Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well (2 page)

At several points, he states that his recipes are easy to do, even when they really are not. For a jelly roll cake, which Artusi dubs “sweet English salami,” he writes: “This cake, which could more properly be called sponge cake with filling, makes a handsome sight in the windows of confectioners’ shops. To those untrained in the art of baking, it might seem to be a very fancy dish, but it really isn’t at all difficult to make” (p. 434). His confident, casual tone is infectious, and the reader feels encouraged to proceed. Regarding meatballs, Artusi says: “Do not think for a moment that I would be so pretentious as to tell you how to make meatballs. This is a dish that everybody knows how to make, beginning with the jackass” (p. 238). His cooking techniques are sound, and the book is full of helpful hints: how to use a rosemary branch to baste roasting lamb, and how to cook garlic properly so that it does not turn bitter.

Though the author is often vague in stating exact quantities of ingredients, pan sizes, cooking times, and temperatures, he teaches readers to think and reason out what they are doing as opposed to slavishly following overly precise instructions. By contrast, many of today’s cookbook authors are so exacting as to tell their readers to expect utter failure if they use the wrong shape of pasta, the wrong kind of pot or even – heaven forbid – stir their ingredients in the wrong direction. Their dear Uncle Pellegrino makes no such demands. For anyone with a modicum of experience in the kitchen, Artusi’s way can expand the readers’ creativity by making them think about what and how they are cooking.

This technique is not always successful, however. A truly novice cook will occasionally need more directions than Artusi offers. For example, Artusi assumes the reader knows how to make fresh pasta. In recipes for tortellini, tagliatelle, cappelletti, and the like, he simply calls for a “dough.”

No matter how serious his subject, Artusi writes with personality,
charm, warmth, humor, and wit. Indeed, if Artusi were alive today, he would surely be the star of a popular cooking show on television. He laced
Scienza in cucina
with anecdotes about people who, while largely unknown to readers a hundred years later, inevitably resemble someone they know. Some of these stories are downright gossipy, like the tale of the miserly Romagnan count who stuffed himself every other day at a hotel’s buffet table and fasted on alternate days to save a few pennies. Others are simply amusing, like that of the nosey priest known as “Don Pomodoro” because, like the tomato, he gets into everything. These characters are timeless and we might recognize some of the same traits in a neighbor or acquaintance. Who among us cannot relate to Artusi’s story wherein a cook is faced with the dilemma of planning a menu for an assemblage of very fussy guests? His employer informs him that one guest does not eat fish and cannot even abide its odor nearby, while another despises vanilla. Spices, almonds, lamb, prosciutto and other pork products, beef, cabbage, and potatoes are also banned. The perplexed cook walks away shaking his head with no idea what to do. If he had consulted
Scienza in cucina
he would have found that the author suggests menus for just about every occasion.

Artusi’s readers have changed in many significant ways, but the book remains timely because the author focuses on simple things that do not change. He offers recipes for both economical meals and celebrations, dishes to please children, and others to nurture someone who is not feeling well. He worries frequently about his digestion and recommends and condemns certain foods based on whether or not they are “windy.”

Artusi engages his readers personally. He often writes in the second person, directly addressing the reader. He asks questions as if he expects an answer: “What trick do you suppose he [the aforementioned Romagnan count] found to maintain such a facade while spending little?” asks Artusi before revealing the end of his story (83). Of course, the reader has no idea of the answer, and can’t help but be drawn in and read on.

Over the years critics have attacked
Scienza in cucina
for including
recipes as typical of French cuisine as of Italian. Artusi was a native of Emilia-Romagna in northern Italy and was accustomed to a cooking style that was closer to the French – especially with regard to its use of butter, meat, and cream – than southern Italian cooking, which is more reliant on vegetables, fish, and olive oil. Any cookbook, no matter how scrupulous the author is about authenticity, reflects his or her personal taste. Furthermore, the worldly Giuseppe Garibaldi, who led his thousand “Red Shirt” troops across Italy to bring about its unification, is often quoted as saying, “It will be spaghetti, I swear to you, that unifies Italy.” If he was correct that the acceptance in the northern regions of this staple food of the South helped to bring a common thread to the twenty disparate regions that became one nation, then we must credit Pellegrino Artusi for having provided the recipe.

Italian cooking has never been more popular than it is today. While chefs in high-priced restaurants experiment with fusion food and exotic ingredients from around the globe,
Scienza in cucina
can be relied upon for the kind of classic Italian fare that needs no explanation and is always pleasing. People today have less time to spend in the kitchen and fewer skills to devote to preparing meals: they need a guide that they can trust.

With the publication
La scienza in cucina e I’arte di mangiar bene
in its complete form in English, Artusi’s masterpiece will become accessible to a whole new audience.

MICHELE SCICOLONE

In love, the
beforehand
is either an itch that hurts or a hurricane that topples trees and ruins crops. The
meanwhile
is ever so sweet, but, alas, it does not last very long. I am not one to agree with the French Epicurean who say that
it lasts only for the time it takes to swallow an egg
, but I must confess, nonetheless, that the meanwhile can be measured not in days, nor in hours, but in seconds on the hands of a watch.

Afterwards
is at times tart, at other times bitter: in the most fortunate cases it is a wearisome state, in other words, a kind of tiredness. In the most unhappy cases, which are rather frequent, it is like pain or regret, or both.

With food instead, the
beforehand
is delicious, the
meanwhile
more delicious, and the
afterwards
more delicious still.

Paolo Mantegazza,
In Praise of Old Age

In 1910, upon reaching its fourteenth edition (the last to be printed under the author’s direct supervision), Pellegrino Artusi’s
La scienza in cucina e l’arte di mangiar bene
began to be recognized as the most significant Italian cookbook of modern times. Since its first appearance in 1891, it had sold 46,000 copies. The first run of the fourteenth edition would bring the total number of books printed and sold to the surprising figure of 52,000.
¹

A success of this magnitude – or any success at all, for that matter – could not be anticipated from either the dismissive early assessment of the manuscript by a friend of the author’s, or the rejection by the “well known” Florentine publishing house to which Artusi, “dismayed but not entirely convinced” by his friend’s opinion, had turned in the hope of seeing his book in print. Rebuffed, Artusi printed and marketed the book at his own expense, but initial sales were discouragingly slow.

In a new item added to the 1902 edition, and revealingly entitled “The Story of a Book That Is a Bit Like the Story of Cinderella,” Artusi himself provides a fairly amusing chronicle of the early difficulties the book encountered.
²
We learn that, after turning down the offer of a second publisher – who had asked for a monetary contribution of “two hundred lire … and the surrender of all royalties” – and being dismissed by a Milanese publisher, who sniffed that “We do not deal in cookbooks,” Artusi engaged the services of the Florentine typographer Salvatore Landi and proceeded to print the work at his “own risk and peril.”

In addition to the rather effervescent and somewhat self-indulgent assertions of Artusi, the early life of the book has been carefully reconstructed by Gian Enrico Venturini in his essay “Storia (del successo) di un libro.”
³
The documents he examined (and made public) in the Municipal Archives of Forlimpopoli (Artusi’s hometown) reveal, among other things, that while Landi continued to print
Scienza in cucina
,
⁴
the Florence-based publisher R. Bemporad & Figlio took charge of its national distribution beginning with the fifth edition.
⁵
It was due largely to this company’s efforts that the book’s impact turned from a snowball into an avalanche. Artusi was quick to recognize Bemporad’s contribution. The concluding paragraph of his 1902 note on the book’s fortunes reads as follows: “Let me close, then, with a well-deserved tribute and expression of thanks to the publishing house of R. Bemporad & Son of Florence, who made every effort to bring this manual of mine to the knowledge of the public and to disseminate it.”
⁶

Eventually Bemporad became the official publisher of the book,
⁷
and from that moment the kitchen bookshelves of a vast and ever increasing number of Italian families – no matter how limited their holdings might be – would include a copy of
Scienza in cucina
, with its unmistakable cover featuring the heading “Hygiene – Economy -Good Taste” right above the title and the author’s name. The numbers of printings and copies sold appeared at the bottom.
⁸
The book became so popular that, to this day, most people refer to it simply as “Artusi.” Widespread use of the author’s name had resulted in a small but extremely significant antonomastic triumph: in his 1931 edition of
Dizionario moderno delle parole che non si trovano negli altri dizionari
(Modern dictionary of words not found in other dictionaries), Alfredo Panzini included the term
artusi
and defined it thus: “Cookery book. How glorious! The book has become a noun. How many writers are there who could boast a similar destiny?”
⁹

Ever since the book “fell” into the public domain, dozens of editions have been issued by a variety of publishers besides Bemporad (now Bemporad-Marzocco). They include Giunti, Rizzoli, Garzanti, and other less prominent presses. Fourteen of these editions are currently available. Among those who printed the book, Casa Editrice Salani should not go unnoted: its early (1907) and unauthorized printing of the tenth edition of
Scienza in cucina
shook the Florentine publishing world and persuaded the concerned parties to turn to legal action.
¹⁰
Most of the current editions take pride in reproducing the “canonic” fourteenth edition; occasionally, however, Artusi’s recipes have been revisited and reshaped so as to make them compatible with today’s dietetic requirements and trends.
¹¹

It would be both difficult and unproductive to give a full account, or even a rough estimate, of the relevance and accuracy of each of these editions. It would be a crime, however, not to issue a few words of praise about one of them. Although all other editions testify to the high esteem in which
Scienza in cucina
has been held among chefs, gourmets, and anyone intrigued by culinary tales, legends, and dreams, the edition first published by Einaudi in 1970 has, to say the least,
widened Artusi’s readership to include scholars, cultural historians, artists, and intellectuals of all persuasions. The carefully documented introduction – easily a book in its own right – authored by the late Piero Camporesi
¹²
of the University of Bologna, identifies Artusi’s masterpiece as an essential document in the history of Italian literature and society. It is not merely a peculiar and much-acclaimed cookbook, but a veritable quarry from which to extract facts and values that are crucial to a serious understanding of the long and contradictory political travail that ferried Italy from the battlefields of the
Risorgimento
to the drawing (and dining) rooms where an incipient bourgeoisie could, at the beginning of the new century, reap some of the material benefits once reserved for the nobility and the clergy.

One more thing should be said about the company Artusi has been keeping, for over thirty years, with Camporesi and Einaudi. Recently, a fourth boon-fellow joined in, and a new edition was brought out that doubles, or even triples, the pleasure of reading, consulting, or simply leafing through the book. In this new edition, the author’s text is once again served with Camporesi’s exhaustive introduction,
¹³
but it is also seasoned with the watercolors of Giuliano Delia Casa, the most exciting visualizations ever attempted of Artusi’s sense of taste and smell. As Pablo Echaurren has written in his affectionate description of the miraculous encounter between the gastronome and the artist:

Giuliano Delia Casa’s painting is anti-conceptual, free-flowing, and instinctive; the artist himself is a force of nature, and, at the same time, the cultural product of his region, of the tradition dating back to a time when Pellegrino Artusi’s instructions were carried out religiously and no attention would have been paid to the abstruse officiants and devotees of
nouvelle cuisine
… In the same way that no second thoughts, no dawdling, no hesitation are allowed in the creation of a watercolor, the art of eating was based on authenticity … Giuliano Delia Casa’s specialty lies in the binomial figure of color/flavor. His mark is rapid yet pregnant like a
tortello
[dumpling],
incisive yet delicate like
culatello
[salt-cured pork rump], ephemeral yet permanent like truffles in a
timballo
[savory pie].
¹⁴