The Art of Cooking The First Modern Cookery Book

[steaner]

The Art of Cooking The First Modern Cookery Book



University of California Press, Ltd. | isbn 0-520-23271-2 | Author: Luigi Ballerini | English | PDF | 216 Pages | 1.26 MB

Introduction
Dear Reader: This is a cookbook—a historical cookery book. If you do not care to read about the world from which it grew (and it would be perfectly understandable if you didn’t), skip the present introduction altogether. No need to feel guilty about it. Read it only if you are the type that does not mind a little suªering. I promise that, at the end, you will hasten to search for a great chef, either in the outside world or within yourself, to obtain from either of them (or from both) the culinary reward you undoubtedly deserve. For a good number of years, a few centuries in fact, the only known mention of Maestro Martino was to be found in the writings of the fifteenth-century Italian humanist Bartolomeo Sacchi, who was acquainted with him personally. This means that the name of an unknown person was for a while on the lips and twice, at least, in the pen of a “reporter” who, in our day and age, is just as unknown as his “reportee.” The muse of history contributed some humor of its own. So enchanted was
Saccni (who in his own time was actually famous enough to need no introduction) with Martino’s gastronomic and rhetorical virtues that he did not hesitate to compare him to Carneades (213–129 b.c.e.), whom Sacchi’s contemporaries would have immediately recognized as the illustrious philosopher who headed the New Platonic Academy in Athens, and whose subtle eloquence and argumentative dexterity, appreciated and praised during that rebirth of classical culture we know as the Renaissance, would eventually fall into the same oblivion that now surrounds the cook no less than the scholar. There is more: ever since the hypertrophic question “Carneades, who was he now?” found its way into the pages of Alessandro Manzoni’s I promessi sposi (The Betrothed; first published in 1827), only to be repeated, generation after generation, by legions of high school kids, Italians have adopted the name Carneades as the quintessential moniker of obscurity.1 Thus, to make sure that fame would not treat Martino unfairly, Bartolomeo sacchi bestowed upon him the following encomium: “What a cook, O immortal gods, you bestowed in my friend Martino of Como, from whom I have received, in great part, the things of which I am writing. You would say he was another Carneades if you were to hear him eloquently speaking ex tempore about the matters described above.”2 Luckily, by the time the events in this story began to unfold, the printing press had become a permanent feature of European cultural life, with the result that Sacchi’s praise of Martino would be repeated a fair number of times, in the 1474 as well as in the numerous subsequent editions of his treatise De honesta voluptate et valetudine (On Right Pleasure and Good Health). But Sacchi’s treatise paid homage to Martino in a way that went beyond the exigency of a compliment, eventually yielding results that we are only beginning to appreciate more than five centuries later. By “lifting” the cook’s recipes and translating them into Latin, Sacchi ensured that the highly original approach
of Maestro Martino’s De arte coquinaria (The Art of Cooking ) would not remain confined to a few obscure manuscripts penned in the vernacular, but on the contrary would be disseminated throughout Renaissance Europe in the first cookbook deemed worthy of mechanical reproduction.3 To fully appreciate the novelty and impact of Martino’s gastronomy, we must situate him in time and place, studying the changes in culinary practice that his example helped to usher in. Given the paucity of historical information available about Martino himself, our study must be necessarily oblique. We begin with the prologue-master, Sacchi, about whom much was known though little is now remembered, and proceed from there to the leading man, about whom we now know a little more than we did a few decades ago, although certainly not enough to satisfy our appetite. Along the way, we will season the plot with accounts of supporting actors and extras (Renaissance popes and cardinals, for the most part, but even a twentieth-century
American gentleman), and with a register of motives that will surely pique the interest of those who love good food and the history and art of gastronomy.................................



Code:
[Only Registered users can see links . Click Here To Register...]