Italian Identity in the Kitchen, Or, Food and the Nation by Massimo Montanari

Author:Massimo Montanari [Montanari, Massimo]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2013-07-22T16:00:00+00:00

1 Yes, but here Manzoni and food are likened as unifiers.

2 The term commonly used for soup.

3 A primo, consisting of soup or a pasta dish, generically minestre, is preceded by an antipasto (literally, “before the meal”), or appetizer. The main dish, inexplicably called “entrée” in English, is listed on menus as secondo.

4 The Betrothed, the novel by Alessandro Manzoni (1785–1863) read by generations of Italians well into the twentieth century.

The NUMBER of ITALIANS INCREASES

Artusi’s insistence on the social usefulness of a “first course” was not gratuitous. At the end of the nineteenth century Italy was a poor country with a poorly balanced diet. Consumption of meat was barely 16 kilos per capita per year, compared with more than 40 in Germany, 55 in the United States, and 58 in Great Britain. The effects of the progressive “simplification” of the diet in terms of carbohydrates, which had became more prevalent in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, continued to be felt.

The dramatic result of the situation was the enormous emigration, already discussed. However, already in the first decade of the twentieth century, the period of industrial take-off, the alimentary trend improved on the whole. Attempts to evaluate it in terms of calories (despite the uncertain methodology of calculation and the doubts that arose among scientists about the validity of such indices) suggest the reassuring level of more than 2500 calories per capita, which was maintained until World War II, when many Italians were plunged into malnutrition. The tragedy of 1915–1918, on the other hand, left no negative traces in this regard. On the contrary, in certain respects “it provided an occasion for millions of peasants at the front to savor, albeit in the dramatic setting of the trenches, meat, pasta, bread made of wheat, wine, coffee.” These foods entered the collective patrimony because they were part of the daily diet. To them were added the traditional foods of home cooking, sent to the soldiers by their families, which were exchanged among them and made available to everyone. By forcing thousands of young men, who had until then lived in an isolated world, to live side by side in trenches or barracks, the war gave many their first exposure to different cultural and alimentary realities. In this way, an “Italian” alimentary model could be shared and spread to new social strata.

The confrontation among culinary traditions extended all the way to prisoner-of-war camps. At Celle, in the vicinity of Hanover, between the end of 1917 and the beginning of 1918, almost three thousand soldiers captured during the rout at Caporetto were held prisoner. A Genoese second lieutenant, Giuseppe Chioni, to alleviate the stress and discomfort of his captivity, had the idea of collecting recipes that he and his companions remembered, and of putting them into a manual he entitled Arte culinaria [Culinary art], once he returned home. Like Scienza in cucina, it is a collective work that grew out of the “reciprocal exchange of memories, regrets, and desires,” Chioni wrote in his introduction,

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