Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well (12 page)

87
They all married, except for Gertrude, who spent the rest of her life in mental institutions.

88
Capatti and Pollarini, eds.,
Autobiografia
, 15. They go on to add that “Epicureanism is a duty in lay society” (22).

89
See his preface, p. 7, below.

90
Artusi,
Autobiografia
, “5.

91
Another colorful member of the gang was the Brazilian Francesco Mosquera de Magalhaes, “a learned man, a free-thinking man whose goodness knew now bounds. He suffered from chronic pneumonia, which would lead him to his grave after 25 years of constant friendship. It hurt me that I was not able to assist him in his last moments of life because his wife thought that I would perhaps disapprove of the nuns to whom she had entrusted his care … I knew that I was not desired at my dear friend’s bedside”
(Autobiografia
, 97).

92
In 1875 (Milan: V. Maisner e Compagnia, Editori), Giglioli published his
Viaggio intorno al globo della Regia Pirocorvetta Italiana Magenta negli anni 1865–1866, 1867, 1868
, one of the earliest scientific (and tragicomic) scientific explorations commissioned by the Italian government and financed with public money.

93
A precious glimpse of the life of this institution of truly higher learning can be garnered from the pages of Artusi’s
Autobiografia:
“I myself can bear witness that the Natural Sciences were entirely neglected even though there were excellent professors. Apart from the botany class, which was taught magisterially by Prof. Parlatore, a great number of people gathered, and in particular, ladies from the foreign colony.” And, just a few lines further down: “I can always remember the singular case of the illustrious professor of zoology, invertebrates, and comparative anatomy [Targioni Tozzetti]. One year, when he was teaching the highly important subject of spontaneous generation, my classmates began to disappear a few at a time, and I alone remained with the professor” (97).

94
Prose writer and poet, Fucini was born at Monterotondo (Massa Marittima) in 1843. He worked in Florence as an assistant in engineering projects. Later he turned to teaching. He died in 1921 at Empoli: the local library is named after him. In his short story “Scampagnata” (An outing) included in his
he veglie di Neri
(Neri’s vigils, 1884), we find the exemplary description of a lunch where “The well-to-do, prosperous bourgeoisie devour mountains of food without any orderliness, taste, or elegance … Following the soup, the fruit, and the boiled meats, no less than seven stews will appear on a given table: two made with chicken, one with milk-fed veal, one with beef, one with sweatbreads, and one with turkey and noodles” (Camporesi, introduction, lcxiv).

95
A philologist and literary historian, D’Ancona taught Italian literature at the university in Pisa, where he was born in 1835. His books include
Origini del teatro in Italia
(1877),
Poesia popolare italiana
(1878),
Studi di critica e storia letteraria
(1880),
Studi sulla letteratura italiana dei primi secoli
(1884). He died in Florence in 1914.

96
English poet and prose writer, Landor was born at Ipsley Court, Warwick in 1775. He was expelled from rugby and Trinity College (Oxford) for firing a shotgun in his rooms. In 1808 he fought as a volunteer in the Spanish War of liberation against the French. Having been sued for libel, he and his wife went into exile in Italy. He was also threatened with expulsion from Florence for being abusive to the local police and for writing condemnatory material about Italy in his
Imaginary Conversations
(1824–29). He died in Florence in 1864.

97
Artusi,
Aurobiografia,106
.

98
See p. 245 below.

99
See p. 408, below. In Artusi’s time and for a much longer while, baking was an expensive proposition, and families that lacked the proper stove (they may have owned a
forno da campagna
, or Dutch oven) or that simply wanted to save on fuel brought their cakes to the local bakery. There, a large wood-burning oven would serve the whole neighborhood.

100
”Incontro con Pellegrino Artusi” (Encounter with Pellegrino Artusi, Forum Popili, 1961), as reported by Andrea Pollarini in “Storia di una mostra che assomiglia a una Cenerentola” (Story of a show that resembles Cinderella). See
Cucina Bricconcella
, 14. In fact, the same Pollarini, in an appendix to Artusi,
Autobiografia
(149–50) re-edits the story of the event from a somewhat different perspective. The young soldier “felt bewildered from the very beginning: no soup but rather ‘bananas with ham.’ Even today the pairing is suspect… The dinner began in a rather shrill fashion and then it continued with an indecipherable quince-stuffed guinea hen and concluded with a traditional cake. Before the end, as if for a lark, gorgonzola was served. In the face of such a peculiar tableau, nearly any hypothesis could be valid. Is it a portrait of a peculiar and senile Artusi?”

101
See pp. 422–3 below. Such language is particularly significant if pitched against the expression of chagrin and contempt employed by Artusi to flesh out the long catalog of the domestic crooks he had had in his service prior to the “encounter” with Francesco and Marietta. See
Autobiografia
, 109–14.

102
Camporesi, introduction, xxxix.

103
Ibid., xlii.

104
See p. 296 below. The term
petonciano
is fairly rare in contemporary Italian. Most people would hardly recognize it as a synonym for
melanzana
.

105
”We possess a handwritten catalogue of Artusi’s library … There are 578 volumes for a total of 300 works … Few of them pertain to cuisine … Artusi was not a bibliophile, nor did he collect valuable rare books.” Capatti and Pollarini, eds.,
Autobiografia
, 128. A
zibaldone
, a scrapbook filled with hand-copied excerpts from books or lectures, and letters, proverbs, quotations, reminiscences (but no photos and, strangely enough, no recipes), is more in harmony with his idea of culture as reference. It is part of the Fondo Artusi of the Muncipal Archives of Forlimpopoli.

106
See p. 68 below.

107
See p. 258 below.

108
See p. 130 below. In his “Story of a show etc.” Andrea Pollarini has published her letter to Artusi, See
Cucina Bricconcella
, 19. Artusi replaces Galasso’s “good sauce or leftover stew with a little bit of spleen” with béchamel and Parmesan cheese.

109
See p. 54 below. Artusi’s awareness of this divergence shows even in the choice of his kitchen helpers: Francesco Ruffilli hailed from Artusi’s hometown, while Marietta Sabatini hailed from Massa e Cozzile, in Tuscany.

110
See Artusi’s preface, p. 7 below.

111
See p. 331 below. Compare Artusi’s language with that of the brief he received from his friend and teacher Giglioli (see also note 95), clearly in response to a request for elucidation: “A family unto itself, the
Rhinidae
[skate] are called
Rhina squatina
in science. They are common [in Italy] and while their skin is useful, their meat is very bad.” From Camporesi, introduction, lviii.

112
Exactly forty years prior to the first edition of
Scienza in cucina
, Dr Giovanni
Rajberti had published an
Arte del convitare spiegata al popolo
(The art of entertaining made simple for the masses), where the notion of “popolo” must be approached with caution. Bear in mind the small number of people who then knew how to read an write, and who had money to invest in a cookbook, and the notion of “the masses” becomes questionable.

113
Regimen Sanitatis, XIX, Code of Health of the school of Salerno
, trans. John Ordronaux, (Philadelphia, 1870), p.’. “Artusi revives this tradition … in a last-ditch attept to anchor man’s diet to the cycle of days and months. He was perhaps the last
philosophe de table
to believe in nature. After him, cuisine would no longer acknowledge the seasons and their rhythms.” Camporesi, introduction, liii.

114
”Get in the habit of eating everything, if you don’t wish to become a burden to your family,” he reminds his reader, resuscitating, I am sure, his mother’s appeals to frugality. “Those who refuse to eat many things offend the others and the head of the family, who are forced to conform to their whims, to avoid making twice the number of dishes” (pp. 15–16 below). As to clothes:

In April stay appareled,

In May just go halfway,

In June discard your pantaloon,

But give it not away,

For it may serve another day (p. 15).

115
Ibid., 15.

116
And if some of the burners remain idle, they can be used to heat up irons.

117
Sunday, 27 June 1999, the second day of the traditional Festa Artusiana, which yearly celebrates the achievements of Forlimpopoli’s most famous citizen, and during which even some street are named after gastronomic products, was dedicated to August Escoffier and featured an exhibition organized in direct cooperation with the Cooking Museum of Villeneuve Loubet. A tasting of peach Melba was offered to all participants. These celebrations are a fairly recent affair and have come about after long neglect, which actually began from the day Artusi, at the request of a friend, contributed two copies of
Scienza in the cucina
to a charity raffle held in Forlimpopoli. “Those who won the books, he tells us in his “Cinderella Story,” 11instead of appreciating them, held them up to ridicule and then went off and sold them to the tobacconist” (p. 3 below). Thus the contemporary “fuss” is not free from suspicions of guilt and the desire to make amends. Artusi’s birthplace, which was in the main square, was demolished and has been replaced with a cheap, modern building. There is no museum of Artusiana in Forlimpopoli. A few pieces of furniture that belonged to the culinary wizard now adorn the mayor’s office.

118
For the celebrated soprano, whom he had admired in
Lohengrin
at Covent Garden in 1894, Escoffier created the dessert
Pêche au eigne
(renamed peach Melba in 1889, at the inauguration of the Carlton Hotel). A legend in her own time, the Australian-born soprano began her career when she was already twenty-seven years old, under the auspices of Mathilde Marchesi. By age thirty she was a star in both London and Paris. On the lighter side, she became famous also for her peformance in Britain’s first advertised public broadcast, when she sang into a telephone microphone with a horn made of a cigar box a rendering of “Home Sweet Home” and the “Addio”
from Puccini’s
la Boheme
. It was 7:10 on the evening of June 15, 1920. Escoffier’s recipe calls for two peach halves that have been poached in syrup and cooled. Each half is placed, hollow side down, on a scoop of vanilla ice cream, then topped with pureed and strained fresh raspberries, red currant jelly, sugar, and corn starch, and sometimes whipped cream and sliced almonds.

119
See
La scienza in cucina etc
., ed. Davide Paolini (Milan: Sperling &c Kupfer Editori, 1991), p. 21. Emphasis added.

120
See p. 261 below.

121
In an imaginary (and then again not so imaginary) list of books whose existence should have spurred him to write his own tract
Physiologie du marriage
(1829), Honoré de Balzac had also employed the word “art”
(L’art de conserver les substance alimentaires, L’art d’empêcher les cheminées de fumer
, etc.) not so much to mark its difference from
physiologie
, as to rather to underline their proximity.

122
Salvatore Battaglia,
Grande dizionario della lingua italiana
(Turin: Utet, 1961),
ad vocem
. This technologically conscious definition is available in English as well: just think of the expression “state of the art.”

123
As suggested in Capatti and Pollarini, ed.,
Autobiografia
, 132.

124
The opening words of “A Few Health Guidelines” confirm this assertion: (”Emperor Tiberius used to say that man, after the age of thirty-five, should no longer have any need of doctors … The … maxim is true inasmuch as man, by the time he has reached the halfway point of his life, ought to have gained enough experience about himself to know what things are harmful and beneficial to him. By means of a good diet he should be able to govern himself …”).

125
The notion that women’s stomachs are weaker than men’s obtains in Artusi as well. See p. 15.

126
Which is exactly what happens to the hero of
Le sottilissime astuzie di Bertoldo
, a very successful example of popular literature, authored by G.C. Croce and first published in 1608.

127
Dating back hundreds of years, this theory found a particular insidious champion in Dr Giacomo Albini, author of
De Sanitatis Custodia
(On guarding one’s own health), probably written between 1341 and 1342.

128
This preface remained pan and parcel of the project from the very first edition of the book which, by the way, was dedicated to two of Artusi’s best friends: Sibillone and Biancani, his cats.

129
Florence: Giunti, 1998.

130
Recipes from
Le scienza in cucina et l’arte di mangiare bene
, revised with a modern twist with the aide of the Association of Chefs of Romagna, published by the Comitato Segavecchia, Forlimpopoli, 1991.