I couldn't finish it today, and I'm sorry for changing it tomorrow morning.

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The joy of wine

The only time I've seen you rejoice...... When we tasted that wine, do you remember? You forgot all your sorrows...... That night, we laughed and we talked......

—Francesco Datini to Ser Lao Mazzei, circa 1400

Although the upper class did not spend much of their budget on bread, the royal kitchens of the court still baked fragrant bread, just as the peasants baked their own bread. When it comes to toasting, Platina has the following suggestions:

I recommend that all bakers bake bread like this: the flour is made of wheat semolina, finely ground, sifted through a high-quality sieve, placed in a bread pan with warm water, and then sprinkled with salt like the Ferrari people in Italy. Add an appropriate amount of yeast and place it in any moist place you can find to allow it to ferment. This is easy to make, but the only thing to keep in mind is that the amount of yeast must be moderate. Too much and the bread will have a sour taste, too little and the finished bread will not be fluffy, and it will be difficult to digest and not good for your health. Bread needs to be baked in the oven carefully, preferably for a longer period of time, and never over-baked in one day, as bread made with fresh flour is the most nutritious.

The budget figures for bread and alcohol mentioned above do not apply to "bread pairings" (other omnivores that diversify the diet). Low-ranking shepherds spend only 14 percent of their total food spending, while the overseers who manage them spend close to 40 percent. "In short, bread is an increasingly prominent part of the diet of the lower classes of society," Grieco writes, "and on the contrary, this proportion decreases as the social hierarchy rises." ”

Unlike beer, wine has always been regarded as the drink of the nobility. Drinking water has the lowest status. There is a story about a traveler in the province of Emilia begging for water from a local farmer. "My sir," replied the good farmer, "water, even the fence will be eroded by it, but if you want wine, I will be glad to give you some." ”

Since the Italian Renaissance, people have begun to give wine more meaning than just a drink to accompany bread. Roy Strong explains: "Nowadays, people carefully select different wines to pair with a variety of dishes – low-alcohol white wines with appetizers, red wines with roasts, and strong wines with desserts. "Of course, different classes of people choose different quality wines. The peasants had to make do with cheap wine, which was made from pressed grapes and the virgin juice was used to make a high-end wine for the upper classes. "People choose wines based on their social status, occupation, age and physique. Odile Redon, a historian of gastronomy, writes. White and dry red wines are more suitable for the upper class because they have a more "delicate" and "soft" taste, while red wine is suitable for manual workers because they are nutritious and "just right" inexpensive. At that time, wine was often diluted with water to increase the volume and reduce the alcohol content.

A versatile vine

If not in all of Italy, but in Tuscany, the incomparable vines are the most valuable and useful products in the region. The vine can be used for the following purposes: its fruit can be juiced to make wine, its branches can be tied into small bundles for firewood, its branches and leaves can be used to feed cattle, and the pits of grapes can be used to feed pigeons.

—Sir Robert Dallington, 1605

Leonardo da Vinci was very much in favor of diluted wine, and he wrote in his notes: "Drinking should be diluted [with water], and only a small sip per sip, and not on an empty stomach between meals." In this way, da Vinci was a mild-mannered man and not an alcoholic.

The spice trade in Italy

The spice trade in Italy

Jean-Louis Flanderin Louis Flandrin observes: "The importance of spices reached its peak in the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in the long history of Europe, and it was also during that period that spices played a more prominent role in cooking than in other periods, because of their variety, frequency and abundance. "The Republic of Venice is a major city-state involved in the spice trade. In the 11th century, Venetian-made ships arrived in the Holy Land of Palestine with Crusaders on board, and when they returned, they were loaded with large quantities of pepper and other spices purchased in Alexandria. Among them, a large Venetian ship returning from Alexandria alone could bring back 200,000 daqat worth of spices, and the total value of the Venetian spice trade is estimated to be in the millions of dacat a year.

As a result, Venice was a well-deserved center of spice trade, and pepper became the king of spices as Europe imported more than six and a half million pounds of pepper each year. Although pepper is not the only spice involved in the trade, it accounts for more than half of all imported spices. No other spice is worth more than one-tenth the value of pepper. Henry Hobson explains: "At that time, the most common method of preserving food in Europe was salting, and there was no spice other than pepper that could go well with meat cured with a lot of salt." Salt and pepper were carnivorous tools in the fight against hunger, especially during seafaring or famine years when crops failed. ”

The perfect sauce with a strong flavor

To make a tangy sauce, you'll need cloves, cinnamon bark, cardamom, and hazelnuts heated over hot charcoal (the dried hazelnuts can be peeled by rubbing), as well as a little crusted bread and sugar. Mix the above ingredients and lightly mash them with vinegar to create the perfect sauce for all grilled meat dishes.

—From Libropercuoco, circa 1500

Historian Wolfgang Schivelbusch notes: "Spices are not only used in cooking, but also as gifts as jewels or as treasures to collect." Schfeierbusch further points out that the rich taste of spices, exotic origins and unusually high prices have led people to associate them with paradise. "Pepper, cinnamon and nutmeg symbolize the identity of the ruling class, they show the world the power of the ruler, and then the ruler is enveloped in the belly. When entertaining guests, the more pepper is sprinkled on the plate, the more respect the guests will have for the host of the banquet. ”

People often think that in the past, a lot of pepper and other spicy spices were used in cooking to disguise spoiled meat, but this is not the case. For modern diners, the abundance of spicy spices used in dishes at that time was simply intolerable, but the chefs did not do it to mask the rancid smell of spoiled meat, as is widely suspected. The only indication of this extraordinary amount of spice is that wealthy families have sufficient reserves of meat, game and fish. In addition, the rulers of the time had a certain awareness of hygiene, and they forbade butchers to sell rotten meat, and stipulated that fish and meat that were not sold within a day of being caught or slaughtered must be salted. Several historians have also pointed out that the meat products consumed at that time were not too fresh.

The Renaissance Man Who Loved Meat (Part I)

The Renaissance Man Who Loved Meat (Part I)

Renaissance Italians consumed a lot of meat every day, much more than modern Americans did, and this amount was enough to trigger protein shock for Italians, who now rely on pasta. For example, at a "family dinner" in Mantua in 1532, eight gentlemen were served, and in addition to salads, breads, fruits, and desserts, eighteen plates of pheasant salad, five steers, ninety sausages, meatballs, delicious liver dishes, five ducks, three tongues, five prosciutto and mortadella pies, fifteen quails, fifteen Milanese sausages, and a stag And these are just the first courses.

- Berengariodelle Cinqueterre of the Cinqueterre

According to Renaissance cookbooks, chefs at that time struggled to buy all kinds of spices that were commercially available. Two cookbooks in England, known as the Harleian Manuscripts (circa 1430) and theHarleian Ms. 4016 (circa 1450), are known as the Harleian Manuscripts (circa 1450), suggesting that chefs should not hesitate to add plenty of spices to 90 percent of their fish and meat dishes. The most frequently mentioned spices in these two books are ginger, black pepper, nutmeg bark, cloves, cinnamon, and ginger (galingal). "The medieval ruling class was fond of dishes with strong flavours," commented Wolfgang Schfeelbusch, "and the higher the social status, the greater the use of spices." Martino and Platina, members of the aristocratic class, also emphasized the use of a large number of spices in their recipes. This is definitely a form of conspicuous consumption by the upper class, as it is obvious from their recipes that the use of spices is closely related to wealth, status, and prestige. It's true that spices are used aggressively in the kitchen, but it's never accidental. The amount of spices used is carefully arranged under the hierarchy and is placed alongside the grade of the food.

Underneath the fact that spices were used in large quantities in the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance was another reason – spices had medicinal properties. Each of the kitchen spices was first introduced as a medicine before being used in cooking. From the thirteenth century to the beginning of the seventeenth century, almost all physicians recommended adding a lot of spices to the cooking of meats so that people could digest them better. During this period, it was widely believed that digestion was also a form of cooking, which took place in the stomach and was done with the body's "animal heat". Because of this, spices, which are considered "hot", are just right to help with digestion. Pepper is judged to be "hot" and "dry" in the fourth grade, with cloves, galangal, cardamom in the third grade, cinnamon bark, cumin, long tomato and nutmeg in the second grade, and so on.

Interestingly, although spices aid digestion, people who are sick are forbidden to come into contact with them. Patients with fever should not use spices as hot and dry spices can worsen the condition. The patient's food is generally cooked with sugar added in place of spices, as sugar is the "mildest" condiment.

Of course, the basic reason for the use of spices in cooking in any era is that they can add flavor to dishes and make light food tasteful, but spices can also be sterilized – the above two theories are inseparable. Jennifer Billing and Paul? W. Sherman () in their book The Bactericidal Function of Spices: Why People Love Spicy Food. MicrobialFunctionsofSpices:WhySomeLikeItHot) suggests that what is documented in the recipe is a never-ending competition for food between us and the parasites. Everything we do in cooking: washing, drying, cooking, salting, seasoning, is to avoid contamination of food by these parasites, after all, most of the spices used for seasoning have a bactericidal effect. The authors conclude: "We believe that the most fundamental reason for using spices in cooking is to destroy the bacteria and fungi produced by food. ”

In Leonardo da Vinci's time, spices were more popular than ever, but they didn't last long. One problem that has always constrained the Venetian spice trade is the tortuous route of transporting spices such as pepper – from India to Egypt and Syria, via the Isthmus of Suez to Alexandria, where they are loaded and transported to Venice, and then expensive to transport across the Alps to Central and Northern Europe. When the Venetians made exorbitant profits in this trade, merchants from other countries began to enter the spice trade. Clearly, the way to eliminate trade intermediaries was to open a direct sea route from India to Europe. So when the route to India was discovered, the Portuguese, and later the Dutch, took the spice business from the Venetians. And this fact has led to a significant drop in the price of spices, and more people can afford to buy them. In this way, spices are no longer as mysterious and exotic as they used to be, and they become commonplace. In addition, dietitians in the middle and late Renaissance advised more careful use of spices, and as a result, spices, which were all the rage, gradually declined in Europe.

There were many spices available to Renaissance cooks, but there were three types of pepper: black pepper (Pipernigrum), long pepper (Piperlongum) and long tomato (Pipercubeba). The chef's cupboard may also contain cinnamon, melegueta, cumin, nutmeg, mace, saffron and cloves. Chefs usually use powdered spices, add them to vegetable juices or sauces, filter them and re-pour them over dishes. This method ensures that the spices do not lose their original flavor during cooking with the food, so as to preserve the rich flavor of the spices to the greatest extent.

Other condiments and herbs used during the Renaissance were parsley, fennel, marjoram, mint, sage, rosemary, oregano, thyme, dill, basil, garlic, shallot, and onion. Although the last three were considered the least "noble" of vegetables, they were also found on the tables of the nobility.