Pellegrino Artusi and some thoughts on a national cuisine.

I knew nothing of Pellegrino Artusi until I read Exciting Food for Southern Types* recently published by Penguin as part of their Great Food series. Exciting Food for Southern Types consists of extracts from Artusi's La scienza in cucina e l'arte di mangiare bene (translated as Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well). Apparently what was remarkable about that book when it was first published in 1891, and why it remains an Italian favourite, is that it was the first attempt at a truly Italian cookbook.

Today we have a fairly clear idea of what we understand by Italian cuisine but Italy as a unified country only came in to being in 1861 and in Artusi's day, although unified politically Italy was still coming to terms with cultural unity, an overall national identity and a national language. What he attempted to do in his cookbook was present a practical manual, meant to appeal to the newly affluent middle-calls housewife, bringing together recipes from all over the country and written in a language which every one could understand. As such La scienza in cucina e l'arte di mangiare bene is seen as a revolutionary contribution to Italian culture and is credited with creating a language which allowed people in Italy to talk about food.

According to John Dickie** what culinary language there was in Italy in 1891 was split between French, the language of high-class cookbooks, of banquets and menus, and regional dialects, the languages actually spoken around the dinner table. In his discussion of 'Cacciucco' (fish stew) Artusi explains that this word 'is understood perhaps only in Tuscany and on the shores of the Mediterranean' elsewhere it is known as 'brodetto' whereas in Florence 'brodetto' means 'a soup with bread and broth, bound with beaten eggs and lemon juice. In Italy the confusion between these and other names from province to province is such that it is almost a second Tower of Babel.' He goes on to lament

After the unification of Italy, it seemed logical to me that we should think about unifying the spoken language, and yet few can be bothered with such an undertaking and many are outright hostile to it, perhaps because of false pride and the ingrained habit that Italians have of speaking their own regional dialect.

Artusi chose to use the formal, written language of public affairs, the Tuscan dialect and to make this accessible to his readers he included a glossary.

For his recipes Artusi drew on his own knowledge of food, derived from his travels and restaurant experiences and (in subsequent editions) on those provided by his readers, to record and codify what had until then been an almost entirely oral tradition of domestic cookery. The Italy of 1891 was only tenuously united, the various regions divided by history, climate and economics, the biggest divide being simply between north and south. The poor, hungry south with their olive oil, dry pasta and tomatoes, and the affluent, cultured north with their butter, polenta, rice and boiled meats. Born in Forlimpopoli, in Romagna, and living much of his life in Florence, Tuscany, it is hardly surprising that Artusi has something of a bias towards the food he knew best and subsequently the cooking of Emilia-Romagna and Tuscany came to represent the ideal of Italian cuisine.

In an oft quoted article Arjun Appadurai ('How to Make a National Cuisine: Cookbooks in Contemporary India', Comparative Studies of Society and History, 30 (1), pp. 3-24 (1988)) makes the case for cookbooks allowing women from different groups to represent themselves to one another and communicate by exploring different tastes. Artusi's middle class audience were no doubt keen to learn more about their new country and what better way for the different regions to represent themselves to one another than through food. Over time recipe books play their part in breaking down geographic, cultural and class barriers to create some sort of homogeneous 'national' cuisine. It follows that in a culture where the traditional cuisine is handed down orally and by demonstration, and particularly in circumstances where there are tremendous regional differences there can be no national cuisine until someone writes it down. Now different parts of the one country can represent themselves to each other but further to that a codified, national cuisine allows the nation to present itself to the wider world. It seems to me that what has emerged in Italy is similar to the Indian situation Appadurai describes 'a national cuisine in which regional cuisines play an important role, and the national cuisine does not seek to hide its regional or ethnic roots.' The problem then becomes that the established notion of a national cuisine often involves regional stereotyping on the one hand and the inflation of a specific tradition to exemplify the whole on the other. The national cuisine becomes a simplification and it becomes what the outside world sees as the authentic/traditional cuisine. So Italian food outside Italy becomes nothing like Italian food served in Italy. The national cuisine which is exported to other countries atrophies because it is standardised. Even at their best cookbooks can only describe what ought to be done or what used to be done but can't quite get at the essence of what cooks are actually doing in the kitchen. Pizza and pasta for example are now ubiquitous but the pizza we get from the take away at the end of the street is nothing like an Italian pizza. The idea of pizza has been subsumed and perverted to suit Australian culinary concerns. When Pellegrino Artusi asked for 'Pasta margherita' he expected to get a sponge cake.
Even in his day Artusi observed that the 'other', the foreigner may then have expectations of 'traditional' food which adversely influences the cuisine so that what is served in Italy as traditional fare becomes a caricature.

Italian cuisine can rival the French, and in some respects actually surpasses it. However, due to the hordes of invading foreigners … our cuisine is slowly beginning to lose its special character in the swirl of wandering nations. These unfortunate changes in our diet have already begun to appear, particularly in the larger cities and in those areas heavily frequented by foreigners. I recently became convinced of this on a trip to Pompeii, where my travelling companion and I were preceded into a restaurant by a group of German tourists, ...and were served in the same fashion as they were. When the proprietor later came up and courteously asked how we liked our dinners, I took the liberty of commenting on the nauseating slop of seasonings we had just been served. He replied, 'Our cooking has to please these foreigners, since this is how we make our living'. Perhaps this is the same reason Bolognese cuisine has begun to change,...and no longer deserves the reputation it once had.

But I digress. Artusi was not a chef. In 1891 he was seventy one, a retired silk merchant with literary pretensions and a passion for food. When he had no success finding someone to publish his recipes he printed the first 1000 copies of Science in the Kitchen at his own expense, with a dedication to his two white cats. According to Dickie he initially managed the whole operation himself, selling the book from his home and personally signing every copy. His original volume contained 475 recipes which had grown to 790 by the fourteenth edition published in 1911, the year of his death. Since then it has never been out of print.

Much of the original appeal of Science in the Kitchen, and what makes it appealing to the reader today, is it's style and tone. Artusi was well educated, well read, well fed and well travelled. He was a noted raconteur and a celebrated host and his text flows much like a lively conversation at a dinner party. He addresses the reader as a friend and confidante in a witty and chatty tone interspersing recipes with anecdotes, historical asides and advice such as 'the best sauce you can offer your guests is a happy expression on your face and heartfelt hospitality'. The title Exciting Food for Southern Types comes from his observations on the English taste for unseasoned vegetables, 'we southern types need our food to be a little more exciting.'

I don't know how representative Exciting Food for Southern Types is of the whole of Artusi's work but he certainly sounds as though he would have been a charming dinner guest. Who could resist his introduction to 'Salsa di magro per condire le paste asciutte' (Meatless sauce for pasta), 'this sauce is like a young woman whose face is not particularly striking or attractive at first glance, but whose delicate and discreet features you might indeed find attractive upon closer observation' or his address to 'Dear Mr. Meat Loaf',

I know that you are modest and humble, because, given your background, you feel inferior to many others. But take heart and do not doubt that with a few words in your favor you shall find someone who wants to taste you and who might even reward you with a smile

Artusi never married. In his will Dickie says 'he left the bulk of his estate to a home for Forlimpopoli's least fortunate inhabitants' and the future royalties from his book to his servants Marietta Sabatini and Francesco Ruffili who had tested all his recipes and without whom there may not have been a book at all.

*All Artusi quotes are from Exciting Food for Southern Types, Penguin Books, London, 2011. These extracts are taken from the translation published in the USA in 1997 which I think must be a translation of the final 1911 edition. Clues in the text suggest that it is certainly later than 1900. I reviewed Exciting Food for Southern Types  for The Gastronomer's Bookshelf  here.

**John Dickie, Delizia! The Epic History of the Italians and their Food, Hodder & Stoughton, London, 2007