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.” 110
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.” 111
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 doeswonders 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. 112
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
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.” 111
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 doeswonders 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. 112
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
Similar Books
