Introduction
Born in 1944, Alberto Capatti is one of the best known and most important historians of Italian food and gastronomy. The first rector of the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Pollenzo, he has edited the monthly 'La Gola' and Slow Food magazine, serves on the scientific committee of CasArtusi, and is a member of the steering committee of the Institut Européen d'Histoire de l'Alimentation.
RGLife had the honor and pleasure of collecting his exclusive testimony on the evergreen legacy of Pellegrino Artusi's work and cuisine.
Alberto Capatti and the legacy of Pellegrino Artusi.
Let us look back and since 2020 is the bicentennial of Pellegrino Artusi let us take it as a model of continuity, totally discontinuous. I walk into the kitchen in Piazza d'Azeglio 25, in the cottage, on the second floor, and observe that the oven and stove receive heat from wood and coal. For the cold, there is a room next door, the pantry. I take a closer look at the pots and pans, all copper, and look for some small device. Nothing, or rather, a reader of 'The Science in the Kitchen' had pointed out to him that instead of the bezel he could use the meat grinder, and he had bought it and was using it. Except for ancient tools, such as the schiacciapassatelli, well known to the people of Romagna, we find nothing, in his kitchen. How is it possible to always use such a manual?
Two revolutions we can point out, since 1911, the last reprint in his lifetime: one energetic, and home gas, provided by the municipality already existed in Florence in the early twentieth century, but Artusi did not make use of it. Cold, as well as heat became a priority in the preservation and processing of ingredients. The second revolution is technological, and the meat grinder was a very modest indicator of this, followed by all the tools for slicing and blending, making up for the old use of a pestle and mortar, or a lunette, or crescent moon as you like.
How is it possible, then, for me to read and translate into action today, a recipe by Artusi? Seemingly two worlds oppose each other, past and present, me with my freezer and him with a meticulous and seasonal calculation of temperatures and with preserves designed to alter the flavor of ingredients. Yet the energy and technological revolution, with electricity that lit up kitchens, powered all kinds of machines, took place, respecting every Artusi recipe, even if the pastry is rolled out by machine and not with a rolling pin.
Has the kitchen been transformed? Of course, I have frozen foods ready and a microwave oven, but there is nothing to prevent me from buying the right ingredients and the minestrone, instead of a traditional Findus, I prepare it by deciding which ones are in season, therefore right, always in the alternative between fresh or dried or frozen beans or peas, how to cut them, thinly strip the Savoy cabbage and spinach - said 'Science in the Kitchen' - and finally the broth, for which Artusi had already allowed to use, for lack of better, Liebig. The relationship with all future contrivances, was already provided for in the recipe for minestrone in this sentence: 'After three trials, always perfecting it, here is how I would have composed it to my taste; very much at liberty to modify it in your own way according to the taste of each country and the vegetables found there.
Thus, as Findus states, technology has captured tradition and made it a value, in a continuity that is uncontroversial, or rather revolutionized from two points of view. Beyond all considerations of marketing and advertising, today the home kitchen is the corner, the reference point of a large industrial kitchen that works with its own recipes and gives the buyer semi-finished or finished dishes (to be reheated). Second, technology takes on all the values of a single home, houses and taverns and the best example is again given by a Florentine steak.
Fernanda Gosetti, in 1990, gave rules of execution in a cookbook, everything with the microwave, published by Mondadori. 10 minutes for cooking and 5 minutes to rest, with the oven off, plus 8 minutes to heat the pan for browning. It makes one want to go leaf through 'Il Ghiottone errante' by Paolo Monelli (Treves, 1935) there where he recounts the Florentine tavern of Troja who presents "a kind of red suitcase," the rib of a local veal, cooks it, serves it, accompanying it with the flask of wine. With the microwave is it the same? I dare say it is more curious, according precisely to Fernanda Gosetti, sister of Anna, editor of the monthly magazine 'La cucina italiana'. So we have to admit that technology has sucked up all the tradition, except, of course, not the veal but the innkeeper, the Troja, with his shaved wrestling head, taciturn and surly.
To those who today repeat it in the most diverse meanings, always citing the Latin tradere and the cultural legacy, we will give for answer a freezer and a microwave, for the former and the latter, inviting them to be considered traditional machines, at least in the present, always looking forward to a future in which we will see more of the same. The refrigerator is over a hundred and twenty years old, and the micro oven at least forty.
Alberto Capatti