The Science of Cookery and the Art of Eating Well E-Book

Donald Phillip Verene

• Herausgeber: ibidem
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Serie: Studies in Medical Philosophy
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 176

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

The Science of Cookery and the Art of Eating Well is a philosophical and historical reflection on food and dining in human culture. It includes discussions of the nature of the first meals as found in Greek literature and the philosophy of history of Giambattista Vico, the Roman cookbook of Apicius (the first known cookbook), the cookbook of Artusi (the seminal cookbook of Italian cooking), Brillat-Savarin’s Physiology of Taste, Plutarch’s “Dinner of the Seven Wise Men,” and Athenaeus’ work on the Learned Banqueters (the Deipnosophists). These discussions are joined with contemporary observations on the importance of the traditions of home cooking and dining with friends as essential to the promotion of human well-being.

Leseprobe

ibidem Press, Stuttgart

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Preface

Chapter 1 Introduction: The Science of Cookery and the Art of Eating Well

Chapter 2 The Dinner of the Seven Wise Men

Chapter 3 The Learned Banqueters

Chapter 4 The Cookbooks: Apicius and Artusi

Notes

Selected Bibliography

Index

Studies in Medical Philosophy

Copyright

In memory of

Eleanor Grant Verene

whose recipes first formed my culinary world

A tavola non s’invecchia.

At table one does not grow old.

Preface

In the second chapter of Ecclesiastes, the wisdom of Solomon is: “There is nothing better for mortals than to eat and drink, and find enjoyment in their toil.” Two things distinctive to human culture are the development of language and the cooking of food. These two abilities come together in the art of dining. The meal unites food and conversation. The pleasures of the table and of table-talk go back as far as the poems of Homer.

The science of cookery and the art of eating well are not medicine, but they are allied with medicine from its earliest conception. Galen, in discussing the importance of nutrition in the Method of Medicine, says: “In short, the chief point of nourishment is to let it be easily digested and nutritious” (7.6). Medicine is directly concerned with the prevention and healing of disease. In its broader sense, it is concerned with the well-being of human beings. In this concern, cooking and eating well play a role. Proper nutrition is essential to the health of the body and the conviviality of the meal and the institution of dining is of great value for promoting the tranquility of the psyche.

The theme of this book is the importance of home cooking and how it depends upon and maintains tradition. The art of eating well is enhanced by a knowledge of ingredients and an awareness of the history of dining. Such knowledge gives context to the daily event of the meal, an event that is present in every culture and as old as culture itself. The art of dining, like the art of living of which it is a part, is a way to order the self and its place in the world.

Chapter 1 is a general view of cooking and dining, as begun by the ancient Greeks and Romans, and progressing to the famous text of Brillat-Savarin, The Physiology of Taste. Chapter 2 is an interpretation of Plutarch’s Dinner of the Seven Wise Men, his imaginative account of the gathering at Delphi of the Seven Sages of Greece, at a dinner hosted by Periander, ruler of Corinth, whose conversation encompasses the nature of good government and the nature of the human soul. Chapter 3 is a condensation of the fifteen books of Athenaeus’s treatise on the Learned Banqueters or Deipnosophists, a work which cites many other works, and which is itself frequently cited but rarely read. Chapter 4 discusses the two most famous cookbooks in Western culture: the Roman work of Apicius and the Florentine book of Artusi. Added to these are comments on some contemporary cookbooks, notably those of Giuliano Bugialli.

The theme of this book derives from my experience with and attachment to Italian cooking, acquired while living for extended periods in Florence over the past several decades. To shop at the Mercato Centrale at San Lorenzo is to confront a world of ingredients necessary to the Florentine table. When combined with the friendly conversations with its vendors, concerning the preparation of their wares, such shopping is a culinary education that no cookbook can supply. In Florentine cooking, as in Italian cooking generally, the quality of the ingredients, including their freshness, is the master key to the art of eating well.

It is only human to desire to eat well. But I find a more specific reason in the words of the great poet of the American language, author of the epic poem The People, Yes, Carl Sandburg, who was born and raised in the midwestern town of Galesburg, Illinois—as was I. Sandburg was asked what he wanted out of life. He replied, “Three things, maybe four: to be out of jail, to eat regular, to get what I write printed. And a little love at home and a little outside.” The fourth was his way of expressing his wish to receive some recognition for his work, but he knew what every writer knows—that the recognition may not come. That’s why it’s important to eat regular.

Once again, I thank Molly Black Verene for her necessary and generous assistance in the preparation of the text.

Chapter 1

Introduction:The Science of Cookery and the Art of Eating Well

Not only does cooking mark the

transition from nature to culture,

but through it and by means of it,

the human state can be defined with

all its attributes, even those that,

like mortality, might seem to be the

most unquestionably natural.

Claude Lévi-Strauss

The Raw and the Cooked

The First Meals

In the Protagoras, Plato relates the story of Prometheus and the acquisition of fire by humans (320d–22d).1 There was a time when the gods existed but mortal beings did not. At the proper moment in the genesis of things, the gods molded the various forms of these beings inside the earth. They did this by blending earth and fire and various compounds. When the gods were ready to bring these beings into the world they put Prometheus and his brother Epimetheus in charge of assigning to each type its particular powers and abilities.

Epimetheus begged Prometheus to grant him the privilege of distributing these powers and abilities to the various species, and the agreement was made that, once the distribution was complete, Prometheus could inspect it. Thus allowed, Epimetheus supplied some with strength; those that were weaker he made quick. To some he assigned wings and to others the means to burrow underground. For protection against the weather he gave some thick pelts and hides. He shod some with hooves and gave others claws. He also provided them with various forms of nourishment. Each species was equipped with what was needed for its survival.

When Epimetheus (whose name means “he who learns only from the event, the heedless”) was finished, Prometheus (whose name means “he who knows in advance, who provides”), saw that all the available powers and abilities had been used up on the nonreasoning animals. The human race had been left entirely unequipped—naked, unshod, and unarmed—and it was already the day that all the animals, including the humans, were to be released from inside the earth into the light.

Prometheus, in order to provide the humans with some means of survival, stole fire for them from Hephaestus, the divine smith and master of the forge on Lemmos; from Athena he stole wisdom in the practical arts that was necessary for their use of fire. But he did not provide political wisdom, necessary for living together in society, for that was kept by Zeus. Humans were the only animals to command the divine power of fire and its use as a means for their existence. Also, they alone among the animals worshipped the gods.

Because human beings did not possess the art of politics, Zeus feared they might scatter and be destroyed, unable to form cities. He sent Hermes to distribute equally to all humans the virtue of justice, joined with the proper sense of shame. In Plato’s account, Zeus thus looks kindly on Prometheus’s act. But in another version, given by Cicero in the Tusculan Disputations (2.10), Zeus is greatly displeased by Prometheus’s theft of this possession of the gods. Cicero quotes from a lost play of Aeschylus in which Zeus (Jove) chains Prometheus to the Caucasus and causes an eagle (Jove’s bird) to swoop down and gnaw his liver. His liver grows back daily, only to be continually attacked for centuries, until Jove repeals the punishment.

Whether Zeus acts kindly toward Prometheus’s theft for humanity or is furiously offended, the fact remains that human animals, unlike any of the others, possess the divine power of fire, sharing ownership of this element with the gods. Possession of fire allows the human race to do four things, in addition to using it for warmth and protection. First, as claimed by Giambattista Vico, the philosopher of history, humans could set fire to the great forests that cover the earth after the universal flood, in order to accomplish the “heavy task of bringing their lands under cultivation and sowing them with grain, which roasted among the thorns and briers, they had perhaps discovered to be useful for human nourishment.”2 In so doing, these giganti, these proto-farmers, accomplish a labor of Hercules and discover the connection of fire to food.

Second, in imitation of Hephaestus (Vulcan), the ancient humans are able to harness the power of nature itself to transform matter from one state to another. As Mircea Eliade, the mythographer and historian of religion puts it: “It is with fire that he controls the passage of matter from one state to another. The first potter who, with the aid of live embers, was successful in hardening those shapes which he had given to his clay, must have felt the intoxication of the demiurge: he had discovered a transmuting agent.”3 Fire puts the cosmic power of nature into human hands.

From the potter comes the smith with the power, by means of forge and crucible, to smelt metals and make tools. Although tool behavior is not exclusive to human animals, the smith is able to make tools that can transform every aspect of human existence, including the cooking and eating of food. From the smith, later, comes the alchemist, who develops elaborate recipes to accomplish “the opus alchymicum which haunted the philosophic imagination for more than two thousand years: the idea of the transmutation of man and the Cosmos by means of the Philosopher’s Stone.”4 Through the powers of the potter, smith, and alchemist humans become “masters of fire.” In the cook there is always the hint of the alchemist, who knows how to make the whole become more than the parts.

Third, the use of fire in cookery is parallel to its presence in ancient agriculture and fabrication. The most primitive form of cookery is the direct application of fire to food. Vico says: “It is true that Homer describes his heroes as always eating roast meats. This is the simplest and easiest way of cooking them, since it requires nothing but live coals.”5 In the Republic, Plato says Homer knew that this way of cooking was the best way to feed soldiers: “for it’s easier nearly everywhere to use fire alone than to carry pots and pans” (404c). Vico notes that the banquets of the ancient heroes were always sacrificial in nature. We find this sense of the banquet in the actions of Agamemnon in the Iliad (3.264–324). Vico says: “Agamemnon himself, accordingly, kills the two lambs whose sacrifice consecrates the terms of the war with Priam. Such was the magnificence at that time of an idea we would now associate with a butcher!”6 The practice of pouring a libation to the gods when dining and drinking is preservation of the sense of the sacrifice. Athenaeus says: “It was not unusual, therefore, for ancient cooks to be familiar with sacrificial procedure; at any rate, they were in charge of both wedding feasts and sacrifices” (14.659d).

Fourth, the second major use of fire in cookery is the preparation of food in boiling water. The crucible in which ore is transformed into metal is transferred to the vessel of the cooking pot in which the raw is transformed into the cooked. Vico claims: “Only after this stage [roasting] must have come boiled meats, for in addition to fire they require water, a kettle, and along with it a tripod.”7 In the Aeneid Virgil has Aeneas and his men prepare meat by both roasting and boiling (1.208–22). Vico says: “Last of all came seasoned foods, which besides the things already mentioned, called also for condiments.”8

Condiments include the side-dishes of vegetables that accompany a meat or fish dish, as well as bread, cheese, honey, and fruit. In the Odyssey, when Odysseus, returned to Ithaca, sits down with Penelope, he speaks of the prosperity that surrounds them, the result of the leadership of: “some blameless king, who, with the fear of the gods in his heart, is lord over many valiant men, upholding justice; and the black earth bears wheat and barley, and the trees are laden with fruit, the flocks bring forth young unceasingly, and the sea yields fish, all from his good leading; and the people prosper under him” (19.108–14). One is reminded of the frescoes by Ambrogio Lorenzetti, in the Palazzo Pubblico at Siena, contrasting the conditions of life under buon and mal governo (good and bad government). Under bad government the countryside is bare and barren—the trees have no fruit and no one is cultivating the crops. Prosperity is to live under justice and to have the fields, flocks, and streams full of food, the maintenance of which depends upon a well-ordered society.

The cook is an heir of the divine Promethean gift. By commanding the power of this gift, cooking makes a transition from nature to culture. Humans are the only animals who cook and hence the only animals who eat rather than feed. In creating his city in the Republic, the Platonic Socrates says the “first and greatest need is to provide food to sustain life” (369d). The human as the master of fire, in the figure of the cook, generates the institution of the kitchen—or at least the hearth. A kitchen without fire is simply a pantry, a storehouse of foodstuffs. With fire, it is the offspring of the divine precinct.

The Idea of Courses

The acquisition of fire, and the accomplishment of cookery it makes possible, allows humans, like heroes and gods, to engage in banquets. As quoted above, the most com­pre­hen­sive ancient text on banquets are the fifteen books of the Deipnosophistaí of the Graeco-Egyptian writer Athenaeus of Naucratis (fl. c. A.D. 200).9 The Deipnosophists, literally, are culinary experts (from deipnon, “meal” plus sophistēs, “wise men”), those who can apply their wisdom as a source for table talk—“learned banqueters.” The banquet described extends over several days, during which a great variety of foodstuffs are consumed and discussed in detail and at length. Mixed with these discussions and descriptions of types of food are discourses on major ideas of humanistic concern.

Those present include four philosophers, four physicians, three musicians (one of whom is specifically a citharode and another is also a poet and jurist), eight grammarians, and a lexicographer. They number more than double the number of Muses. Their views are presented in a symposiac framework, but as integrated with the courses eaten at a banquet. The tradition of the Greek symposium (from sympinein, “to drink together”) was a drinking party that followed the evening meal, as represented by the masterpiece of Plato’s dialogue, the Symposium. The work of Athenaeus is the subject of Chapter 3.

Athenaeus’s account of the banquet demonstrates the natural interconnection between dining and discourse. We see this connection also in Plutarch’s Septem Sapientium Convivium (Dinner of the Seven Wise Men)—the seven sages of Greece who meet at Delphi to celebrate the dedication of the famous inscriptions on the temple of Apollo—gnothi seauton and mēden agan (“know thyself” and “nothing overmuch,” as well as others that have been lost). At the dinner Cleodorus, answering a question of Solon, says that the dining table is “an altar of the gods of friendship and hospitality” (Moralia 158c). This dinner is the subject of Chapter 2.

Dining is distinctive to the human animal, as has been demonstrated. The meal is the purpose of cookery, and the meal requires table manners and conviviality. Dining is a life-ordering experience, with its roots in the ancient sense of the sacrificial—the connection of the human to the gods. The gods conduct banquets and the humans do so in imitation of the gods. One is reminded of “A Fable About Man” by the Spanish Humanist, Juan Luis Vives, that relates a banquet held by Jupiter to celebrate Juno’s birthday, at which man, as part of the entertainment, impersonates first plants, then animals, then humans, then the gods, and finally Jupiter himself. The gods are so impressed with this talented playing of these roles, this unique ability of the human being to be an archmime, that they ask man to join them in their seats at the banquet.10 Dining is in essence a connection to the divine.

Discourse is also distinctive to the human animal. Although non-human animals communicate and manifest some linguistic and proto-linguistic ability, only human animals fully engage in the symbolic act in which meanings build upon themselves to form worlds of ideas and ideals, in which language is even used to have words reflect upon themselves. Language is the key to self-knowledge. We may consider, with Socrates in the Phaedrus, whether we are complex creatures, puffed up with pride, like Typhon or are a simpler, gentler being, blessed with a more quiet nature (230a).

Dining is an occasion to exercise the human ability of the word. Humans share the act of nourishment with non-human animals but they do not share with them the art of dining or of putting thought into words. Athenaeus, citing Hesiod, says: “It is nice for people at a meal and a substantial banquet to enjoy conversation, after they have had enough to eat” (2.40f). In the dinner the senses and the intellect are brought together, as they are in the human psyche itself.

The host may follow the ancient precept, often attributed to Marcus Terentius Varro, that at dinner the number of guests should be greater than that of the Graces and less than that of the Muses. A formal dinner-party or a dinner for a special occasion or holiday may be larger. A banquet has no set limits on the number of guests. A dinner has a set number of courses, served in a particular order, but a banquet may expand the number of courses and the number of dishes served in unique and multiple ways. The principle of the banquet is variety and abundance. A dinner is a meal taken on a daily basis; a banquet marks a special occasion. To have a meal in the sense of dining is to eat in a certain way, that is to say, by courses, and, if not eaten alone, is to be accompanied by conversation. Dinner conversation often includes the food itself as subject, for the content of the meal is not to be ignored or simply consumed with indifference.

In his lecture “Delle cene sontuose de’ romani” (“On the Sumptuous Dinners of the Romans”), delivered before the Accademia Palatina in Naples in 1699, Vico offers a description of the structure of the Roman meal.11 He states that he believes the subject of Roman dining can be completely described and explained in terms of four headings: time, place, means, and order of dining. He draws on some of the Latin authors essential to modern accounts of the subject, such as Lucullus, Seneca, Pliny, and Petronius.12

As to time, Roman dinners began at the Roman ninth hour (nona, very roughly, three o’clock p.m.), the beginning of the evening. The Romans ate little during the day, taking a full-course, formal meal only in the evening. The place of dining was the cenaculum or upper room of a house. Vico says that the art of dining required not only the means to supply the kitchen—a pantry, a vivarium (to keep animals alive for food), and a piscina (to keep live fish)—but also a librarium (a collection of books). He claims such dinners provided not only food for the body but also food for thought (il corpo coi mangiari, l’animo con le cognizioni). The librarium was nearby to supply books that could be referred to in order to resolve a dispute that might arrive in conversation.

In relation to means, Vico comments on the elaborate nature of the glassware, utensils, and serving pieces employed and on the various images displayed on them that represent types of food. He describes the triclinia, dining couches, arranged on three sides of the low dining table, mensa, and on the order of placement of host and guests on each couch. Each couch held three reclining diners. The length of the dining room, triclinium, was to be twice its breadth. Vico also describes a second type of dining arrangement—the single, semicircular couch, stibadium, that held all the diners around a half-moon shaped mensa.

Vico mentions that the diners would have gone to the baths, and from them to dinner, dressed in appropriate togas. In fact, the taking of baths, along with cooking, mark the beginning of civilization. Sacred ablutions precede sacrifices, a custom that Vico holds is common to all nations. The symbolism of water and fire, aqua and igni, is fundamental to the Roman ceremony of marriage. He mentions that the dinner would include entertainment, especially music and singing. He also mentions the custom of each guest, on leaving, putting tidbits (apophoreta