation of a gourmet.

Meanwhile, a valuable indication appears in notes on meals taken at the Albergo della Stella in Prato between 1395 and 1398. From this most unusual source one learns that meals often ended with cooked pears and cheese or, depending on the season, with “cheese and cherries” in May, “cheese and peaches” in September. This is priceless evidence because it concerns people of various social conditions and foods à la carte, that is, ordered by the client. There does not seem to be much difference between the alimentary practices of these hotel clients and those of Filippo Maria Visconti, duke of Milan in the first decades of the fifteenth century, who, according to his biographer Pier Candido Decembrio, liked to end a meal with “pears or apples cooked in cheese.”

As can be seen from these instances, the association pear/ cheese was establishing itself as a particularly felicitous variation of the widespread partnership of cheese and fruit, of which there are many amusing literary parodies, such as the one by Luigi Pulci that describes the outsized appetite of the giant Morgante and the demi-giant Margutte. They are both in a tavern and have just devoured a huge amount of meat and bread. At that point, Margutte calls over the innkeeper: “Tell me, would you have some cheese and fruit to give us, since this has not been very filling?” The innkeeper runs into the pantry and returns with an entire wheel of cheese weighing six pounds and a whole basket of apples. They are still not sated. He gathers up all the cheese and fruit he can find (“a mountain of cheese and fruit”), and the two clients make quick work of it all.

References multiply in the sixteenth century with the success of a new literary genre—comic-burlesque poetry—that is filled with allusions to objects and practices of everyday life. A master of this genre is Francesco Berni (1497–1535), whose playful Capitoli served as a model for a host of imitators. In these rhymes, the pair cheese/pears frequently appears. A poem by Giovanni Della Casa sings the praises of a kiss, described as tastier than anything else, including “cheese and pears.” Girolamo Ruscelli, glorifying the flavor of sausage, uses as a measure of comparison the most celebrated of delicacies such as “good cheese, good autumn pears.” Berni’s style is reprised by Anton Francesco Grazzini, known as il Lasca (1503–1584), who in his plays launches rapid-fire allusions to our theme. In the second act of Pinzochera he recommends that one should always have on hand in the kitchen “raviggioli,² carovelle pears, and other fruits in season.” In Sibella he has a scene that ends with “fruit and cheese in abundance and succulent salad.”

Evidence like this is important above all for its indirect nature. It does not sing the praises of cheese and pears, but instead speaks of other subjects that nonetheless take for granted the gastronomic excellence of this pairing and refer to it as something so familiar that it needs no explanation.

In those decades, even private documents confirm that the practice of serving cheese with pears was by then established. On November 28, 1538, Francesco de la Arme, an official of the Este court in Ferrara, sent a crate of pears to the duke of Mantua, accompanied by a letter: “I am sending to Your Excellency 500 carovelle pears,” to which he adds a suggestion as to how to eat the fruit: “We find them delicious with a good fat cheese from which the butter has not been removed.”

Of an entirely different nature, but equally eloquent, is a comment inserted into Natural and General History of the Western Indies by Gonzalo Ferdinando d’Oviedo, published in Toledo in 1526. Translated into Italian only eight years later, it was included by Giovanni Battista Ramusio in his monumental collection Navigation and Voyages. Describing the vegetation of the New World, Oviedo comments on “certain trees that are called pear but do not bear pears like those in Spain. They are rather wild trees on which huge fruits the color and shape of true pears grow.” At that point he stops to remark, “with cheese these pears are very good.” This observation, extraneous to the phenomenon being described, is for that very reason revealing of a custom the author apparently knew well. I would not hesitate to believe that this comes from his long familiarity with Italy, where he had close relations with friends and business partners, among them Ramusio himself.

When we were seeking a starting direction for our research, in order to determine signal places and periods, the very first evidence selected decidedly led us to the where and the when. The key places seem to be France and Italy: France, where a proverb revealed to us the early awareness of the pairing cheese/pears, already attested in the thirteenth century; Italy, where this awareness appears to have gained considerable currency in successive centuries, to the point of becoming a commonplace.

Now, however, we must return to our initial proverb (al contadino non far sapere . . .) and ask why the tastiness of this combination should be concealed from the peasantry. Given the nature of the proverb, we will evidently have to focus the investigation on social aspects of the subject. We will do so by trying to discover what cheese and pears meant in that culture, and in those times, since a foodstuff is never a simple nutritional or dietary element but tends to define itself as having a personality of its own, endowed with a very specific “social status,” in the apt expression coined by Jean-Louis Flandrin. With this as a base, we will try to find out what significance the combination of these two products could have had. Let us then begin with cheese, which, in the proverb, seems to be the principal component that brings the other component, pears, into the picture.