Renaissance cookery

[telophase]

Reading a translated book by a Renaissance master cook—The Opera of Bartolomeo Scappi (1570). And getting tripped up by the use of all sorts of meats and the completely different flavor profiles favored at the time.

By which I mean you’ll be reading along and hit a recipe for truffles and chicks. AUGH. Or run across one for melon sautéed in butter or chicken fat then boiled with meat broth and gooseberries and thickened with eggs and grated cheese.

Other things are quite interesting: gnocchi existed before potatoes, being made of flour and grated bread, along with a few other things. And there’s a recipe for a garlic soup that starts with FIFTY BULBS—not cloves, bulbs—of garlic. (It’s cooked in several changes of water to kill the garlic burn.) Yeah, he’s cooking for more than a couple of people (he was chief cook to several popes), but...that’s a lot of garlic.

Comments

[marycatelli]

Medieval recipes are always interesting.

[yhlee]

Reminds me weirdly of Paul Dickson's Chow, a history of American military food, which has sample recipes that serve 50. Because of course they do. (I have never been tempted to make one, even scaled down for five...)

[camwyn]

Some of the medieval and renaissance recipes out there leave me appreciating Leonardo Da Vinci's choice of vegetarianism so very, very much.

[larryhammer]

a garlic soup that starts with FIFTY BULBS

And the problem is ... ?

[dhampyresa]

a garlic soup that starts with FIFTY BULBS
Ah yes the famous mid 16th century Italian vampire outbreak.

[golden_bastet]

Oh, I'd try the garlic soup. But then I love garlic.

(There's yer social distancing for ya.)

[adafrog]

Crazy.

[indywind]

Medieval, Renaissance, and early Colonial European and adjacent cookery is another thing I'm nerdy on. If you ever want cookbook or recipe recs (either for books/articles interesting and informative to read, or foods that I have personally enjoyed making or eating), or opinionated nattering about broad trends or popular misconceptions, hit me up.