Medieval Tastes: Food, Cooking, and the Table

284 Pages·2015·3.68 MB·English

by  Massimo Montanari

Medieval Tastes
ARTS AND TRADITIONS OF THE TABLE
ARTS AND TRADITIONS OF THE TABLE: PERSPECTIVES ON CULINARY HISTORY
Albert Sonnenfeld, Series Editor
For the list of titles in this series, see Series List.
Medieval Tastes
Food, Cooking, and the Table
Massimo Montanari
TRANSLATED BY BETH ARCHER BROMBERT
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS NEW YORK
Columbia University Press Publishers Since 1893
New York Chichester, West Sussex cup.columbia.edu
Copyright © 2012 Gius, Laterza & Figli. All rights reserved. Published by arrangement with Marco
Vigevani Agenzia Letteraria Translation copyright © 2015 Columbia University Press All rights
reserved E-ISBN 978-0-231-53908-1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Montanari, Massimo, 1949- [Gusti del
Medioevo. English] Medieval Tastes : food, cooking, and the table / Massimo Montanari;
translated by Beth Archer Brombert.
pages cm Translation of: Gusti del Medioevo. Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-231-16786-4 (cloth : alk. paper)—978-0-231-53908-1 (ebook) 1. Food–Europe–
History–To 1500.
2. Food habits–Europe–History–To 1500.
3. Cooking, Medieval.
I. Title.
TX351.M6613 2015
394.1'20940902–dc23
2014023679
A Columbia University Press E-book.
CUP would be pleased to hear about your reading experience with this e-book at cup-
[email protected].
COVER ART: Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, France/Bridgeman Images COVER DESIGN: Milenda Nan
Ok Lee References to Internet Web sites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the
author nor Columbia University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed
since the manuscript was prepared.
Contents
Introduction Invitation to the Voyage
CHAPTER I Medieval Near, Medieval Far
CHAPTER II Medieval Cookbooks
CHAPTER III The Grammar of Food
CHAPTER IV The Times of Food
CHAPTER V The Aroma of Civilization: Bread
CHAPTER VI Hunger for Meat
CHAPTER VII The Ambiguous Position of Fish
CHAPTER VIII From Milk to Cheeses
CHAPTER IX Condiment/Fundament: The Battle of Oil, Lard, and Butter
CHAPTER X The Bread Tree
CHAPTER XI The Flavor of Water
CHAPTER XII The Civilization of Wine
CHAPTER XIII Rich Food, Poor Food
CHAPTER XIV Monastic Cooking
CHAPTER XV The Pilgrim’s Food
CHAPTER XVI The Table as a Representation of the World
CHAPTER XVII The Fork and the Hands
CHAPTER XVIII The Taste of Knowledge
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Introduction
Invitation to the Voyage
WHEN IT COMES to food and cooking, the Middle Ages often take the
starring role. This is not only because medievalists, like all historians,
devote much attention nowadays to this long neglected subject of history
but also because marketing strategies for food production and catering
were born in the Middle Ages. In truth, Middle Ages in most cases is no
more than a generic term used to evoke an equally generic image. But
that term and that image are evidently considered useful for selling and
making more appealing commercial offerings. The term medieval
attributes an added value to products and services. History is brought
into play as the locus of “birth” and “origin.”
This is a concern typical of our era: to authenticate the present by
recalling the past, to legitimize what we are making now by saying that it
used to be made long ago. The expression “long ago,” historically
meaningless, indicates something of a more genuine nature than does “a
time past”; “long ago” is an indistinct, mythical time when things are
presumed to have come into being. Then they came down to us, after a
“historical” journey, which is, in reality, without history because nothing
happens then. The “tradition” invoked is not the fruit of events,
experiences, encounters, changes, inventions, and compromises—
history, in a word—but is static and immobile. It is the “idol of origins,”
about which Marc Bloch has written, which leads us “to explain the most
recent by means of the most remote.”
If we look at European labels—DOP, IGP, STG—proclaiming the
denomination of protected origins, protected geographic origins, and
guaranteed traditional specialties, we are amazed by the vagueness of
historical documentation, which, after all, is the requisite foundation for
authenticating and registering a product. References, when there are
any, are second-and thirdhand. History is reduced to anecdotal snippets
of little interest other than fulfilling a legislative requirement to provide the
pedigree of the product, placing it in a context of consolidated “tradition.”
That “tradition” may even be extremely recent. At present, it takes only
twenty-five years for a product to acquire recognition as typical or
traditional. With regard to image, however, ancient looks better than
modern. To claim “medieval” or, even better, “Roman” origin is a way of
enhancing the nobility of the product. The older the history and the more
remote the “origin,” the more the product will seem worthy of being
safeguarded.
The basic assumption is to think of “continuity” as a seal of guarantee.
That things are subject to continuous modifications, that the flavors of
foods and the tastes of people change with time, that the social and
cultural contexts determine constantly changing forms of usage, that the
same objects do not always correspond to the same names—all this,
which is obvious to the historian, is of no interest to the general public.
They would rather believe that “tradition” all by itself is a guarantee of
quality, and believing that “it has always been made this way,” generation
after generation, is enough for total assurance.
The presumed continuity between present and past is based on a
double mechanism of reduction: leading the present back to the past by
projecting onto the Middle Ages the image of what we are today, of what
we produce and consume today; and leading the past to the present,