Welcoem to posts!!
in the future - u will be able to do some more stuff here,,,!! like pat catgirl- i mean um yeah... for now u can only see others's posts :c
A beautiful 16th-century short poem, Celeo e lâorto, tells the story of the farmer Celeo who prepares his meal, following the literary model of the pseudo-Virgilian Moretum and updating the content for the time: instead of flatbread and moretum, Celeo makes polenta. The author, Bernardino Baldi, was a mathematician, poet, historian, and clergyman who was born in Urbino in 1533 and began his academic career by studying philosophy. He was abbot of Guastalla from 1580 to 1609.
Before the beginning of the poem, a note says that the text teaches the true and proper way to prepare polenta, a dish loved by people of all conditions, meaning that it is appreciated by both the rich and the poor. Polenta, as we read in Plinyâs Naturalis Historia, is an originally Greek dish that has become increasingly popular in the history of Italian cuisine. There are several types of polenta, but it is mainly made with millet, foxtail millet, and barley, whereas cereals such as buckwheat and maize appear in 16th-century sources.
In Baldiâs poem we find several literary tropes well known since ancient times, such as the simple pleasures, the exaltation of the rustic life, the beauty of agriculture, the idea of locus amoenus as
place of freedom, and the awareness of human mortality.
The full article is available on Patreon.
www.patreon.com/historicalitaliancooking
Image: Terrestrial Paradise by Jacopo Bassano (16th century)
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Lumonia or limonia is one of the few dishes from Arabic cookbooks that survived in medieval Italian cuisine, undergoing a profound transformation and new elaboration thanks to the work of cooks linked to the tradition of the Liber de Coquina. Today we present the variation offered by Anonimo Fiorentino's cookbook, an amazing source of medieval cuisine written in the 14th century, which uses oranges instead of lemons to prepare a delicious sweet-and-sour chicken stew.
Here you find information about this recipe, with the original text and our translation, the method we followed, and the ingredients.
Link to the video https://youtu.be/Biflw6lPcak
Articolo in italiano historicalitaliancooking.home.blog/italiano/ricettâŚ
Lumonia, also spelled limonia, is one of the few dishes of Arabic origin that we find in the cookbooks related to the tradition of the Liber de Coquina; in this case, the manuscript of an anonymous author known as Anonimo Fiorentino, dating back to the 14th century. The Italian and the Arabic preparations are very different, with some characteristics in common: limonia is a stew or a soup (with chicken or other ingredients) made sour with the addition of lemon or other citrus fruits. Contrary to what one might expect, not all the recipes feature lemon (limone in Italian): in the Liber de Coquina, for example, we also find oranges and lumias. In fact, the recipe that we have chosen is a delicious sweet-and-sour chicken stew with oranges and sloes, flavored with sweet spices and sweetened with dates and sugar.
Anonimo Fiorentinoâs lumonia is very complex and involves several steps. We have simplified the cooking and changed the proportions a littleâsince the original recipe is for twelve people and requires six chickens or young caponsâwithout changing the result very much. Since we did not parboil the chickens but cooked them directly with the lard, we prepared the almond milk in the most common way, which is by adding water to the ground almonds, rather than chicken broth as suggested in the recipe, but feel free to try the original preparation as it is written, if you like. We have used lard, but the original recipe calls for cured pork fatback, rendered and strained to remove the small bits of fat.
Sloes grow wild in many places in Europe, but they can be hard to find elsewhere. They have a peculiarly sour, bitter, and aromatic flavor that is not easy to substitute, but you can use prunes instead.
In medieval sources, such as Michele Savonarolaâs treatise on food, we read that there were several varieties of oranges, sweet and sour. Choose those you prefer according to your taste.
As for the choice of spices, the only one mentioned by Anonimo Fiorentino is saffron, the others are sweet and fine spices. Anonimo Veneziano recommends two different blends for sweet spices and fine spices. The former includes cloves, ginger, cinnamon, and Indian bay leaves; in the latter, the author lists pepper, cinnamon, ginger, saffron, and cloves. Use your own personal preference when choosing spices for this recipe.
Ingredients
1 chicken
lard
spices (saffron, white pepper, cinnamon)
100 g unpeeled almonds
4 dates
2 oranges
30 g sloes
sugar
salt
Method
Cut the chicken into pieces. Pit the dates and cut them in half, then cut the oranges into quarters. Soak the saffron in warm water and grind the other spices in the mortar.
Pound the almonds in the mortar and dilute them with a cup of water, then filter the milk.
Stir-fry the chicken with the oranges in lard, then add the spices, two pinches of sugar and salt, the saffron, the almond milk, the dates, and the sloes.
Cook for at least 40 minutes, depending on the size of the chicken. Serve the meat separately from the sauce.
Original text
Se vuoli fare una vivanda che si chiama lumonia, per XII persone, togli sei pollastri grossi, o vuoli sei capponcelli; togli tre once di spetie dolci fini e tre libre di mandorle e III once di çucchero e XXV datteri e XII aranci bene sugosi e meça libra di prugnole. E togli i polli che tu ai e mettigli a lessare con esso. Quando sono cotti, togli una libra di lardo bene strutto e bene colato, e metti a sofrigere i polli interi in questo lardo e delli arancia fae IV parti dellâuno, e metti a sofrigere coâ polli. E quando sono sofritte queste cose, polvereçale colle dette spetie e di çucchero. E togli le mandorle che tu ai bene lavate col guscio e bene macinate e stenperate col brodo deâ capponi magro e bene colato e metti questo latte a bollire in uno vasello per se e ançi che bolla, la prima cosa che tu metti si vi metti quantitĂ delle dette spetie, la seconda, metti le prugnole bene lavate, la terça metti i datteri bene lavati, fatto II parti dellâuno, e la quarta metti il zafferano stenperato. E quando è bene bollita questa vivanda mettivi entro i capponi e li aranci. Questa vivanda vuol esere gialla e agra dâaranci, e spessa e poderosa di spetie e dolce di çucchero. Dae i capponi per tagliere e il savore per iscodella.
Translation
If you want to make a dish called lumonia for twelve people, take six large chickens or six small capons; take three once of sweet and fine spices, three libre of almonds, three once of sugar, twenty-five dates, twelve juicy oranges, and half a libra of sloes. Take the chickens that you have and boil them with these. When they are cooked, take a libra of pork fatback, well melted and drained, and stir-fry the whole chickens in this pork fatback. Cut the oranges into four pieces and stir-fry them with the chickens. When these ingredients are fried, sprinkle them with the said spices and sugar. Take the almonds that you have, well-washed with their peels and well-ground and diluted with lean capon broth passed [through a sieve], and bring this milk to a boil in a pot by itself. Before it boils, add some of the said spices; second, the well-washed sloes; third, the well-washed dates cut in half; and fourth, the diluted saffron. When this sauce is well cooked, add the capons and oranges. This dish must be yellow, sour with oranges, thick, strong with spices, and sweet with sugar. Serve the capons on a flat plate and the sauce in a bowl.
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Polpetta is a typical preparation with meat or fish that dates back to the end of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Today, this term refers to meatballs, but the origin of this dish is very different.
The word polpetta derives from polpa (from Latin pulpa), which means lean meat. In fact, this dish is usually prepared with the lean meat of veal, capon, or also kid and venison. Bartolomeo Scappiâs recipe is even recommended for turkey, with the suggestion of wrapping it (and other dry meats) in caul fat to prevent drying.
Polpette can be also prepared with fish. In Cristoforo Messisbugo and Scappiâs cookbooks, we find recipes with pike, sturgeon, tuna, and other fish.
The basic recipe comes from Maestro Martinoâs Libro de Arte Coquinaria. Essentially, the meat is cut into thin slices, flattened with a knife and seasoned with aromatic herbs and spices, then rolled and roasted on a spit. Renaissance recipes are, essentially, more complex variations of this preparation, as we will see below.
The full article is available on Patreon with translations of recipes from Maestro Martinoâs Libro de Arte Coquinaria, Bartolomeo Scappi's Opera, and Cristoforo Messisbugo's Banchetti.
www.patreon.com/historicalitaliancooking
Image: the wedding of Cana by Michele Damaskinos (16th century)
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Today we prepare medieval lumonia from Anonimo Fiorentino's cookbook, written in the 14th century, a delicious sweet-and-sour chicken stew with oranges, an Italian cook's interpretation of a recipe from the Arabic tradition.
https://youtu.be/Biflw6lPcak
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New video coming tomorrow with an incredible medieval recipe that is perfect for a festive meal. Pictures, historical information, original recipe, and more on our Patreon page.
www.patreon.com/historicalitaliancooking
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English
Our new book "Early Italian Recipes. Meat, Meatballs, and Sausages" is finally out and available in print and e-book editions, in Italian and English. It is the third volume in the series Early Italian Recipes (but each book stands alone and can be read in any order) and is dedicated to meat preparations throughout history, starting from ancient times to reach the end of the Renaissance.
"Starting from the Antiquity, literary, culinary, and dietetic sources have devoted a great deal of space to meat, offering different perspectives depending on their focus: the spectacularity of preparations, the search for harmony between flavors, or even the healthiest combination according to the medicine of the time. Historical cookbooks often combine all these elements in an attempt to balance taste and health through the development of complex culinary techniques aimed at enhancing the properties of each ingredient. The choice of cooking methods, herbs, and spices becomes the result of a dynamic dialogue between culinary art and dietetics.
Not only medicine, but also social and religious factors influence the consumption of meat, without forgetting elements such as farming, trade, and preservation, all of which are decisive aspects in the development of a food culture in which meat plays a central role. Religion, especially in the Middle Ages, marks a distinction between fat days and lean days, when meat is substituted with fish as a form of penance.
This volume, the third in the series Early Italian Recipes, offers a journey in search of the roots of Italian cuisine through the study of original sources from the Antiquity to the end of the Renaissance to rediscover the origins of our extraordinary food tradition."
For a preview and the table of contents, check out these links
English edition: www.amazon.com/dp/B0DN2RPGW4
Edizione italiana: www.amazon.it/dp/B0DN31FVJK
Italiano
Il nostro nuovo libro "Antiche ricette italiane. Carne, polpette e salumi" è finalmente uscito ed è disponibile in edizione cartacea ed ebook, in italiano e in inglese. Si tratta del terzo volume della collana Antiche ricette italiane (ma ogni libro è indipendente e può essere letto in qualsiasi ordine) ed è dedicato alle preparazioni di carne nella storia, partendo dall'antichità fino a raggiungere la fine del rinascimento.
"A partire dallâantichitĂ , le fonti letterarie, culinarie e dietetiche hanno dedicato ampio spazio alla carne, offrendo prospettive diverse a seconda dellâelemento centrale su cui desiderano concentrare lâattenzione: la spettacolaritĂ delle preparazioni, la ricerca dell'armonia tra i sapori, o anche la combinazione piĂš salutare secondo la medicina del tempo. I ricettari storici spesso uniscono questi elementi nel tentativo di bilanciare gusto e salute attraverso lo sviluppo di complesse tecniche culinarie finalizzare a valorizzare le proprietĂ di ogni ingrediente. La scelta dei metodi di cottura, delle erbe e delle spezie nasce pertanto come risultato di un dialogo dinamico tra arte culinaria e dietetica.
Non soltanto la medicina, ma anche fattori sociali e religiosi influenzano il consumo di carne, senza dimenticare allevamento, commercio e conservazione, tutti aspetti decisivi nello sviluppo di una cultura alimentare in cui la carne occupa un ruolo centrale. La religione, in particolare nel medioevo, scandisce una netta separazione tra periodi di grasso e di magro, in cui il pesce, fondamentale in epoca antica, sostituisce la carne come forma di penitenza.
Questo volume, il terzo della collana Antiche Ricette Italiane, propone un viaggio alla ricerca delle radici della cucina italiana dallâantichitĂ alla fine del rinascimento attraverso lo studio delle fonti originali per riscoprire le origini della nostra straordinaria tradizione alimentare."
Qui trovate un'anteprima e l'indice del libro:
Edizione italiana: www.amazon.it/dp/B0DN31FVJK
Edizione inglese: www.amazon.com/dp/B0DN2RPGW4
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A Mediterranean ingredient that we occasionally find in historical recipes is juniper. The most common use is the same as today, being often included in recipes for game meat, especially birds. However, juniper also appears in the preparation of a medicinal wine, in addition to being eaten by itself, as reported by Dioscorides and Costanzo Felici.
There are two types of juniper, a larger variety that is cultivated and another smaller that grows wild, Castore Durante writes in the 16th century.
Juniper grows in the hills and mountains, especially in dry places. It is hot and dry, the plant as well as the berry, and has thinning, digestive, astringent, and tonic effects, in addition to opening the stomach.
The berries of both plants are blue and their leaves resemble those of rosemary, but they are thinner, and juniper wood lasts for hundreds of years without spoiling, and for this reason its coal, covered with ashes, is used by the alchemists. Not only the berries, which Durante describes as large as peas and with a pleasant smell, and the wood are used, but also the resin, from which a varnish is made by mixing it with linseed oil.
The leaves and the berries have a series of medicinal recommendations, among which they act as an antidote to poison, produce good blood, give a good smell to the breath, and help memory.
The full article is available on Patreon with translations from Lodovico Bertaldi's commentary on Ugo Benzi's dietetic book, Costanzo Felici's letter on salads, De Re Coquinaria, Anonimo Toscano's Trattato, Johannes Bockenheim's Registrum Coquine, and Pietro Andrea Mattioli's Discorsi sulla Materia Medica di Dioscoride.
www.patreon.com/historicalitaliancooking
Image: juniper from Pietro Andrea Mattioli's Dioscorsi sulla Materia Medica di Dioscoride (16th century)
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Ofella was one of the favorite dishes of the Emperor Claudius, according to Suetonius, and was very popular between the Antiquity and the early Middle Ages, as we read in Martial's Epigrams, De Re Coquinaria and Vinidarius' Excerpta. Today we present a version of this dish as it would have been served in an ancient tavern, certainly accompanied by bread and wine.
Here you find information about this recipe, with the original text and our translation, the method we followed, and the ingredients.
Link to the video https://youtu.be/Jdy6CpcQFB0
Articolo in italiano historicalitaliancooking.home.blog/italiano/ricettâŚ
Rogo vos, qui potest sine offula vivere?
âI ask you, who could live without offula?â asks the Emperor Claudius rhetorically in a passage of the eponymous Life written by Suetonius, who also reports Claudiusâ habit of frequenting taverns in search of wine (and probably, the aforementioned offula, along with other typical foods such as meatballs and sausages).
Although in other contexts the word offula seems to refer to a completely different type of preparation, such as pieces of polenta in Apuleiusâ Metamorphoses, where they are given to Cerberus to satisfy his hunger, it is also used for slices of meat in Columellaâs De Re Rustica in a recipe for curing any kind of meat.
The most common name used for slices of meat, however, is not offula but ofella, as we read in Martialâs Epigrams (where to his guests are given ofellae so tender that they do not need the knife of a servant), as well as in De Re Coquinaria and Vinidariusâ Excerpta, a short early-medieval cookbook written in the style of the recipes of the ancient Roman source. Since ofellae seem to have been very popular in the Antiquity, we have chosen this preparation to celebrate the release of our new book, Early Italian Recipes. Meat, meatballs, and sausages, which contains 108 recipes selected and translated from primary sources dating from the Antiquity to the end of the Renaissance and accompanied by a comprehensive introduction on the use of meat throughout history across the social classes, the relationship between dietetics and culinary art, animal husbandry, meat preservation, and much more.
Despite the popularity of ofella, there are no specific instructions in the culinary sources about what type of meat to choose. From the cooking methods, however, it seems clear that some recipes are meant for meats such as beef (for example, the reference to the fact that it must be cooked rare) or pork (for example, the specification to leave the rind on), but other recipes can also be prepared with meats that can be cut into slices, such as mutton, lamb, or veal. This is in line with the preparation in Columellaâs book, where the meat to be cured is cut into pieces weighing one libra, which is about 330 grams.
For our ofella, we chose a cheap cut of beef, which was an inexpensive meat in the Antiquity, the type of cut that would probably have been served in a tavern of the time. You can use any cut of beef that is suitable for a short cooking to keep the meat tender, or use the meat you prefer, adjusting the cooking time.
We have chosen a recipe in which the meat is cooked with oenogarum, which is a sauce based on garum and wine that can be prepared in many ways. The simplest preparation is to mix wine and garum, or to use a garum prepared directly with wine, as described by authors such as Gargilius Martialis.
In De Re Coquinaria, however, there are a few recipes for oenogarum that add to these basic ingredients a series of condiments, spices, and aromatic herbs. We chose a recipe from the 1st book that uses only rue as an aromatic herb, but others add thyme and savory to the other ingredients. To prepare the sauce, we recommend mixing equal amounts of garum and wine (wine is taken for granted in the recipe, as often happens in this source), for example two tablespoons each, one tablespoon of olive oil, and a little honey. The spices should also be added in moderation, for example a pinch each, remembering that lovage and pepper make a very spicy combination.
A perfect pairing for this ofella is bread. We recommend lixula Sabina, kyboi, or even panis hordaceus, if you want to prepare a cheap meal that would be served in an inexpensive tavern, accompanied by a vegetable side dish like wild peas with mustard or rutabaga stew and, of course, wine.
Ingredients
beef
spices (black pepper, coriander seeds, lovage)
rue
red wine
olive oil
honey
garum
Method
Grind the spices in the mortar, then add the minced rue, two tablespoons each of wine and garum, one tablespoon of olive oil, and a little honey. Mix the sauce. Heat the oil in a pan and cook the meat until rare. Add the sauce, bring it to a boil, and serve.
Original text
In sartagine abundanti oenogaro. Piper asparges et inferes.
Piper, ligusticum, coriandrum, rutam, liquamen, mel et oleum modice.
Translation
Cook [the ofellae] in a pan with plenty of oenogarum. Sprinkle with pepper and serve.
Pepper, lovage, coriander, rue, garum, honey, and a little oil.
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In addition to polenta, bread, maza, and ptisane, whose preparation we have studied in a previous article, barley appears in a number of historical recipes, from the Antiquity to the Renaissance. Today we are going to explore some of these preparations, sometimes recommended as an alternative to other cereals, such as wheat, farro, or rice.
In De Re Coquinaria, we find a couple of recipes for tisana, which in this case refers to the husked barley, and another that uses grains of barley for the preparation of petaso, which is shoulder ham.
We recently translated one of the tisana recipes, called tisana barrica, in an article on mallow in historical cooking: the preparation requires chickpeas, lentils, and peas, cooked with broken barley, adding a number of herbs (including dill and leeks, mentioned in Galenâs preparation), then fennel seeds, oregano, silphium, and lovage. The only condiment is garum.
The second recipe uses an unknown ingredient, called coloefium, which someone suggests may be some kind of meatballs. This opinion is supported by the mention in an epigram by Martial, where someone eats sixteen coloephia, but we have no other elements to establish what exactly this preparation could be. If we opt for the interpretation of coloefia as meatballs, we can use a recipe for isicia to complete the preparation.
The full article about barley in historical cuisine is available on Patreon with translations from De Re Coquinaria, Tractatus de Modo Condiendi Omnia Cibaria et Potus, manuscript 211 from the Wellcome Library, Bartolomeo Scappi's Opera, and Cristoforo Messisbugo's Banchetti et compositione di vivande.
www.patreon.com/historicalitaliancooking
Image: harvest by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (16th century)
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To celebrate the release of our new book, "Early Italian Recipes. Meat, meatballs, and sausages," today we prepare ancient Roman ofella from the 1st and 7th books of De Re Coquinaria, an amazing steak very easy to prepare that was very popular in the Antiquity.
https://youtu.be/Jdy6CpcQFB0
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Italian cooking throughout the centuries, starting from the Ancient Roman period, crossing the Middle Ages and Renaissance.