Domenico Passegnano, Wedding Banquet of Grandduke Ferdinando of Tuscany, ca. 1590. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.
Source: Photo courtesy of Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY.
A Final Word
Our story comes to an end in the seventeenth century, customarily called the Baroque period, stopping in the 1660s. We’ll consider some of the same topics we’ve discussed in the previous chapters with a special emphasis on the changes that began to take place during this period. We’ll see changes in the rules governing household staff and changes in table service and seating arrangements (especially for women), all outlined in culinary treatises and other documents; as well, we will see an increase in private dining and a greater sophistication of the diner. Unlike in the past, culinary treatises and cookbooks, like other books, were no longer luxury items, becoming commodities that were increasingly available to a larger number of people, though still linked to doctors and their remedies as we saw with Platina and Romoli. We turn now to consider some of the changes evidenced in these books.
As we have already noted in the chapter 1, the three books by Cesare Evitascandalo (Dialogo del trinciante, Il maestro di casa, and Libro dello scalco), while published in the early seventeenth century, were written in the 1570s continuing the traditions of Rossetti and others; however, Evitascandalo’s works will contribute much to this part of our story. It is with the publication of Vittorio Lancelotti’s Lo scalco practico in 1627 that we begin to see a change in eating habits and menus.[1] No longer do we see the profusion of dishes on the table; rather, Lancelotti streamlined the banquet,[2] reducing the number of dishes from twelve or sixteen to six or sometimes even three to a course. Unlike previously, when a simple sauce would do, Lancelotti called for several garnishes with the intent of focusing attention on the lavish ingredients of a single dish, and while meals were still huge, meats and fish were not served together, nor were there sharply contrasting ingredients; with these changes, the repertoire of the cook became fairly narrow. While not a typical cookbook, Lancelotti, who included twenty-two meals organized by the month, as we will see later, vividly described each dish, how it was prepared and how the plate was organized. Like Lancelotti and Romoli before him, Giovan Battista Crisci in his Lucerna de corteggiani (The Courtier’s Lamp) of 1634 included nearly 290 pages of monthly menus for every day of the year as well as descriptions of eight banquet projects and a collation, but without recipes.[3] Crisci shows the scope and variety of ordinary meals organized into three rounds of service (hot, cold, and fruit) and comprising a maximum of eighteen dishes—all in the context of the Neapolitan court. While Lancelotti’s menus were for actual meals, this is not always the case. Evitascandalo, in his Libro dello scalco, and Antonio Frugoli, in his Practica e scalcaria, for example, gave lists of suggested dishes that could be served at a meal and optional menu suggestions as well; their works and others, then, were practical guides for the steward on how to plan a menu.[4]
The culinary writings of the seventeenth century, like Lancelotti’s, are more specific and directed to the professional, though all the writers still dedicated their works to their patron; whereas earlier writings like those of Martino or Messisbugo that we discussed elsewhere in this book were written for the master and meant more for his library than as culinary guidebooks. Evitascandalo, Lancelotti, and others defined more clearly not just what each staff member was to do as outlined below, but how the table should be laid and how table service should go—real guidelines for service at the elite table; they were guidebooks for the household manager and/or the head steward. Mattia Geigher’s Li tre trattati (1639), for example, was clearly written with the professional in mind.[5] Geigher, who was a trinciante (carver) for thirty years for the German community in the law school at the University of Padua, gives step-by-step illustrations of how to pleat napkins and how to arrange plates and service items; more important, he outlines the visual steps for carving.[6] It is more of a practical guide without the banter directed to the courtier as in earlier works. The shape of the book, alone, a long, rectangular manual that would not topple if stood upright, as Ken Albala has noted, suggests that it could be used by a working carver for practice,[7] Geigher’s work attests to the increasing professionalism that we see as well with Francesco Liberati’s book, Il perfetto maestro di casa (1658).
As the century progressed, so, too, did the organization of the household staff. With the publication of Francesco Liberati’s Il perfetto maestro di casa (first in 1658 and then again in 1668[8])—nearly one hundred years after Scappi’s work—we see an increasing bureaucratization of household officers, and there is less culinary information in Liberati’s book than in the books written by Romoli, Scappi, and others. Liberati does not include menus or recipes; writing in a straightforward and practical manner, he tells us how to run a large Roman household including the duties of various officials, etiquette and protocol, how to provision the household and the costs involved, the transfer of the household to the country villa in summer, and how to organize celebrations for a new cardinal or for a funeral. As well, we see an increasingly ceremonial nature to dinner service with a strict chain of command; by the 1660s, then, everything becomes more regimented with greater restrictions than previously. Moreover, the number of officers increased; for example, for wine service alone, there was the wine steward, a cellar master, and servers. Now the private cook (cuoco segreto), unlike Scappi who bore the same title, cooked only for the prince, never (or rarely) for other courtiers. Added to the steward’s duties was the responsibility of ensuring that food passed through as few hands as possible and that no strangers or even members of the household be allowed into the kitchen near the food intended for the prince.
The duties and numbers of staff also evolved over time. Cesare Evitascandalo recommended a minimum of twenty-three offices for running a household and as many as thirty-five people.[9] The maestro di casa (housemaster) directed the scalco (steward), who in turn supervised the cook, credenziero (now referred to as the butler), trinciante (carver), spenditore (purchaser), dispensiero (quartermaster), and wardrobe master, who had his own assistants. As well there were assistant cooks, scullery boys, assistant butlers, and so on. The chief cook controlled the kitchen, where only the steward was allowed to enter.[10] The butler was responsible for the contents of the credenza (often referred to as a butler’s pantry); no one was allowed in this room, not even near enough to put a hand through the gate.[11] The master of the guardaroba (wardrobe) along with his assistants kept track of everything and charged out objects to other household officers, for example, copper pots to the cook or silver plate to the butler.[12] According to Francesco Liberati, the purchaser of foodstuffs should procure whatever was on the list that the steward gave him each day and he was not to leave the house without notifying the steward or housemaster; the quartermaster could not give anything out of his stores without a written request. Everything was to be weighed and recorded; for example, the quartermaster could not give an order to the bakery to make underweight bread. More important, he had to remember that he could not take his master’s property, such as surplus flour from underweight bread.[13]
Like the culinary treatises discussed above, living spaces in the palace, especially in Rome and, in particular, the elite apartment, were clearly defined not just by the number of rooms, but also in terms of service and movement throughout the building. At the heart of the palace was the apartment of the noble person with its articulate sequence of public and private rooms, moving from the outer antechamber through at least one or two other rooms to the most private room, the bedroom, giving a processional feel as you moved from one room to the next.[14] Each important member of the family had his or her own apartment, often one for winter and another for summer. The apartments were supported from below by all the services requiring access from outside, and above were the private quarters of the noble women’s female attendants. All the rooms were connected via stairs: grand ceremonial ones for the elite and small, hidden ones for the servants. Each wing of the palace had its own identity with its own loggias, galleries, gardens, and so on. If a large family, like the Borghese or the Barberini, shared a palace, each group had their own wing. For example, Cardinal Francesco Barberini (1597–1679), nephew of Matteo Barberini (1568–1644, Pope Urban VIII) had a separate wing (the south wing) in the Palazzo Barberini alle Quattro Fontane from his brother Taddeo (1603–1647), prince of Palestrina (1630) and prefect of Rome (1631), and his wife, Anna Colonna-Barberini (1601–1658), whose apartments were in the north wing. Anna’s apartment was above her husband’s. This palace was virtually two palaces joined together by an extraordinary loggia.[15]
Husband and wife ate their meals separate from each other, sometimes alone or sometimes with guests, either in an anteroom of the apartment or in a salone nearby. Maffeo II Barberini (1631–1685), for instance, ate Sunday dinner in the middle room of his apartments in the Palazzo Colonna Barberini at Palestrina; he had a view of the teatro and fountains that were built in the hillside.[16] It was only at banquets and public festivities that a woman might join her husband for a meal. Kitchens, credenze, and other preparation rooms were more conveniently located along connecting stairways and passages. Life in the palace was about movement: the coming and going of guests and the finely tuned movements of hosts and gentlemen in receiving those guests; the movable ritual of dining, itself performed with a parade of food from the kitchen below as servants discreetly moved through hidden stairs and passageways to where the meal was to be served and back down again; the arrival of quantities of food and other supplies and their distribution; and the daily passage of the numerous staff (famiglia) through portals of the palace to their workplaces and perhaps to their meals in the staff dining room (tinello). Liberati’s metaphor for the famiglia is fitting here: “one body composed of many members, informed by a single spirit in service of the prince.”[17]
Most household staff lived outside the palace in housing provided by the prince, with the exception of women attendants for the wife of a secular prince, as was the case with Anna Colonna-Barberini and her attendants at the Palazzo Barberini[18]; these women usually lived on the top floor of the house, sometimes on the mezzanine. Each woman had a modest room, but shared a kitchen and dining room. They received their food and other supplies through a turn box (rota) to avoid contact with male servants. A small spiral staircase connected them to the noble women’s apartments below. So, at least in Rome, we will see a greater isolation of women at all levels not just where they lived, but also where they took their meals and how they were seated at public banquets. We will come back to the staff’s living arrangement later in this chapter; for now, let’s turn to the cook, his staff, and his kitchen.
The head or personal cook (cuoco segreto), under the supervision of the steward, was in charge of the main or private kitchen and cooked the master’s meals, whereas the second cook (aiutante di cucina or cuoco commune) cooked for the staff and helped the first cook to prepare dishes for banquets. Both had assistants who were not cooks.[19] Francesco Liberati takes this even further, stating that the personal cook must be off in a kitchen separate from the common one of the household and that he must be trustworthy and not from a distant land.[20] The personal cook should be experienced with pasta dishes, with jellies, plain boiled dishes, broths, pastries, potages, and everything else touching on his service. He must avoid using a greater amount of wood, coal, spices, fats, and similar ingredients than is required by the job; he must avoid taking the leftovers for himself under the pretext of payment in kind. The personal cook should be clean, and cleanliness lies not only with the person and dress, but also in the kitchen and the equipment, by cleaning copperware, pewter, tables, spits, and all other equipment and surfaces. Outsiders are not permitted to enter into the private kitchen. According to Cesare Evitascandalo, the steward should see that the cook has clean hands, without scabs or any other filth, and not have festering legs as many do from too much wine.[21] Let’s take a tour of the cook’s kitchen.
The kitchens in most Roman palaces were typically located on the ground floor or in a basement, for ease in delivering food and other supplies and some distance from the dining table, usually at least 150 paces.[22] The ideal arrangement was to have two kitchens, the first one for the master (cucina segreta) and the second for the household staff (cucina commune). If only one was possible, the cook had to keep a special watch on the master’s food. As always in a large household, security was important so the windows to the street were barred and unauthorized personnel were not allowed into the kitchen.[23] For those individuals sharing a single palace like the Barberini and the Borghese families, each member had separate kitchens in their own wing and separate cooking staff. Cesare Evitascandalo’s ideal kitchen is not unlike that of Bartolomeo Scappi that we looked at in chapter 3 and must have looked much like figure 1.5.[24] It was to have all the necessary copper, iron, and earthenware pots and utensils, as well as a couple of pots that could be locked, full of water, for use with the prince’s foods. It should have a table for working dough and everything needed to do that work. Another table was for arranging plates. Also necessary were a large cupboard and chest with latches for cold foods and the day’s supplies. A bed should be provided for the kitchen boy so that he would not stay by the fire all night. Near the hearth with its constant, low flame, there should be a waist-high counter (poggio) for cooking all manner of foods with coals; it should have three or four chambers for the coals—for pots and for saucepans—this would save much wood and charcoal. This cooking counter should be separate from the one for the staff if there was only one kitchen.
An important line of movement within the palace was from the kitchen to the rooms where meals would be served, usually the outer anterooms of private apartments, but also the salone for a major banquet, a loggia opening to the garden for summer meals, or an inner room of the apartment for privacy. At the Palazzo Barberini, a spiral staircase led from the kitchens, on the lowest level of the north wing up to the corridor with access to Taddeo Barberini’s anterooms. From another corridor, food could be carried through to a staircase that led to the anterooms of Anna Colonna-Barberini on the piano nobile. Food could also be carried from the kitchen through the north entrance hall on the lowest level to a staircase leading to the more withdrawn rooms of both Taddeo’s and Anna’s apartments.[25]
At the Palazzo Borghese in the Campo Marzio district of Rome, the kitchens of brothers Camillo Borghese (1552–1621, Pope Paul V), Giovanni Battista (1554–1609), and Francesco (1556–1620) were in the area toward Monte d’Oro to the north of the courtyard on the ground floor and were only one story high with windows and a door toward the street. Staff entered the kitchens from the north corner of the palace courtyard, through a small courtyard. They had the usual fittings: hearth, sinks, counters, food warmers (scaldavivandi), and a partitioned off corner, with a bed for the cook or his assistant. Drains carried waste water to the garden and out to the sewer in the street.[26] The cucina segreta (private kitchen) at the Palazzo Chigi was located in the basement and had a large fireplace, a cooking counter (murello), wooden shelves, and a rack for pots as we see in Scappi’s kitchen (see figure 1.6); there were beds for the cook and his helpers as well.
As we have already noted, in the Roman palace, there was a scrupulous separation of the sexes with separate apartments for women. Women’s daily lives were not generally involved with those of their husbands; rather, they were surrounded by women companions, some of noble families and some of lesser rank, who lived in secluded apartments in the palace. As well, noble women had their own staff of male servants apart from those of their husbands including stewards and cooks, and their expenses were recorded distinct from those of their husbands or other male family members. Separate kitchens were maintained for women, and separate accounts were kept for provisioning their tables. The female attendants had apartments in the attic or mezzanine, convenient to the noble woman’s apartments and, at the same time, secluded and isolated from the rest of the palace.[27] The female attendants had sparsely furnished individual rooms, a common kitchen without an oven, a dining room with a fireplace, and a storage room with a turn box (rota) through which they received food and other supplies without coming into contact with the outside—a situation that is reminiscent of nuns enclosed in convents. This is distinctly different from what we saw in the sixteenth century; recall that Gerolama Farnese-Sanvitale and her daughter, Margarita, had private apartments in the Palazzo Claudia in Parma and female attendants whose rooms were nearby (see chapter 3), with a small kitchen and a room to eat meals.
Looking at Anna Colonna-Barberini’s apartments in the first Barberini palace, Casa Grande on via dei Giubbonari, she had seven rooms in all, located to the right of the sala, which had a permanent baldacchino over the credenza, clearly a place for dining.[28] Her rooms had windows facing the courtyard and she had her own private chapel. Her daughter, Lucrezia, had a room next to Anna’s bedroom; next to Anna’s bedroom was another bedroom for her four young sons. Her female attendants lived above, where the “signora’s” kitchen, an upper kitchen, and a room where “the women ate” were located.[29] She had a similar set of apartments in the Palazzo Barberini, as we have noted, in the western end of the north wing opening into the salotto with Andrea Sacchi’s frescoes, Divine Wisdom. A spiral staircase connected Anna’s apartments to those of her attendants above and to the laundry in the basement below. A corridor led to the kitchen, dining room, and storeroom on the upper level. The kitchen received light from a grilled window and a window in the door. So we see a greater isolation of women in the seventeenth century than we did in the sixteenth where women’s apartments were adjacent to their husbands’ and with optional areas for private meals.
To support the prince’s dining in his apartment, which became commonplace in Rome as the century progressed, or in the salone, two special rooms were required: the credenza (now more commonly called the butler’s pantry) and the wine steward’s room (bottiglieria).[30] Both are distinct from the similarly named tables arranged for service during a banquet. The credenza should be as near to the sala as possible, dry, airy, and spacious. Foods that would not spoil such as oranges, lemons, and fennel were kept there, as well as the silver plate and tables for service at meals. The room had to be secure, to protect both the food and silver, so it had a gate that was kept locked. As an added measure of security, either the butler or his assistant slept there. It is of interest to note the change in terminology here. In the seventeenth century, the credenza or butler’s pantry seems to replace the sixteenth-century dispensa (pantry), although the latter is still used by Liberati.[31] We saw evidence of a credenza-like space in the sixteenth century; however, it was a cupboard, not a room as in Gerolama Farnese-Sanvitale’s house in Parma (see chapter 3). Now with the credenza becoming an actual room, the role of the credenziero (credenza steward) changes, too, and foreshadows a type of butler. The credenza was an intermediate point of service, closer than the kitchen, but not far from where the meal was to be served. At the Palazzo Borghese, Cardinal Scipione Borghese’s (1576–1633) credenza was adjacent to the kitchen for his staff and the rooms of his butler, Giovanni Battista Petroni, and was outfitted with a cupboard for the silver, another cupboard, a shelf for storage, and a lavatory.[32] Cardinal Borghese was the nephew of Pope Paul V. In Prince Marcantonio Borghese’s (1601–1658) wing of the palace, the credenza was near his bookkeeping office and had a fireplace, shelves, a counter for cleaning silver, a large press for folding linens, a smaller portable press for napkins, a lavatory, and a table for use at dinner service.[33] Francesco Borghese’s (1556–1620) steward lived in a set of rooms located on the mezzanine running from the southeast façade to the loggia with a view of the gardens and was under Francesco’s apartments; his carver also had a room on the mezzanine near the piazza, and Francesco’s locked credenza was nearby.[34] In the Palazzo Barberini in Rome, the secure credenza, with built-in sink for dishwashing, was a vaulted room on the ground floor. It did not have windows to the outside and was near the sala above.[35] The butler and his assistants would set up a temporary service station in a room adjacent to the eating room and then clear things away afterward.[36]
The wine steward’s room (bottiglieria) had be close to both the wine cellar and the prince’s apartments and had to be secure. The wine steward (bottigliero) supervised the cupbearer (coppiero).[37] Working from this room, the wine steward set up a small table in or near the room where his master was to eat, providing the wine and glasses, which were returned to the bottiglieria after the meal. In the Palazzo Farnese, the wine steward’s room was on the ground floor, just to the right of the entrance and connected to the anterooms of the apartment above by a small staircase. It had basins for cooling the wine.[38] Likewise at the Palazzo Chigi in piazza SS. Apostoli, the wine steward’s room was on the ground floor adjacent to the dispensa (pantry), near the garden with a door to the courtyard and a door that opened to the private staircase to both Cardinal Flavio Chigi’s apartments on the piano nobile and the wine cellar below. Furnishings included shelves, two large cupboards, tables, pedestals, boxes and copper vessels, two beds (for the wine steward and his assistant), and water piped in from the fountain in the garden.[39]
It is of interest to note as well that both the Palazzo Chigi and the Palazzo Barberini had bakeries: the first was located in the basement in a corner room; the bakery had an oven and was next to the cook’s pantry, followed by two wine cellars, whereas at the latter, a bakery was located on the lower floor of a building outside the main palace.[40]
The prince was not only responsible for housing, but also feeding his staff—they ate after his own meals were served, of course. Both Evitascandalo and Liberati suggest separate sittings in a single tinello (staff dining room), rather than two tinelli as we saw in chapter 5.[41] Whatever the arrangement, the room with a fireplace was capacious, located near the kitchens and pantry, usually on the ground floor and outfitted with tables and benches. This is the case at both the Palazzo Farnese and the Palazzo Borghese. As the century progressed, the staff dining room fell into disuse. Rossetti wrote that some servants ate in the house and that others received money to provide their own meals.[42] At the turn of the century, Evitascandalo noted that there were two ways to feed the staff: in the tinello or by providing them with provisions to prepare their own meal.[43] Though plans for the Palazzo Barberini (1628) called for two tinelli. As built, none exists, and the old staff kitchen was removed and a new one built outside the palace, which also housed the tinello.[44] The remodeled houses rented for the famiglia (household staff) by the Barberini family had fireplaces that could be used for cooking by their occupants. By 1658, Liberati wrote that hardly anyone used a tinello; provisions or money replaced it.[45] Cardinal Flavio Chigi, nephew of Pope Alexander VII, gave his staff at the Palazzo Chigi money for food, and many of the apartments he provided for members of his household had fireplaces and even small kitchens (cucinetta).[46] The palace had neither a tinello nor a staff kitchen. In 1677, a new cucina commune (staff kitchen) was built against the garden wall of the palace on a corner of the property.[47] The kitchen could be reached by a subterranean corridor running along the garden wall from the corner of the courtyard of the palace, but no tinello was built. So the patrons of the kitchen had to take their food elsewhere to eat it; in the kitchen were two beds, one for Pietro Pulciani, coco commune (staff cook), and his assistant, Innocentio Bandoni.[48]
The tinello did survive elsewhere in Italy; in Bologna, for example, staff kitchens and dining rooms are listed in the inventories of Alberto and Cristoforo Angeletti’s house (1602), the Delle Arme family palace (1614), and the Calvi family home (1621). At the Angeletti house, for example, the tinello was located in the basement between the lower kitchen and the wine cellar; the cook’s room was nearby. Staff dining rooms remained in use elsewhere in northern Italy.[49] Country residences outside Rome also had staff dining rooms simply because staff members were away from their usual dwellings and needed a place to eat as at the Palazzo Colonna Barberini at Palestrina. Yet Pope Innocent X’s residence in Frascati did not have a staff dining room; one wonders where the staff ate. Of course, we still find it in women attendants’ apartments, even when the courtiers and servants had moved out of the palace. The demise of the staff dining room corresponds to the increase in independent housing for the famiglia, outside the main palace and with cooking facilities. Cardinal Scipione Borghese, for example, housed his large famiglia in a single unified palace designed especially for them, the Palazzo della Famiglia Borghese.[50] Let’s look at Don Francesco Ceccarelli’s three-room apartment that he shared with his mother (1643). The first room centered on the fireplace where food was prepared; it had a grill, tripod, and spit. In the credenza, there were several copper vessels, forty maiolica and plain plates, and other pots and dishes. His mother and he sat at a table with wooden chairs to share a meal and to talk. One room was his mother’s bedroom and the other, with another fireplace, was where Francesco slept and studied.[51]
Over time, meals and mealtimes did not change all that much: pranzo (the main meal of the day, or dinner) and cena (the lighter evening meal, or supper) remained the two primary meals, with the occasional collation offered, but it was a lighter meal composed mostly of salads, fruit, and confections served at the end of the day, like the one Vittorio Lancelotti served on a Saturday evening in June.[52] Mattia Geigher’s collation was planned for women and included candied lemons, pears, artichokes, and peaches, among other things.[53] As well, Lancelotti, in his Lo scalco practico, distinguished between the everyday meal and banquets in his twenty-two menus. He included meals that took place in gardens or in a villa away from home, for example, a traveling meal, like the banquet hosted by Cardinal Ippolito Aldobrandini at the Villa di Belvedere in Frascati for Pope Urban VIII and twelve cardinals on October 18, 1625, which was an elaborate, multicourse meal.[54] On one occasion he noted a meranda that preceded supper. On August 13, 1626, Cardinal Ippolito Aldobrandini was in Parma; it was his name saint’s day and the meal was served in the Fonti gardens.[55] The meranda included a variety of fruits and salad served on plates with ice underneath—so in a way, a collation; it was August so the ice kept everything cool and fresh.
In general, meals had fewer dishes in each course with simpler ingredients and with fewer spices, with a tendency toward sweetness. Garnishes, on the other hand, increased. Wild meat diminished, in part due to over hunting; as well, white meats such as veal, capon, and turkey took center stage.[56] The meal still began with a cold course from the credenza, but with fewer dishes—perhaps five—and it was followed by a hot course. Each hot course alternated with a cold one, and each successive course became smaller with fewer dishes; no course was monotonous or repetitive as happened in the past. Everything led to the final course from the credenza, which offered a wide variety of choices to end the meal, including fruit, vegetables, cheeses, and confections. This is quite a contrast from the multicourse meals discussed in chapter 5 (see the sections titled “A Steward’s View” and “Ostentation in Rome”). Lancelotti’s menus are seasonal and arranged by the month giving us a sense of what was eaten at a specific time of year and at which meals.[57] Both Evitascandalo and Geigher provided seasonal menus as well as lists of suggested foods, sometimes with some details about its use.[58] Liberati, too, had an interest in seasonality, making suggestions as to what was appropriate to eat at a certain time of year. As well, he instructed the housemaster in acquiring the best products from all over Italy, for example, cases of pastries and candied fruit from Genoa, rose-colored sugar (zuccari rosati), citrons, jam (conserve) of every sort and boxes of candies from Naples and Sicily, exquisite salami and soap from Bologna, good candles and truffles from Spoleto, water and exquisite sausages from Lucca, fresh sheep’s milk cheese (marzolini), white grapes (verdea), the best red Tuscan wines of Montepulciano, and muscatel and Malvasia from Montalcino.[59]
Meal planning took place, of course, each and every day of the year whether it was for an elaborate banquet or a simple meal the master took in the anteroom of his apartment. And it was the duty of the steward to plan it as Evitascandalo tells us: “In the evening, after supper, the steward will plan the dishes he wants made the following morning, both roasted dishes and boiled dishes, appetizers, potages, soups, pastries and other prepared dishes.”[60] Of course, if the meal was a grand one, the steward would begin his planning well in advance of the event and much more was involved than just the food as we will see. Ottaviano Rabasco, in his Il convito overo of 1615, advised hosts to organize their banquets suitably in advance, so that when guests arrived, they may seem relaxed, welcoming, and attentive. For their part, guests were to appear engaged and complimentary, without betraying any urge to get away.[61]
Planning for banquets, especially weddings like that of Maria de’ Medici (1573–1612), ward of Ferdinando I de’ Medici (1549–1609), grand duke of Tuscany, to Henry IV (r. 1589–1610), king of France, on October 5, 1600, could be intense and could involve an entire city. A few weeks before the wedding, Ferdinando entrusted the planning for the festivities, to be held in the Sala dei Cinquecento in the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, to Giulio de’ Nobili and Ridolfo Altoviti, and the planning involved far more than just the meal. It is reminiscent of all that went into hosting Pope Sixtus V at Castel Gandolfo, and this was a much larger event. Nobili and Altoviti completed a list of recommendations for housing the distinguished foreigners who would come and for renting a sufficient supply of wooden tables, backed stools, and wine chests. The master of the guardaroba (wardrobe) inventoried the kitchen and service equipment. Hay, feed, and stalls for all the extra horses were organized. Giovanni del Maestro, Ferdinando’s housemaster, submitted lists of necessary provisions for the feast and suggested confectionaries for the duke’s review. A scheme was devised for seating the overflow of guests expected for the banquet. Extra apartments in the palace, for example, were made suitable to hold tables for the husbands of the court ladies and younger courtiers, expected to help serve the banquet.[62] In order for the credenza display to make a suitable impression on the guests, at least one thousand extra plates were necessary and were borrowed from other Medici palaces; extra kitchen equipment came from Ferdinando’s villa at Poggio. Service items were delivered to the goldsmith on the Ponte Vecchio in Florence for re-plating and polishing.
As the day of the ceremony approached, Florence was in a near state of emergency. A proclamation was issued on September 9 stating that all poultry, game birds, eggs, and such supplies as needed for the banquet were banned from sale at the public market. Maria’s marriage brought honor to all of Tuscany, and every citizen was expected to do his part. Numerous citizens and aristocrats had already been recruited to assist in the pageantry. Even outlying cities offered their services and supplies. Arezzo, for example, sent twenty-one men to serve as stewards or at table; twenty-three to work in the kitchen, with the wine service, or at the credenza; and another twelve to help where they could. Giovanni del Maestro and Ferdinando’s head cook, Giulio Sanese, set up the menu and were assisted by three French cooks who came from Rome.[63] It was a six-course meal that began with a selection of cold dishes from the credenza including salads, fig-stuffed jellies, and a variety of stewed game birds. The first hot course from the kitchen featured roasted game birds (ortolans, quails, pigeons), stewed boneless capons covered with ravioli, turkey in pastry cases shaped like hydras, and spicy veal breasts stuffed alla moresca. The meal ended with jellied quinces, fresh and candied fruits, olives, fish in wine, eggs, and artichokes.[64] It was a sumptuous meal befitting a queen.
Unlike sixteenth-century culinary writers like Cervio, Messibugo, Romoli, Rossetti, and Scappi, the majority of whom were stewards, not all those writing in the seventeenth century, whether steward or cook, included menus for historic meals. With the exception of Lancelotti and Stefani, who did, Evitascandalo (Libro dello scalco), Geigher, and Frugoli present ideal menus; however, Frugoli’s menus have dates as if they were for specific events, but no mention of persons or place. Many of the menus are arranged seasonally or by the month, and many of the writers included suggestions for dishes that were appropriate for a credenza course or what should be served at a particular time, such as Evitascandalo’s “insalada per la sera.”[65] These lists, then, were meant to assist the steward in planning a meal, allowing him to build his own menu, whereas the suggested menus could be used as is or with minor variations as the steward saw fit. Let’s look at Bartolomeo Stefani’s menu for the banquet held in Mantua in honor of Queen Christina of Sweden on November 27, 1655.[66] Stefani, like Scappi, was a head cook, not a steward like Evitascandalo or Lancelotti, and he worked for Ottavio Gonzaga, one-time ambassador to Carlo II (d. 1666). Stefani received his training from his uncle, Giulio Cesare Tirelli, in Bologna. He includes original recipes, followed by banquets and less elaborate meals. His book concludes with Queen Christina’s banquet, which gives us a sense of Stefani’s not inconsiderable powers as organizer and as the skilled hands that made the elaborate pastry, the sugar paste flowers and marzipan fruit with their lifelike coloring, and the butter and sugar sculpture and garlands of fresh flowers. Like Scappi, who stated in the preamble of Book IV that the menus in his book were ones he had made,[67] Stefani likely cooked this meal himself (with assistants, of course). Stefani begins with a description of the main table and its decoration, including elaborate sugar sculptures in the form of Mount Olympus with the Altar of Faith, two putti, and a crown with the coats of arms of Queen Christina. The engraving of a wedding feast (see figure 5.5) gives us a sense of how elaborate a display of sugar sculptures could be. Stefani’s meal began with an extensive cold course from the credenza; but, unlike Lancelotti and others, Stefani’s hot courses did not alternate with the cold ones. Rather, after the first credenza course came three hot courses from the kitchen, followed by two more courses from the credenza—in all, a six-course meal. Stefani, like Lancelotti, discussed each dish in detail and he described the ingredients and exactly how each item was placed on the plate with the appropriate garnishes or sauces; his descriptions are that of a dedicated cook with a sureness of touch and a pride in his work. For the first credenza course, Stefani describes a soup (“zuppa”) made from large pigeons cooked in milk and Malvasia, with sponge cake (“pane di Spagna”), sugar, and cinnamon. For serving the dish, the pigeons were formed into roses and covered with pistachio milk, pine nuts, and rose water. The plate was further garnished with marzipan, frozen (“agghiacciato”) sugar, and outlined in gold. The final two credenza courses are just lists of items: the first, mostly fresh fruit and vegetables, such as apples, grapes, pears, fennel, celery, asparagus, and artichokes; the final course consisted of bowls of candied fruit, confections, and jams (converve). In between these two courses, the first tablecloths and decorations were removed and a cypress tree made of sugar was placed in the center of the table along with sugar roses, all outlined in gold. Stefani’s meal was well orchestrated and certainly suitable for a queen.
Let’s look at a less elaborate menu that Stefani prepared for eight gentlemen served at a square table.[68] Rather than the usual procession of dishes, Stefani placed a platter in the middle of the table and surrounded it with smaller, complementary dishes, reminiscent of Rossetti’s “German” style of service that we discussed in chapter 5. Like Christina’s banquet, this five-course meal began and ended with a credenza course, with three kitchen or hot courses in between. For the first course from the kitchen, Stefani described how the young sow’s udder was precooked, and then spit roasted, basted with butter, and served with a salsa reale and surrounded by diligently cooked calves’ liver, deep-fried brains, sweetbreads, and ornamented with marzipan alternating with slices of bitter orange and lemons. The accompanying dishes included four plates of coppa and mortadella from Bologna, decorated with laurel leaves and four round bowls of orange sauce, topped with sugar and cinnamon; all were small portions as Stefani advised as a “bollito misto” followed, and he explains in detail how this was made. The gentlemen ended their meal with a plate of a variety of cheeses; four apple tortes, served hot with sugar on top; four small plates of ricotta with sugar, cinnamon, and perfumed water; four plates of asparagus dressed with olive oil, pepper, cinnamon, and a lemon sauce; a plate of celery, cardoons, and artichokes; and another of fresh fruit, confections, and candied fruit. Clearly, Stefani took pride in what he made no matter who was being served.
Like Rossetti and Romoli, Cesare Evitascandalo, in his Libro dello scalco, was primarily concerned with the most senior individual in the hierarchy of court servants—the steward—in whose hands rested not only the health of his master, but his honor among his peers.[69] Sloppy meal service or poorly prepared food reflected badly on the master and tarnished his reputation. Tending to the body of the master was the first responsibility of the steward, who was one of the closest members of his personal circle and knew the master’s complexion, the body’s humoral balance, and the dishes best suited for him. Moreover, Evitascandalo described in detail the humoral qualities of every ingredient that might be encountered. For Evitascandalo, the ideal steward should be of noble birth or, at the very least, well born and courteous and be between the ages of twenty-five and sixty. The steward must have experience if he is to serve at court. While no set uniform had developed yet, if the steward was noble, he could wear a hat and carry a sword, whereas if he served clerics, it was best if he wore a long cloak. Yet, while serving at a wedding, the steward could wear something quite different. For the May 13, 1662, wedding in Rome of Prince Aldobrandini and Ippolita Ludovisi, niece of Pope Gregory XV, the stewards, carvers, and gentlemen serving at the table all wore festive garb.[70] Lancelotti described each one in detail, but we will consider only the head steward who was richly dressed in turquoise-watered silk trimmed with gold lace over black; a turquoise sash was draped over his shoulder. Evitascandalo expected the steward to know what a prepared dish was and what it was made of so that he could explain if asked about the dish.[71] If the dish had a tangy garnish, the steward should know if it were made of vinegar or something else or, if it were sweet, whether it was made of sugar or honey. In the roast course, he should be able to tell the difference between a thrush and a blackbird, a suckling calf and a grazing calf, a fig-eater or some other small bird, and so on. Whoever wishes to exercise that most honorable profession, Evitascandalo continued, must have had long experience in kitchen matters and have taken pleasure in seeing and learning all that is associated with a good cook in order to be organized and competent. Liberati suggested that since he had his master’s life in his hands, the steward must be very careful that the dishes served him were of the highest quality.[72]
The steward not only planned the menu, controlled what went on in the kitchen, and guided dinner service, he oversaw all those who were involved in serving a meal: the credenziero (butler), the coppiero (cupbearer), the bottigliero (wine steward), the canovaro (cellar master), and the trinciante (carver). Just as the duties of the household staff became more rigid, so, too, did the rules pertaining to conduct and to etiquette during table service. Let’s look at what Liberati has to say about their roles at table: the credenziero (butler) had to lay the credenza and tables with dishes to be set out and clean the silverware and vessels. For service from the credenza, he had to have on hand the hand-washing basin and ewer, towels, tablecloths, serviettes, cutlery, and spices. The cupbearer, who worked with the wine steward and the cellar master, should be refined and clean, with a gravity of person. He supervised the wines, waters, the sottocoppe (coaster), glasses, and containers in the wine cellar. The wine steward should never let his master drink wines that were not perfectly healthy, and he must be supremely clean and never let anyone approach the little table and vessels he had prepared. No one was to drink from the glasses meant for the master. Whenever there were guests and banquets, he had to be careful to bring in several sorts of fresh wines and waters and put fanciful glasses and a variety of small decanters and vessels on display. The cellar master must be temperate in his drinking and should know about wines so as to keep them and distribute them. As he received them, he was to sample each barrel, one by one.[73] The carver, more than anyone else, was a performer at the table; his role at table remained constant throughout the centuries from the Middle Ages onward—he was the star of the show. According to Liberati, he should be young, hardy, handsome, and steady on his feet, with graceful legs. He must not touch the table with his waist or get his hands greasy. He must not make noise with his knife on the meat or dishes, and even less he must not make himself heard with sneezing or coughing and he must stand at his master’s table until the end.[74] Evitascandalo, too, saw carving as a serious and honored profession. Like Cervio, he felt the carver should be old enough to keep a whole turkey aloft without obvious strain and sweating as he carved it, and he should be able to carve just about every sort of food, including the smallest truffle. If he followed Geigher’s manual, he would know exactly where to place the fork and the precise order in which each slice should be executed. Like the steward, he should be well dressed in somber colors.[75]
As in the sixteenth century, no room was set aside specifically for dining; meals were often served in the outer anteroom of private apartments within the palace or, depending on the weather as Evitascandalo suggests, “in a cool place, a garden, a loggia, or a cool room, or in a warm room, with or without a fire.”[76] During the summer, for example, Cardinal Francesco Barberini often took his meals in the oval salone of the Barberini palace; it was a cool, pleasant room without a fireplace, connected to his summer apartments and near the loggia, which was used for a credenza and bottigliera. Banquets took place in the sala or in the smaller salotto. If it were adjacent to the sala, the salotto could function as a serving room. Wherever the meal took place, tables of the appropriate size could easily be brought in, set up for the meal, and then taken away once it was finished.[77] Tables for both food and wine service were also set up, usually in an adjacent room. However, in a sala of a person of high rank, like the Borghese, a baldacchino (an honorific canopy of state) dominated with a built-in credenza or serving table with its plate rack underneath ready for service during meals, as was the case at both the Palazzo Borghese and the first Barberini family palace, Casa Grande in via dei Giubbonari.[78] The permanent credenza highlighted under a crowning baldacchino as if it were royalty is new in this period, not just in Rome, but in Venice as well, where it stood in the portego.
With the seventeenth century came a sense of greater elegance with tables laid out and decorated in a particular manner, including elaborately folded napkins. Mattia Geigher, in his trattato delle piegature, gives detailed instructions as well as illustrations for pleating and folding napkins in various shapes such as a variety of birds, fish, animals, castles, abstract geometric constructions, and even a ship in full sail.[79] Some of his linen sculptures, conceived as table decorations in their own right, rivaled sugar and butter sculptures. Sugar sculptures adorned tables and sometimes the room itself and were far more elaborate than in previous centuries as we have already seen at the banquet for Queen Christina of Sweden (see figure 5.5) and will again at Maria de’ Medici’s wedding. The placement of dishes on the table, for example, had to be just right. The arrangement of the first course dishes established a design, and the dishes in later courses had to be set down in similar positions. Manuals, especially Mattia Geigher’s, specified exactly how the plates were to be placed on the table; Geigher included illustrations of plate arrangements so that the steward could make no mistakes.[80] Each plate, with a central ingredient, was elaborately decorated with a number of garnishes previously found on the credenza or at the final fruit course: pastry stars, fried bread or marzipan, grated salami or prosciutto, asparagus spears or artichoke hearts, egg yolks or truffles, candied citron, and nuts.[81] Many of them were served together and on nearly every dish. The fashion, then, was for elaborate garnishes with contrasts in color, flavor, and texture. As the courses (an alternation of cold and hot dishes as before) were brought to the table, the courtiers, gentlemen, and staff members stood in attendance, removing their hats whenever the prince or cardinal lifted his cup to drink. Diners were entertained, not just with music, but by the performance of the carver and the procession of dishes brought to the table by elegantly dressed servers. Once the meal was over, everything was removed from the room and it could be used for other purposes.
One’s position at the table did not really change; as in the sixteenth century, rank determined one’s place, though women ate separate from men. At banquets, women sat at tables apart from men, or at least the seating arrangements and service were carefully contrived so as to protect men and women from each other.[82] At the banquet following the wedding of Taddeo Barberini and Anna Colonna, fourteen secular members of the two families were seated on the right side of the table, the three women guests grouped together after the bridal couple; fourteen cardinals were arranged according to rank on the left side.[83] At Maria de’ Medici’s wedding banquet, three tables were set aside for the women, who were part of the wedding procession. Giovanni del Maestro lined the tables up with a space between the central table to serve wine and the meal—which came from two tables arranged in the form of a T—so they were served separately from the main table.[84] At the principal table, in the center was Cardinal Aldobrandini, the Papal Legate; to his right, Queen Maria; next to her sat the duchess of Mantua, the Grand Duchess Christina, and the duchess of Bracciano. To his left sat the duke of Mantua, Grand Duke Ferdinando, and ten-year-old Prince Cosimo.[85] This seating arrangement, with women grouped together to the right of the female guest of honor, became fairly common.
Banquets became more formal, more sophisticated, and more public as the century progressed. Evitascandalo noted the spectator aspect of banqueting as well.[86] Bystanders watched processions of carriages through the streets, and the reception of guests in a palace was carefully choreographed. At mealtimes, the gentlemen attendants stood and watched the elaborate service, ready to remove their hats whenever the prince took a drink, and the performance of the carver was a special attraction as was the case at the Palazzo Barberini in Rome. The sala could be full of people curious to see not only Cardinal Francesco Barberini eating, but Caetano, the trinciante, carving the meats.[87] For a banquet, such crowds of spectators might come to admire the elaborate displays and service of food that special measures would have to be taken to control them; as Cervio stated, the Cardinal’s table was well worth seeing.[88] This would certainly be the case for the elaborate wedding banquet for Maria de’ Medici in Florence (see figure 6.1 for an example of an elaborate wedding banquet held in honor of Ferdinando de’ Medici, grandduke of Tuscany, ca. 1590). Giovanni del Maestro, Ferdinando’s housemaster, wrote in his memoir that he took care of everything, especially the arrangement and decoration of the tables, procuring the food, and hiring artists to design and make the sugar sculptures, which were a major part of the banquet. Giovanni had a special table made just for them.[89] The maestro della sala (master of the banquet) was Virgilio Orsini, duke of Braccano, Giovanni de’ Medici was Maria’s cupbearer, and Antonio de’ Medici took care of the door and guarded the room. Twenty-five noble pages served the meal.[90] It is of interest to note that the cost alone for the confections, including ingredients and salaries of those designing and producing them, cost 3,702 florins, 6 lire, and 3 soldi.[91]
Source: Photo courtesy of Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY.
While officially Giovanni de’ Medici was in charge of the banquet decoration, it was architect and theater designer Bernardo Buontalenti (1531–1608) who masterminded the exuberant grottos and mechanical inventions that greeted the guests as they entered the Sala dei Cinquecento in the Palazzo Vecchio.[92] At the southern end of the room, a credenza, shaped like an enormous fleur-de-lis, spanned the space between the two windows; it was thirty braccia high—nearly seventy feet. Most of it was made of pietre dure, semiprecious stones, including agate, chalcedony, jasper, and lapis lazuli, as well as highly polished, colorful marble cut into intricate mosaics. Overhead and reaching to the ceiling was an enormous baldacchino that emphasized the display of the rarest objects in the duke’s collection: silver and gold platters and Chinese porcelain, rock crystal, and shell cups in jewel-studded mounts. Two fantastic grottos dominated the center of the room, sprouting an abundance of trees and foliage. Sugar statues of Apollo and Mnemosine and Hyman and Lucinda stood on either side of the grottos along with gilded statues of the virtues raised on pedestals. The focal point of the entire scheme was the Queen’s Table, placed at the northern end of the room in a great niche bordered by gilded pilasters that supported an enormous canopy opposite the towering credenza. The table’s crisp, white linen cloth came from Rheims and provided a snowy background for a miniature replica for a winter hunt scene of confectionery, which was the centerpiece of the table. Jewels studded the sides of the table, and the napkins were folded in astounding shapes. Moreover, sculptor Giambologna (1529–1608) was commissioned to design classically inspired sugar sculptures in the Hercules theme; Ottaviano Pinadori made them in sugar.[93]
Candles and torches in silver and gold candelabra burned throughout the room, reflecting off jewels, mirrors, and glistening sugar. Other torches were hidden to cast the credenza, the grottos, and the Queen’s Table into theatrical relief—the banquet was a living drama. Maria and the guests seated at her table faced the crowd, and every guest in the room, seated or standing in the gallery, witnessed the event; they also watched her dine, which , in itself, was a privilege and an honor. At the end of the evening, the torches dimmed around the queen and as if by magic, torches blazed to light Buontalenti’s fanciful pastoral creations. Trees, plants, and statues disappeared by means of hidden mechanisms. Billowing clouds appeared over the grottos, from which bejeweled chariots descended and the singers serenaded Maria and her guests with music composed by Emilio de’ Cavalieri. As a grand finale and to the shock of her guests, Maria’s table rotated; Maria was surrounded by mirrors. When it revolved again, she was surrounded by a delicate miniature garden with scampering animals and songbirds. While the banquet came to an end, the festivities continued for several more days.[94] Such political weddings were always an occasion to show off, to emphasis wealth and power with no expenses spared.
When we consider the changes that took place in the seventeenth century, especially as outlined in the culinary writings of the period, two overriding concerns stand out: cleanliness and security. While both of these issues were addressed in earlier periods, now it seems to be almost an obsession. Let’s take cleanliness first. Everyone and everything needed to be scrubbed and scoured clean. The cook and steward, for example, must be clean, and the cook must keep his kitchen impeccable, and the butler must make sure the silver, silver plate, and tablecloths are spotless; the list goes on and on as we have already seen in this chapter. Cleanliness is tied to a healthy appetite; a stained tablecloth at a banquet not only disgraced the butler and host, but also made the diner squeamish. And, of course, cleanliness relates to the well-being and health of the prince and his guests. Everything was under lock and key for fear of theft, every servant and staff member a potential thief. The butler’s pantry and the kitchen, for example, were not only locked tight, but only authorized personnel were allowed to enter. Servants, like the cook or his assistant, often slept where they worked; we’ve noted beds in the corner of a kitchen or pantry, for instance. Perhaps, these concerns are further evidence of the greater professionalism and targeted audience of these guidebooks that we discussed when considering the rules governing household management and staff. Whatever the case may be, life for everyone was stricter and more regimented. Women’s lives in particular, both servant and elite, were more restricted than in the past. There were rules and regulations for everything and a proliferation of manuals as well. We are left to wonder if everyone followed the rules.
We began in the late Middle Ages—the heyday of medieval cookery—and traced the process of cooking, eating and dining, and the staffing of the kitchen and the dining room through the Renaissance—the focus of this book—to the Baroque period with its new standard of professionalism at every level, marking the end of an era. The role of the cook, steward, and other members of the kitchen and the dining room brigade evolved over time with the rules governing them becoming truly codified by the seventeenth century. The kitchen—how it was equipped and staffed and where it was located—changed, too, from one century to the next, moving from primarily hearth cooking to the use of freestanding stoves and other equipment. The orchestration of dining, particularly for grand banquets, became more elaborate, almost theatrical, in the use of props such as life-size figures made of sugar or fountains with running water and ever-changing lights and grottoes and tables that could move or revolve (recall the wedding banquet of Marie de’ Medici discussed earlier in this chapter). Eating habits and what people ate changed over time from primarily wild game and lots of meat in the Middle Ages, for example, to the discovery of new world products like tomatoes and turkeys by the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century. How food was spiced and the number of dishes served at a meal became more refined by the seventeenth century. Culinary treatises and cookbooks began with a few costly handwritten recipe manuscripts (Maestro Martino of Como) to the earliest printed books (Platina) to the proliferation, in the sixteenth century, of ambitious and comprehensive cookbooks and dining manuals mostly written by stewards (Messisbugo, Rossetti, and Romoli, for example). The exception was the master cook Bartolomeo Scappi, whose treatise greatly impacted the writers of the century that followed, where such authors as Lancelotti and Liberati clearly wrote with the professional in mind. The centuries that follow those covered in this book mark even more dramatic changes than what we have seen occur in the seventeenth century and, therefore, are part of another story.
Vittorio Lancelotti, Lo scalco practico (Rome: Francesco Corbelletti, 1627).
Ken Albala, The Banquet: Dining in the Great Courts of Late Renaissance Europe (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2007), 22–23.
Giovan Battista Crisci, Lucerna de cortiggiani (Naples: Domenico Roncaglioli, 1634).
Cesare Evitascandalo, Libro dello scalco (Rome: Vullietti, 1609); Antonio Frugoli, Practica e scalcaria (Rome: Francesco Cavalli, 1638).
Mattia Geigher, Li tre trattati (Padua: P. Frambotto, 1639; repr., Bologna: Arnoldo Forni, Editore, 1989).
Albala, The Banquet, 157.
Ibid.
Francesco Liberati, Il perfetto maestro di casa (Rome: Angelo Bernabo dal Verme, 1658 and republished in subsequent editions: Bernabo, 1668; Hercole, 1670; repr., Bologna: Arnaldo Forni, Editore, 1974), 11, 45, 87.
Cesare Evitascandalo, Il maestro di casa (Rome: Vullietti, 1598; Viterbo, 1620), 211.
Evitascandalo, Libro dello scalco, 4; Evitascandalo, Il maestro di casa, 12.
Evitascandalo, Libro dello scalco, 5; Evitascandalo, Il maestro di casa, 42; Liberati, Il perfetto maestro di casa, 66–67.
Evitascandalo, Il maestro di casa, 75–78.
Liberati, Il perfetto maestro di casa, 68–69, 73–75.
Patricia Waddy, Seventeenth-Century Roman Palaces: Uses and the Art of the Plan (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990), 67.
Ibid., 180.
Ibid., 282.
Liberati, Il perfetto maestro di casa, 12.
Evitascandalo, Il maestro di casa, 79–89.
Evitascandalo, Il maestro di casa, 11, 12, 54, 56; Liberati, Il perfetto maestro di casa, 87–90.
Liberati, Il perfetto maestro di casa, 87–90.
Evitascandalo, Libro dello scalco, 1–4.
Giovanni Battista Rossetti, Dello scalco (Ferrara: Domenico Mammarello, 1584), 40.
Evitascandalo, Libro dello scalco, 4; Evitascandalo, Il maestro di casa, 12, 102.
Evitascandalo, Il maestro di casa, 56.
Waddy, Seventeenth-Century Roman Palaces, 128.
Archivio Segreto Vaticano (hereafter, ASV), Archivio Borghese, 306, #27, 1608, 14 November.
Waddy, Seventeenth-Century Roman Palaces, 30.
Ibid., 168.
Ibid., 169.
Evitascandalo, Libro dello scalco, 5; Evitascandalo, Il maestro di casa, 42, 99; and Liberati, Il perfetto maestro di casa, 66–67, 71–72.
Liberati, Il perfetto maestro di casa, 73–74.
ASV, Archivio Borghese, 4173, 1622, 4 January; 4174, 1621, 23 August.
ASV, Archivio Borghese, 307, #67, 1619, 27 September.
Waddy, Seventeenth-Century Roman Palaces, 81.
Ibid., 201.
Ibid., 36.
Evitascandalo, Il maestro di casa, 12–17.
Waddy, Seventeenth-Century Roman Palaces, 36.
Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana (hereafter, BAV), Archivio Chigi, 520, fols. 199–206.
Waddy, Seventeenth-Century Roman Palaces, 251, 309.
Evitascandalo, Il maestro di casa, 133; Liberati, Il perfetto maestro di casa, 120.
Rossetti, Dello scalco, 10–11.
Evitascandalo, Il maestro di casa, 133.
Waddy, Seventeenth-Century Roman Palaces, 44, 251.
Liberati, Il perfetto maestro di casa, 119.
Waddy, Seventeenth-Century Roman Palaces, 45.
Ibid., 312.
BAV, Archivio Chigi, 702 and 573.
I wish to thank Joyce de Vries for sharing these inventories from the Archivio di Stato in Bologna with me.
Waddy, Seventeenth-Century Roman Palaces, 42–43, 45.
ASV, Archivio Borghese, 457, inv. 52, fols. 158–163v.
Lancelotti, Lo scalco practico, 146–47.
Geigher, Li tre trattati, Bk. II, 52–53.
Lancelotti, Lo scalco practico, 247–56.
Ibid., 201.
Albala, The Banquet, 41.
Lancelotti, Lo scalco practico.
Evitascandalo, Libro dello scalco; Geigher, Li tre trattati, Bk. II.
Liberati, Il perfetto maestro di casa, 151–52.
Evitascandalo, Libro dello scalco, 1–4.
Ottaviano Rabasco, Il convito overo discorsi di quelle materie che al convito s’apppartengono . . . (Florence: Donato e Bernardino Giunti & Compagni, 1615).
Maria Luisa Incontri Lotteringhi della Stufa, Pranzi e conviti, la cucina Toscana dal XVI secolo ai giorni d’ oggi (Florence: Edizioni Polistampa, 2010), 135–46.
Ibid., 138.
Ibid., 139–41.
Lancelotti, Lo scalco practico; Geigher, Li tre trattati; Frugoli, Practica e scalcaria; Evitascandalo, Libro dello scalco.
Bartolomeo Stefani, L’ arte di ben cucinare (Mantua: Osanna, 1662; repr., Bologna: Arnaldo Forni, Editore, 2007), 135–42.
Bartolomeo Scappi, The Opera of Bartolomeo Scappi (1570): L’arte et prudenza d’ un maestro cuoco (The Art and Craft of a Master Cook), trans. and with commentary by Terence Scully (Toronto, Buffalo, and London: University of Toronto Press, 2008), 382.
Stefani, L’ arte di ben cucinare, 109–13.
Evitascandalo, Libro dello scalco, 1–4.
Lancelotti, Lo scalco practico, 107–8.
Evitascandalo, Libro dello scalco, 1–4.
Liberati, Il perfetto maestro di casa, 45.
Ibid., 66–67, 71–72, 76–80.
Ibid., 48–49.
Cesare Evitascandalo, Dialogo del trinciante (Rome: Vullietti, 1609), 4, 6, 11; Geigher, Li tre trattati, Bk. III.
Evitascandalo, Libro dello scalco, 18.
Evitascandalo, Il maestro di casa, 13, 99, 185.
Waddy, Seventeenth-Century Roman Palaces, 101, 167.
Geigher, Li tre trattati, Bk. I.
Ibid., Bk. II.
Frugoli, Practica e scalcaria, 52, 56; Lancelotti, Lo scalco practico, 107–9.
Waddy, Seventeenth-Century Roman Palaces, 26.
Lancelotti, Lo scalco practico, 289–90.
Incontri Lotteringhi della Stufa, Pranzi e conviti, 137–38.
Ibid., 141.
Evitascandalo, Il maestro di casa, 18.
Waddy, Seventeenth-Century Roman Palaces, 57.
Vincenzo Cervio, Il trinciante (Rome: Giulio Burchioni and Gabbia, 1593), 104–9.
Florence, Archivio di Stato, Giovanni del Maestro, Memorie, Carte Strozziane, I serie, 27, c. 35r.
Incontri Lotteringhi della Stufa, Pranzi e conviti, 141.
Ibid., 144.
Ibid., 138.
Ibid., 138–41.
Ibid.