I didn't finish it today, but I'm sorry for the change tomorrow morning.

———— Messisbugo's favorite meat

Christophoro Messisbugo, author of The Feast: A Combination of Good Food and Pomp (1592-1594), lists his favorite meats, probably at the top of the list: "bulls, cows, calves, wild or domestic boars, stags, deer, roe deer, lambs, baby goats, suckling pigs, hares, rabbits, dormice, peacocks, wild or domestic pheasants." Quail, thrush, sandpiper, bunting, warbler, quail, turtle dove, duckling, crane, goose, dove, heron, snipe, wild or domesticated duck, plover and other poultry. Plump and fleshy steers and similar hens, domestic pigeons and spotted-tailed forest pigeons. ”

In Ferrara, Ercole I was the first duke to allow the masses to visit his court banquets. Cristoforo de Messisbugo was the organizer of the feasts that planned Ercole I, or scalco, deacon. Messisbugo was a high-ranking court official who remained in office after Ercole's death in 1534. Messisbugo's book Banchetti (composizionidivivendeeapparecchio) was published in 1549 after his death. The second part of the book is a recipe for the daily diet of the court, as well as a description of the molds that could be used to make puff pastries in the shape of a palace, an eagle and an irise, as well as details of the fourteen banquets and dinners organized by Messisbugo. The first chapter of the book provides an overview of the various utensils needed to host Ferrara's legendary feasts: from hall settings and table decorations, to music and entertainment, to a lengthy list of all the must-haves. Like a similar event created by Leonardo da Vinci for the court of Sfxcha, the meal was only one part of the feast, which I will elaborate on later.

Deep-fried Elderberry Flowers pie

This recipe comes from Cristofloro Messisbugo, the "Scalco" of the court of Ferrara de Este during the Renaissance, or the organizer of the banquet.

Mash four ounces of flour, three pieces of fresh ricotta cheese (or a pound of soft cheese) made that day, one and a half pounds of ground cheese, three ounces of salted cheese, and half an egg-sized amount of yeast. Add six cracked eggs, a glass of milk and three ounces of rose dew to the mixture. Stir to combine. If it is too thick, dilute it with an appropriate amount of milk. Add three ounces of raisins at this point. If you're making this dish in the summer, you can also add an ounce of elderflower while mashing all the ingredients in a mortar. Then you can spoon the pie of any shape you like and fry it in a pan. You can also use butter or three pounds of lard to fry the pie. Once fried and served, sprinkle with three ounces of powdered sugar and serve.

"As a great Scarco," wrote the gastronomic historian Roy Strong, "Messisbugo was a man of vast knowledge, a keen perspective, a high level of artistic taste, and a passion for music." In some ways, Messisbugo is a theatrical genius, but his organizational skills are even more prominent. Indeed, a good Skalco must have the organizational skills to manage a large number of craftsmen and actors, the creative mind of a show producer, and the practical experience of managing financial resources.

In the tradition of the great culinary works of Martino and Platino, among others, the Renaissance was followed by Bartolomeo Scappi, one of the most influential (and slightly controversial) chefs of the Renaissance. Because the names are so similar, the two Bartolomeo are often confused. In fact, quite a few of the sources I have consulted have this identity confusion error. Bartolomeo Sgapi was the chef of Pope Pius IV and Pope Pius V, but little is known about his life, even the date of his birth and death. All we know is that in April 1536, seventeen years after the death of Leonardo da Vinci, Bishop Cardinal Lorenzo Campeggio, who worked for him, orchestrated a banquet in honor of Charles V. Later, in 1567, he also planned and organized a banquet to commemorate the first anniversary of the reign of King Vius V.

Sgarpi is best known for his book Opera (Operadell?artedecucinare, A Collection of Culinary Arts). The publication of this book is a groundbreaking historical record, detailing more than forty years of secret culinary history at one of Europe's most illustrious courts. There are six chapters in the book, containing more than 1,000 recipes. The first is a classical dialogue between a culinary master and his apprentice, covering tasks such as cooking, the organization of meals, the types of kitchen utensils, and the quarantine and preservation methods of various foods. The remaining five are informative and rich in recipes about livestock, game, poultry, fish, vegetables and eggs, just like Platina. He then presents readers with 113 seasonal menus for everything from simple dinners to lavish feasts. In addition, there are several articles about the work of pastry chefs and the food suitable for patients.

Renaissance cooks, such as Skapi, believed that many ailments could be treated with different kinds of food. In this way, the tradition of using spices as food and medicine continued. Sometimes, chefs are like doctors and have a responsibility to keep people healthy. Schippi also likened himself to a "prudent and wise architect" who "built on the solid foundations of his precise designs, on which he created practical and extraordinary buildings for the world".

"Lombard flavor" vanilla Italian wonton

This recipe from Bartolomeo Schipi is the epitome of Renaissance Milanese pasta. "Tortelli" (Italian wonton) is also known as "Tortelloni", and this method of cooking is now also popular in Lombardy and the Emilia Romagna region.

Chop the beet and spinach leaves, rinse several times in water, squeeze the water dry and set aside. The leaves are simmered in fresh butter and a little vanilla such as parsley or thyme is added. Remove from heat and pour the mixture into a clay or tinned copper pot and add equal parts Parmesan cheese (ground) and fresh Recotta cheese, seasoned with pepper, cinnamon bark, cloves, saffron, raisins and cracked raw eggs. Once well mixed, add some breadcrumbs if it's too thin and a little butter if it's too dry. To make a piece of dough at this point, see Chapter 1 for how to make it. The mixture is made into a large or small Italian wonton by placing it on top of the dough, folding it in half and squeezing both sides at the same time, cooked in a rich broth, plated and sprinkled with cheese, sugar and cinnamon bark.

The most famous part of the Opera book is the kitchen illustrations, which are used in the vast majority of books on Renaissance cooking published today. Sgarpi was in charge of the Vatican's (pope's) kitchen at the time, and it was he who first described the modern kitchen of the Renaissance. Opera contains copperplate details of kitchen facilities, tools, and gadgets, such as a pasta cutter and a top-of-the-line barbecue.

The illustrations also show the procedure for preparing meals during the election of the Pope – the process of preparing meals requires a high degree of security to prevent the possibility of poisoning the diet. Each cardinal's food is prepared by his personal chef. Sgarpi was involved in this procedure and described it in detail in his book. "The food was served in sumptuous containers adorned with the coat of arms of each cardinal," Riley wrote, "and after being examined by a team of four bishops, a rotating revolving door was passed into the secret chamber where the Cardinal Conference was located. All wines are clearly marked and served in glass containers. No whole pie or chicken is allowed, and all food has to be cut up. The purpose of this was to rule out the possibility of dangerous knives in the dining room, where the bishops might have the opportunity to collude with the attendants to criticize the cardinal.

To illustrate the culinary arts of Italy more clearly, Schippi divided Italy into three parts: Lombardy (the Po Valley), the Grand Duchy and Rome, and the Kingdom (southern Italy and Sicily). He focuses on three cities: Milan, Rome and Naples, but at the same time, he also clearly shows his knowledge of the local cuisine of Venice, Florence and Genoa. He was the first writer to provide a comparative analysis of Italy's regional cuisines, and only one of the hundreds of recipes in his book is called all'italiana (Italian): the Pieces of Grayling in Broth. As a Lombard, many of Sgarpi's dishes reflect Lombard traditions, such as Lombard-style soups and Lombard-style rice, as well as stuffed meats, pies and noodles that appear several times in the book.

Venetian-inspired dishes are usually fish-based, such as SmallStuffed Squidin Fish Broth, but there are also well-known dishes like Braised LoinofBeef and Cinnamon Cakes. In Rome, Sgarpi's second home, there is a wide variety of dishes, such as minced meat, pasta assortment, Roman-style cabbage and pan-fried fish cakes. Savoury dishes from Naples include PuffPastryFilledwithSquabMeat and CabbageSoupwithMortadella. It is clear that Scarppi understood that the emergence of regional cuisines in Italy was a city-based phenomenon, and decided that the cities he had chosen were representative of the overall culinary style of the region in question, as they were the trading centers and food distribution centers of the region.

Unlike the writings of Martino and Platina, Bartolomeo Sgarpi's menu shows us the process of making salads and fruits into beautiful dishes that make them more suitable for lavish banquets. A variety of salads and fruits are served in each of the banquet courses, which can soothe the rich taste of fish dishes cooked with plenty of spices and renew the appetite of the diners.

Sgarpi was so knowledgeable that he even wrote about the making of marinades and Arabic puff pastries. In the book, he recorded two hundred recipes for making waffles, shortbread, and a cake called pizze. Exotic dishes documented in Opera also include Moorish couscous and allatedesca. In the post-Renaissance era, none of the gastronomic writers of Squapi made any attempt to summarize the major gastronomic cities of the Italian peninsula and create a "national" culinary encyclopedia based on them. Instead, they chose to focus on a specific region. For example, Lucernadecorteggiani (The Oil Lamps of the Courtiers), published in Naples in 1643, by Giovan Battista Crisci. The focus of the book is on the gastronomy of southern Italy, especially cheese and fruit, and it lists a list of gastronomic products from Naples to Calabria to Sicily, which has not been done before. The focus of the book is no longer on the big towns, but on the rural areas and those small villages. In fact, the only city mentioned by Cristch when talking about the cuisine of the South is Naples, the capital of the Kingdom of Naples, and the bulk of the list is the record of the origin of fruits such as peaches from Amalfi, apples from Moiano, wild cherries from Somma, salted ricottas from Capua, and fine mozzarella from Aversa.

Sgarpi's Opera and the recipes of the regions in it sparked a trend of cookbooks dedicated to regional cuisine. Not only that, but the authors of these cookbooks have also delved deeper into the flavors that are unique to each region. Another writer with a passion for southern Italian cuisine is Antonio Latini. In Naples between 1692 and 1694, Latini published a two-volume series of Loscalcoallamoderna (The Art of the Planning and Organization of a Feast) (Loscalcoallamoderna, overol?artedibendisporreiconviti). The first volume, "A Brief Facts of Naples", deals with "the precious fruits and other precious products produced in different regions of the Kingdom of Naples", covering the twelve provinces of the Kingdom. In addition to this, Latini also documented the food specialties of the small villages in the provinces, such as Poggioreale in Campania, which supplies Naples with "fine fruits", Chiai for its famous peas, cardoon, artichokes, turnips and horseradish, Ischia and Capri for "a large number of pheasants" and " Veal of the finest" and Urtra (Principato Ultra) for "brainsausages".

In Italy during the Renaissance and beyond, among the many wonderful cookbooks and other gastronomic literature, the books of Christie and Latini are among the best. The last comprehensive and systematic collection of recipes to emerge during this period came from Latini. In the period from the late 17th century to the middle of the 18th century, there was a gap in culinary literature. "This silence," explains the gastronomic historians Alberto Capatti and Massimo Montanari, "embodies the feelings of cultural inferiority that Italians experienced when French cuisine began to sweep across Europe, and the impact of this sentiment has proven to be profound." Instead, it is "a return to local traditions and oral transmission, both of which are the main tools for the continuation of national cultural traditions."