I couldn't finish writing it today, and I will replace it tomorrow morning, and I will still give away a thousand words.

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"In Florence, Leonardo da Vinci was at the center of the most refined humanism. The historian Allessandro Vezzosi wrote: "It was a wonderful world of literary and artistic flourishing, an extraordinary melting pot where the revival of interest in classicism, together with new influences from the north, greatly enriched the Tuscan tradition." "At the time of da Vinci's lifetime, Florence had a population of about 150,000 and was capable of rivaling other European powers, such as France, England, the Holy Roman Empire, and Milan. At that time, there was no unified Italy or a common Italian language, and in what is now Italy there were a number of city-states, including the Republic of Florence, the Duchy of Milan, the Republic of Venice, the Republic of Siena (Therepublia) and the Republic of Genoa (Therepublioa). Each city-state has its own dialect, although this has gradually changed since the 14th century, when Dante Dantealighieri wrote the Divine Comedy in both Tuscan and Sicilian. These city-states have been playing out a series of alliances, borders, and diplomatic relations for centuries. Ultimately, as a consequence, trade and finance have flourished, and on the negative side, the endless wars between city-states have had numerous devastating consequences.

In the Middle Ages, trade between Italian city-states, as well as between them and other ports in the Mediterranean and the north, declined enormously, and in the early Renaissance, trade picked up as luxury goods needed to reach Italian ports such as Pisa, Genoa, and Venice by sea. This increase in trade has contributed to the influx of cash into the city-states, which in turn has stimulated a banking boom. Florence became the center of the financial industry in its region, and the banks that thrived in Florence opened their own branches in other cities, including those of the powerful Medici family.

There were two other important factors that had a profound impact at the beginning of the Italian Renaissance. In China, the Ming rulers stopped trading with foreign countries, so the money originally used to buy Chinese luxury goods was diverted to the Italian city-states, so that the wealthy and dominant merchant class, as well as the papacy with more pockets than before, had the financial power to finance the creation of a large number of works of art and architecture, and many artists such as Leonardo da Vinci benefited from it.

In 1452, the year da Vinci was born, two historic innovations were witnessed: the invention of the printing press and the publication of Gutenberg's Bible, which greatly contributed to the development of culture. In the decades that followed, as city-state publishing houses sprung up, a large number of affordable classics and other works of all kinds were published. In this way, not only institutions such as libraries, which act as repositories of knowledge, but even individuals like Leonardo da Vinci, who have been researching for a long time, can afford to buy printed books without being deterred by expensive manuscript scrolls.

However, the beginning of the Italian Renaissance did lack an important element: peace. Chaos and instability are the hallmarks of Italian politics. Italy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was like a miniature continent, and the city-states were in fact warring states. Ironically, the great success of the Renaissance intellectual and literary circles took place in a world of violence and war. Milan and Venice, Florence and Pisa, Rome and Florence, Naples and Milan are all at war. Alliances eventually fell apart, and plunder, looting, and battles continued to scarve the city-states. During the Italian Renaissance, the old order of medieval society was broken and a new social form was formed.

The first gastronomic revival in Italy

The first gastronomic revival in Italy

One of the manifestations of the formation of a new social formation is the changing eating habits. The food of the pre-Renaissance Italian city-states consisted mainly of wheat bread, olive oil, fish, eggs, various vegetables, meats such as lamb and lamb, and abundant liquor, as did the diets of southern France, most of Spain, and North Africa. Food historian Roy Strong(r) says of the new changes in the Renaissance as follows: "Basically, the norms inherited from the Middle Ages have been preserved intact, but they have been enlarged, improved, and perfected over the course of nearly a hundred years in the sixteenth century." People are still using those spices, but on a smaller scale. The use of these spices was an important means for people to flaunt their wealth, as they embodied value – for court cooking, that was the soul of it. ”

Italian wines

Italy has always produced high-quality wines, and ordinary red wines are very nutritious. In Italy, the most beautiful women eat with red wine and dip it in a small piece of bread, because they believe that it will make the body fuller (under all conditions, the plump woman is the favorite of the Venetians) and will be more colorful.

—Fynes Morryson, Anitinerary, 1617

Over the centuries, cooking techniques have been constantly reinvented, and our discussion of them is almost exclusively focused on the wealthy, because only the rich are free to choose their food. The choice of the rich can be bread and water, or cake and wine. As for the poor peasants, they certainly do not have the right to such a choice.

In the Middle Ages, it was believed that beef was only suitable for the lower classes, and not at all suitable for the rich to be on the table. During the Renaissance, the status of beef increased because veal (taken from cattle slaughtered as a minor) was favored. The right of the nobles to slaughter calves symbolized their wealth and prestige. On the contrary, some of the ingredients that we detest now were typical of the time: the nose, eyes, cheeks, liver, intestines, head, kidneys, belly, tongue, pancreas, crown, and similar parts of the fish, which explains why the authors of two classic Italian cookbooks of the time referred to the quirky "dishoftroutiines" (salmon sausage meal).

The Italian gastronomic renaissance was also influenced by the Middle East. During the Crusades, Europeans discovered Saracenic cooking in the Arab world, some of which were little known or even unheard of in Western Europe. The gastronomic historian C. Anne Wilson writes: "In the West, it was the aristocracy or the royal family that first introduced dishes inspired by Saracenic cooking." These brand new toppings include sugar, almonds, pistachios, rice, dates, citrus, pomegranates, roses, and spinach. A new technique is the simmering of a thick sauce with crushed almonds – marzipan, a sugar-coated almond batter, has become a common dessert.

In addition, the way food was prepared at that time was also heavily influenced by the ideas of classical writers. The "Four Liquids Theory", which was dominant in medieval medicine, was also used by people in the Renaissance in the form of linking food and medicine. This doctrine can be traced back to the ancient Greek physician Galen, whose basic idea was that all living things have four elements, or four "bodily fluids": blood, yellow bile, mucus, and black bile. These four bodily fluids correspond to air, fire, water, and earth. Therefore, chefs need to balance the four characteristics associated with these four body fluids when cooking: hot, dry, moist and cold. It is believed that it is unhealthy to consume foods that do not take into account the balanced combination of these four body fluids, and there are certain foods that are specifically designed to balance the four fluids in the body. For example, beef is cooked because it is "dry" and "cold", pork is roasted to remove its "moist" qualities, and fish is both "moist" and "cold", so people want to fry it to dry and warm.

"In general," writes the gastronomic historian Jean-Louis Flandrin, "the most 'cold' and 'natural' meats are served with the hottest sauces." Poultry meat occupies the highest place in the food chain, so it is only necessary to add "jance", a sauce made of white wine, apple cider vinegar, ginger and cloves, to cook them. The "four-liquid theory" also applies to the texture of handling food, and many dishes have crushed or minced ingredients, which can make multiple body fluids evenly mixed and easier to digest.

The reason why the "Four Liquids Theory" developed during the Renaissance was due to the fact that the cookbook writers who drew on a lot of past experience contributed to it. These people were also influenced by the imported food trade of the time. Food historian Kenalbala commented: "They have a similar attitude towards food – open, eclectic and very international. ”

Basic food from the Renaissance

Basic food from the Renaissance

Some writers who study Renaissance food believe that Italian food at that time could be divided into three main categories: bread, wine, and all the rest. In fact, this is only an accurate description of the diet of the peasant class, which is not the case in the courts of the principalities, and its composition is much richer and more diverse. The gastronomic historian Alan Grieco points to a little-known fact that at the time, wheat flour was surprisingly expensive compared to meat. Today, meat costs almost fifteen times as much as flour, while in early Renaissance Italy, pork was only twice as expensive as wheat flour and veal was only 2.5 times more expensive. There is also a direct social relation: "The lower the social status, the higher the proportion of income consumed on bread." ”

A similar connection applies to the consumption of alcohol. Louis Stuuff, in his study of the food budget of the Studiumpapal in Provence, from around 1365 found the following percentages:

Wine: 41%

Bread: 32%

Meat: 15.5%

Fish & Eggs: 5.3%

Spices, cooking oils and cheeses: 3.1%

Fruits and vegetables: 3%

Food writer Créd. A. Wright asks: "What do these figures tell us? The answer, no doubt, is that in Provence wine is food, and the much-vaunted 'Mediterranean vegetables' almost do not exist." "However, the low percentage of vegetables here may be due to the fact that most of the vegetables are grown in their own gardens and people don't have to spend money to buy them.

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......

—Francisco Dattini to Serlaomazzei, 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 advise all bakers to 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 omnivorous foods 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 who begged a local farmer for a drink in the province of Emilia. "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 (r) explains: "Nowadays, people carefully select different wines to accompany 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.