I didn't finish it today, and I will change it tomorrow morning.

In addition, because I didn't read this chapter a while ago, I missed a lot of bugs and typos, so I will ask the editor to open the permission and modify it one by one.

Also, some adults raised about the use of revolvers, steam engines, etc., it's not a bug, it's not that I'm mistaken, this has a historical basis, and I'll post it in the replacement chapter tomorrow, and I'll understand it after reading it.

I've checked all of this seriously.

——————

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 Moryson, An Itinerary, 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 "DishofTrout Intestines".

The Italian gastronomic renaissance was also influenced by the Middle East. During the Crusades, Europeans discovered Saracencuisine 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 newly introduced 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 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.

"Broadly speaking," said the gastronomic historian Jean-Louis Flandrin. Louis Flandrin wrote, "The most 'cold' and 'natural' meats need to be served with the hottest sauces. "Poultry meat occupies the most prestigious 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 Ken Albala 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 Allen Grieco points out 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 Stouff, in his study of the food budget of the Studium Papal 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 Cleaved? A. Wright () asked: "What do these figures tell us? The answer is, undoubtedly, that in Provence wine is food, and that the much-vaunted 'Mediterranean vegetables' are almost non-existent." "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......

—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.

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.