Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well (7 page)

The son of Agostino, a prominent merchant whom friends called “Buratel,”
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and of Teresa Giunchi, Pellegrino Artusi was born on 4 August 1820. In 1831, his father had participated in the insurrectionary movements of Forlimpopoli, which at the time was one of the Legazioni Pontificie, a territory governed by the church. In March of that year Buratel was among the signatories of a proclamation extolling “Liberty, Union, and Fatherland.” In later years, his patriotism would abate considerably. To get a taste of the lukewarm national sentiments that afflicted old Buratel and the parallel insurgence, in him, of a “sound” one-never-knows philosophy, let us pay heed to an
episode narrated by Pellegrino himself: “A public subscription was opened in order to aid the State Treasury in paying for war expenses. At that time my father had given me the key to the [family] coffer and I could rummage around in it just as he did. I opened the box with him there and said: ‘I have not been able to offer Italy my arm, when She asked for it … Let me now give a sign, at least, of my love for her liberty and independence’ … I took 300 liras and rushed them over, asking the clerk to register them in my father’s name. Caught unnaware by my sudden action, he could not keep himself from exclaiming: ‘What are you doing? What are you doing? Who knows if things will last like this?’ ‘They will,’ I said, ‘this time they will,’ and I fled.”
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Couched in language that could not be more pietistic and is, nowadays, slightly repulsive, the passage also sheds light on the shifting of power from father to son within a fairly representative upper-middle-class family. Most of all, it alerts us to the kind of rhetoric to which an accomplished bourgeois would unashamedly resort, in order to disguise as an act of patriotism what in reality is nothing but a crude (and very profitable) financial investment.

A male child among seven sisters, Pellegrino grew up in comfort, thanks to his father’s successful business as a textile merchant and drug store owner. Of his early education, Pellegrino writes: “When I was big enough, it was decided that l’d be sent to school… And what an awful school it was! … What awful teachers, especially for the lower classes! Real slave drivers. On top of everything else, the one l’m talking about was an acrimonious man whom they called
Strapianton
[the Well-Rooted). A rabid papist, he used to make us read the Office of the Virgin every Saturday in Latin even though he himself didn’t understand a word of it. Every so often when a student didn’t know his lessons, he would say, ‘put your hands out’… and whack with the rod.”
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Later Artusi studied at the episcopal seminary schools of Bertinoro and for a time sojourned in Bologna, without, however, attending the Pontifical University, as many of his more creative biographers contend.
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As a young man, he helped with his father’s business and traveled
as far as Trieste, Milan, Ancona, Rome, Naples, and many other places where he acquainted himself with much of the gastronomic lore he would later whip into the cauldron of
Scienza in cucina
. The immediate cause of the family’s move from Romagna to Florence was the brutal assault to which they, and the entire town of Forlimpopoli, had been subjected by the a band of brigands led by the notorious (and controversially romantic) Stefano Pelloni, better known as the
Passatore
(Ferryman), a nickname he inherited from his father, who was a real
passatore
on the River Lamone.
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It was in Florence that Artusi found the world he had always been looking for. Having become an investment banker, and a very wise investor,
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in less than thirteen years, he had earned enough money to be able to dedicate himself more freely to intellectual pursuits and to attending university lectures, which were then public. Above all, his prosperity and changed family situation (having buried his parents and overcome “the nightmare” of his sisters
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) enabled him to be inducted into what we might call a self-styled club of permanent bachelorhood, characterized, as the editors of his autobiography have not failed to notice, by “a modest hedonism, an elegant wardrobe, and a real passion for food.”
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Perfectly harmonious with the “philosophical” premises in which it was grounded, the third of Artusi’s predilections would become a very special labor of love, leading to a pot of gold at the end of a savory rainbow.

Whatever reticence may have hindered him at the beginning, the insistence of the many gentlemen and ladies “of my acquaintance, who honored me with their friendship” led to his resolve to proceed with the project of publishing
Scienza in cucina
. The “materials had long been prepared,” he writes in a paragraph of the preface, “and served only for my personal use. I thus present it to you now as the simple amateur that I am, certain that I shall not disappoint you, having tried and retried these dishes many times myself.”
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These modest and yet highly informative lines shed light on both Artusi’s social life and the specific environment within which he cultivated his culinary talents.

A bachelor who enjoyed the covenient intimacy of a fair number of female friends, as he somberly but unequivocally declares in his
Autobiografia
, Artusi basked in the reflected light of acquaintances whom he could admire without losing his own balance, and in the trust he inspired in people seeking either gastronomic advice or ways to improve their assets. Nothing illustrates his notion of “covenient familiarity” better than his “strategic” retreat from the proximity of a “good oil and fresco painter, judged to be among the best in Florence,” whom Artusi had befriended for the purpose of “forming an idea of artistic beauty.” 11I used to visit his studio to admire his work and, to make sure that I would be tolerated, I wasn’t negligent in using those courtesies practiced among friends.”
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When, however, the painter suggests that Artusi consider buying a painting the
gradus ad amicitiam
is rudely interrupted. Clearly Artusi did not care to include this gentleman artist in the cohort to which Mantegazza and many other members of the upper bourgeoisie and Anglo-Florentine aristocracy contributed social lustre and intellectual vitality.
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Numbered among the luminaries were Enrico Hillyer Giglioli
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and Adolfo Targioni Tozzetti, both of them colleagues of Mantegazza’s at the Regio Istituto di Studi Superioiri,
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poet Renato Fucini,
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critic Alessandro D’Ancona,
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marquis and marchioness Almerici, and even the controversial English writer Walter Savage Landor.
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If the marrige of friendship and patronage was not meant to be, that of friendship and free professional service encountered no obstacle whatsoever. It is again Artusi who informs us of how well-disposed he could be towards people whom he hardly knew, as in the case of Domenico P., better known as Mengone, from Faenza. On moving to Florence, “he came over to my bank and introduced himself, imploring me to invest a sum of money, the fruit of his savings. I could see that he was a gentleman and that he had promise, and what’s more, he was proving to be a fellow patriot. So I was happy to help him without charging him anything.”
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As for the specifics of Artusi’s culinary environment, many clues indicate that he used his modest kitchen as a laboratory equipped with
an affordable coal-burning stove and well stocked with implements and utensils. Unfortunately, unlike more modern books, Artusi docs not include a section describing the kitchen equipment he considered essential. An inventory is possible nonetheless. A paragraph in his recipe for
stufatino di petto di vitella di latte coi finocchi
(stewed breast of milk-fed veal with fennel) is, in this respect, quite illuminating: “When I say ‘saucepans’,” Artusi expounds, “I mean copper pans, well coated inside with a layer of tin. People can say what they like, but copper, when kept clean, is always preferable to iron or earthenware, which get too hot and tend to burn the food cooking in them. Earthenware cracks and absorbs grease, and after some use starts to give off a bad smell.”
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Other ubiquitous utensils are the wooden mixing spoon and, above all, the
mezzaluna
, to whose versatility
Scienza in cucina
could be considered a monumental ode. Then, of course, there are the sieves. Sooner or later, not merely vegetables but also fish and meat are pounded in a mortar and passed through a sieve. Bizarre as it may sound, a strainer can also do as well as a baking dish. “To bake,” Artusi writes in the first recipe for
bocca di dama
(lady cake, recipe 584), “pour into a copper baking pan greased with butter and dusted with confectioners’ sugar and flour. Or you can use a strainer with a wooden ring, and cover the bottom with a sheet of paper.”
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The most colorful testimony of Artusi’s painstaking involvement in the actual testing of his recipes – and of the strenuous efforts of his two kitchen aides to make the most of the master’s verbal explications – comes perhaps from Domenico Amaducci, a young fellow citizen from Forlimpopoli who, during his military service in Florence, visited repeatedly with the white-haired gastronome. Artusi, for his part, used Amaducci as a guinea pig: “finally I was asked to sit at the table,” recounted Amaducci of one such visit, “or more precisely, a small little round table where there was room for two persons, and I was forced to sit there observing all rules of etiquette. ‘The meal is served!’ said Artusi who paced restlessly between the dining room and the kitchen, which had been transformed (as I would later see) into a well-equipped
laboratory with two earthenware stoves … Before taking leave, I wanted to meet the two ‘martyrs’ of the stoves … ‘Did you enjoy the meal?’ they asked me. I answered with a military expression: ‘I’ll sign off on that!’ ‘Lucky you. We’re here almost all day long working on these stoves and our master drives us crazy with his continuous experiments.”
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It is doubtful that Artusi ever touched a kitchen utensil, that he ever lit a fire under a pot or finely chopped or gently stirred anything. These tasks, as can be gathered from the Amaducci story, were entrusted to his housekeeper and cook, Francesco Ruffilli and Marietta Sabbatini. Artusi’s role was exclusively that of a taster, a pronouncer of verdicts, approving or disapproving the domestically re-created gustatory experiences he had been exposed or alerted to in the outside world. His debt of gratitude for the cares of his two “semper fideles” would neither go unacknowledged nor remain unpaid. In his will, Artusi bequeathed to Marietta “5,000 lire, free of inheritance tax, the complete bed from my bedroom, including my yellow silk bedcover, and, as a memento, my long gold chain and watch,” and to Francesco, “3,000 lire, likewise free of any inheritance tax or withholding, and, as a memento, my gold watch, which you wind with a little key.” For Marietta, he actually goes a significant step further and enters a
Panettone Marietta
among the recipes in
Scienza in cucina
. In the introduction to that recipe (no. 604), Artusi credits her as “a good cook, and such a good-hearted, honest woman that she deserves to have this cake named after her, especially since she taught me how to make it.” Further praises are added at the end: “This panettone is worth trying, because it’s much better than the Milanese-style panettone that’s sold commercially, and isn’t much trouble to make.”
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This comment brings us back to the issue of provenance. Centuries of exchanges and debates brought about by colliding gastronomic cultures have revealed the symptomatically idealistic nature of the quest and turned it into a “consummation to be wished,” perhaps, but not “devoutly.” At best, it can be gauged in terms of insistence on and/or variation in the selection of ingredients and condiments, and in the
manner of amalgamating them in mediocre, plausible, or even excellent dishes. In this respect Artusi is as original as the next person, actually a little more, since he aggressively campaigned in favor of vegetables, upon which the majority of food-minded contemporaries looked with a great deal of suspicion. Take potatoes, for instance, which had been imported into Europe at the end of the sixteenth century, and for which Italian cooks would not find any systematic use until the nineteenth century was well under way. Indeed, it is only after the validation they receive in
Scienza in cucina
, Professor Camporesi informs us, that “
Gnocchi di papata
(potato dumplings) attain full and stable national citizenship.”
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The same, Camporesi goes on to remark, can be said of tomatoes, which literally counterinvade the Italian peninsula from the south, after Garibaldi’s red-shirted troops “delivered” those regions from the Bourbons and turned them over to the Piedmontese. Tomatoes give “new fleshy texture and flavor to eclectic, anonymous Romantic cuisine, which was largely an offshoot of French cooking, and had doggedly survived the restoration, without any effort at originality. Much more than the potato, the tomato is a new disruptive and revolutionary element in 19th-century Italian cuisine. Long neglected in culinary practice and looked upon with suspicion, it had been relegated, at best, to negligible services.”
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Artusi can also be called a fighter of gastronomic prejudice, which he finds dietarily unacceptable. He even points out the subtle manifestation of racism inherent in some such prejudices: “Forty years ago,” he writes in his recipe for
petonciani
(eggplant; recipe 399), “one hardly saw eggplant or fennel in the markets of Florence; they were considered to be vile because they were foods eaten by Jews. As in other matters of greater moment, here again the Jews show how they have always had a better nose than the Christians.”
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Much simpler aetiological questions (where did Artusi get his inspiration, whence did he transcribe the treatments for his full-fledged scripts?) can be answered in a variety of ways. Apart from the recipes he drew from the classic cookery books that, contrary to
common opinion, did not feature prominently in his not entirely impressive library,
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he borrowed from friends who shared his gastronomic proclivity and, above all, from their wives.