Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well (8 page)

As late as April 1909, Marchioness Blandina Almerici sends him the recipe for the
ciambelline
(little rings) she had eaten at the Albergo Tre Re di Bologna, the same establishment where Artusi ate his
maccheroni
next to an overly vociferous (according to Artusi, anyway) Felice Orsini (see above, page xxxii). Other feminine presences can be sensed in
Scienza in cucina
, but protected by a veil of anonymity. Who is the “young, charming Bolognese woman known as la Rondinella [the little swallow]” we are invited to thank for having taught Artusi how to make
strichetti alia Bolognese
(strichetti noodles Bolognese style; recipe 51),
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or “the lovely and most gracious Signora Adele [who] wishes me to tell you how to make”
sformato della Signora Adele
(Signora Adele’s Gruyère Mold; recipe 346)?
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And are such epithets as “charming,” 11lovely,” and “most gracious” reason enough to believe, as someone has suggested, at least in the case of la Rondinella, an actual, and perhaps food-related, love affair?

What he did not learn from his paramours or his friends and their wives, Artusi drew from anonymous or vaguely identified sources (such as the family from Santa Maria Capua Vetere who gave him the recipe for
maccheroni alia napoletana
(macaroni Neapolitan style I; recipe 85) or borrowed from the chefs, the innkeepers, the
maîtres d’bôtel
with whom he became acquainted at the many prestigious eateries and spas he could easily afford to frequent. He also lent a favourable ear to his correspondents, housewives and housekeepers who, upon buying
Scienza in cucina
, would write the author with variations and/or suggestions of their own. A diligent interlocutor, Artusi never forgets to acknowledge the contributions of his readers, unless of course the adopted recipe has been substantially altered. Such is the case of
rossi d’uovo al canapè
(egg-yolk canapés; recipe 142), which offers Artusi one more opportunity to rail against “stupid and often ridiculous names,” but not to thank Adelina Galasso from Breganze, in the county of Vicenza, from whom he may have received the original input.
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There are two basic culinary traditions that find, a home in Artusi’s book: the then unpopular and now highly fashionable simple cooking of the
contadini
, and the complex cooking of courtly chefs smartly adapted to modern needs and tastes. In both cases he was ahead of his time: the pains he took to rehabilitate country-style cooking paved the way to its current widespread acceptance as a sign of sapience and refinement. He also brought together the culinary tradition prevailing in his native Emilia-Romagna with the dishes he learned to appreciate in Florence, where he pitched his tent for the longest time.

The people of Romagna use butter and animal fat for frying and are partial to pasta dishes and meats, reflecting a tradition that has Celtic origins. Tuscans, on the other hand, use oil for frying and favor soups and vegetables, preferences considered “quintessentially Mediterranean,” as we have fallen into the somewhat mysterious habit of saying. The alloy Artusi created from the two formative elements of Italian culture – the unbridled energy of the Gothic and the delicate “design” of the Renaissance – was unprecedented. Romagna and Tuscany are adjoining regions. Forlimpopoli and Florence are fewer than a hundred miles apart, and the portion of the Appenine range separating them is not particularly impervious. Yet their basic gastronomic (as well as phonetic) physiognomies diverge significantly. No one was more conscious of the divergence than Artusi himself, who felt the need to alert anyone interested in his
minestra di due colori
(two-color soup; recipe 31) that “this is a light and delicate soup which in Tuscany is most likely to be appreciated by the ladies. However, it should not be served in Romagna, that homeland of tagliatelle, where softness to the bite is not to the locals’ taste. Even less would they appreciate the pasty texture of tapioca, the very sight of which would, with few exceptions, turn their stomachs.”
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Whichever way you slice it, one conviction remains intact in Artusi’s pages from beginning to end. He creates his recipes for those who can afford them, those who have the means not just of feeding themselves, but of doing so pleasantly and, above all, intelligently. He does not believe in wasting money (he was a banker, after all) and instructs his readers to be frugal (not stingy). By the same token, he
affirms, in no uncertain terms, that top-quality ingredients and produce are to be obtained or else the art of eating well will go down the drain. “If you do not aspire to become a premier cook,” writes Artusi, “you need not have been born with a pan on your head to become a good one. Passion, care, and precision of method will certainly suffice; then, of course, you must choose the finest ingredients as your raw materials, for these will make you shine.”
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It is not merely a question of affordability, however. Appealing to upper-middle-class taste requires a strategy that transcends the identification of expensive or neglected ingredients. While the encoding of gastronomic concerns in the rubric of bourgeois values is inevitable, Artusi’s readers may simply be aspiring members of that social class. Reading
Scienza in cucina
, in other words, can become an effective enticement to upward mobility. As to those who could exhibit an old membership card, they too had to feel justified in spending, or paying people to spend, so much time in the kitchen. Domestic dinner parties had to become, or pass for, a cultural event, as well as a statement of prosperity.

There are several clues in the text that makes these statements plausible, if not final. The large number of digressions have already been observed. Let me just add here a particularly poignant example, as it brings together scientific competence and Artusi’s beloved
religio oeconomica:
“The angel shark
(Rhina squatina)
,” he writes in the recipe for
pesce squadro in umido
(stewed angel shark; recipe 462), “has a flat body similar to the ray. The skin, which is rough and hard, is used to polish wood and ivory, and to line sheaths for knives, swords and the like. The flesh of this fish is rather ordinary, but when prepared in the following manner it makes a family dish that is not only edible, but more than passingly good. And it is economical, because it is easy to find, at least in Italy.”
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The juxtaposition of “culture” and culinary instructions is a shrewd rhetorical device to reassure readers who otherwise may have felt embarrassed by their own familiarity with a book of recipes. In this way they could not only consult it as frequently as they pleased, but leave it around the house and even show it to their friends (which does
wonders for sales). Similar sentiments, in our day and age, may be elicited by “serious” men’s magazines, such as
Playboy
, where the enjoyment of female nudity is made acceptable by the presence of sophisticated literature. There are also lexical clues: when a dish is ready, it is never
brought
to the table: it is
sent
there by someone who actually slaved away to make it for you in your kitchen, or by a figment of your wishful imagination. Which means, let me say one more time, that the reader must be a bourgeois or have bourgeois aspirations.
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Another prominent indicator of the audience “targeted” by Artusi is the concern he shows for hygienic norms, which prompted him to equip his book with sections entitled “A Few Health Guidelines” and “The Nutritional Value of Meats.” While
all
of his notions hearken back to the idea connecting health with intelligent food intake – an idea from which sprung Hippocratic medicine itself –
some
specifically link good health to the observance of the “seasonal principle,” implying the exclusive consumption of what nature produces at any given time during the year. The seasonal principle also entails the necessity of eating more when the “natural body heat” is stronger, which happens during the winter months, according to medieval doctor Ugo Benzi’s
Regole della sanità e della natura dei cibi
(Principles of health and the nature of foods). This view – the backbone of a centuries-old tradition, profusely exemplified in the
Theatrum
and
Regimen Sanitatis
of the Salernitan school – has been totally demolished by modern systems of refrigerated transportation. In Artusi’s times, however, this kind of wisdom was on every body’s lips, as attested by dozens of adages and popular rhymes:

Slender in Spring thy diet be, and spare
Disease, in Summer, springs from surplus fare.
From Autumn fruits be careful to abstain,
Lest by mischance they should occasion pain.
But when rapacious winter has come on,
Then freely eat till appetite is gone.
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Health concerns extend to food variety – no single food item is so necessary that it cannot be replaced, nor can it possibly constitute a complete diet by itself – as well as clothing, physical exercise, and, above all, ambience.
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This last issue offers Artusi yet another opportunity to exercise his wit:

Try to live in healthy houses, full of light and well ventilated: illness flees where the sun shines in. Pity those ladies who receive guests in semi-darkness, and in whose homes you stumble into the furniture and know not where to put your hat. Because of this custom of living in dimly lit rooms, of not moving their feet or getting out into the open air, and because their sex tends by nature to drink little wine and rarely eats meat, preferring vegetables and sweets, such ladies are seldom seen with red cheeks, the sign of prosperous health, or with fine complexions all blood and milk. Their flesh is not firm but flaccid, their faces like vetches that one grows in the dark to adorn tombs on Holy Thursday. Is it any wonder, then, that among women one finds so many hysterics, neurotics and anemics?
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How far and wide we have traveled from the Romantic idolization of the
mansarde
or the much-below-standard dwellings of the proletarian and sub-proletarian families that populate Edmondo De Amicis’ pages.

It is not just the dining room that undergoes radical changes during the last decades of the nineteenth century. Even more radical innovations take place in the kitchen, where meat grinders make their first appearance and the old wood-burning oven is replaced by the cast iron stove, a modern cooking unit that enables domestic chefs to determine precise cooking times at fairly exact temperatures, and boil, roast, and bake different dishes all at once.
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Cooking leaves the world of alchemy and crossed fingers to enter the arena of precision, with no unpleasant surprises.

From the time of Artusi to the present, Italy has become a country and, by and a large, a culture where the scientific adventure of cooking
and the artistic experience of eating have once again sidestepped the emotions surrounding technology and intuition to achieve the status of a religious initiation. In and of itself, this is not necessarily an indication of progress, yet I would challenge anyone to label the rediscovery of gastronomic rituals as regressive. It would be enough to remember that the great-grandparents of those Italians who, in our own time, are subjecting themselves to one or more dietetic treatments, were likely to have eaten far less than was required for their daily sustenance. In spite of such major catastrophes as two world wars and the widespread irresponsibility that has characterized the last half century of their political and economic history, vast numbers of Italians have left behind poverty and malnutrition (as well as illiteracy) to live in a world where the immediate satisfaction of material needs has become not simply a birthright, but an opportunity to reconnect to a legacy of luxury and sophistication dating back to the Renaissance, when Swiss guards wore, as they do now, uniforms designed by none other than Michelangelo.

On this evolutionary trajectory, the figure of Pellegrino Artusi occupies a pivotal place, not too remote from that of Maestro Martino in the late fifteenth century. Both of them, each in his own cultural and political environment, twisted into a cogent and organic whole threads of intuitions and habits that might have appeared unreconcilable on first sight. Each leaned on the past to usher in the new, reacting positively to difficult circumstances and turning “necessary conditions into desirable qualities,” as the old Italian adage goes. As for the inevitable temptation to suggest that Artusi is to Italian gastronomy what Escoffier is to French, heeding it is by far less heretical than many culinary theologians are prepared to admit. It is true, however, that the analogy is not proportional and, consequently, neither specular nor infinitely reassuring. It may, however, offer some help, if only by way of contrast. The role played in Italy by Artusi’s historic persona and the symbolic values attached to it is likely to differ in kind, not just degree, from the role played in France by the celebrated author of
La guide culinaire
. To appreciate the difference within the analogy, all we have to
do is turn to some edifying examples of “European” gastronomic literature. Following in the footsteps of the
Larousse gastronomique
(where Escoffier is treated with all the respect he deserves),
The Oxford Companion to Food
wholly ignores the name of Pellegrino Artusi and assumes “assafoetida” to be the first possible entry after “artichoke.” (It is worth noting, by contrast that all Italian gastronomic dictionaries honor the name and the talent of the French virtuoso.)

A much nobler attitude transpires from the behavior of the good people of Forlimpopoli and those of Villeneuve-Loubet (in the south of France, where Escoffier first saw light, in 1847), who agreed to “twin” their townships and, to make sure that even the most distracted traveler would not miss the significance of their gesture, set up road signs, each acknowledging the existence of the other. Whether real or merely wished for, the seductive energy of this “egotisme à deux” in which
here
and
there
merge into one aspiration, at a time when public attention seems to be monopolized by a resurgence of inflated patriotism and embarrassing episodes of pseudoheroic behavioral patterns, may be read as an auspicious sign that difference and equanimity can still go hand in hand.
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