Fame, glory, and reputation, so important for Renaissance families, was earned of course on the battlefield or in the political arena. But families also secured reputation by throwing great parties.
Arranged marriages were a special time for celebrating the alliance of two families, but they were also highly scripted events that displayed the wealth and culture of a family (and, therefore, their power). With a spectacular banquet a Renaissance ‘pater familias’ could both impress his neighbors (and in-laws) and reward his followers.
The dinner hosted in 1487 by Giovanni II Bentivoglio in Bologna in celebration of his son’s marriage to Lucrezia d’Este began at 8pm and lasted until 3am and included, among many other dishes, stewed venison, re-formed into its own skin so as to appear alive, a dressed peacock for each guest, and two castles made of sugar, one which was packed with live birds that, when loosed, careened across the dining room, the other packed with live rabbits which were released to scattered among the guests feet. All was served with copious amounts of both sweet and spiced wines..
Below is the Menu for the banquet celebrating the marriage of the Marquis Gian Giacomo Trivulzio of Milan with Beatrice d’Avalos of Aragon, which took place in Milan in 1488. (You may find it interesting, if non too savory, to know that Beatrice was Giacomo’s aunt.) Giacomo commanded Milanese troops in both the Battle of Agnadello (1509) and the Battle of Marignano (1515), two of the more significant French victories in the Italian Wars.
Notice the total absence of pasta.
- Rosewater-scented water for the hands.
- Pastries of pine-nuts and sugar.
- Cakes made with almonds and sugar, similar to marzipan.
- Asparagus (to the amazement of the guests, since it was enormous and out of season).
- Tiny sausages and meatballs.
- Roast grey partridge and sauce.
- Whole calves’ heads, gilded and silvered.
- Capons and pigeons, accompanied by sausages, hams and wild boar
- A selection of delicate “potages”.
- Whole roast sheep, with a sour cherry sauce.
- A variety of roast birds—turtledoves, partridges, pheasants, quail, figpeckers—accompanied by olives as a condiment.
- Chickens with sugar and rosewater.
- Whole roast suckling pig, with an accompanying “brouet”.
- Roast peacock, with various accompaniments.
- A sweetened, sage-flavored custard.
- Quinces cooked with sugar, cinnamon, pinenuts, and artichokes.
- Various preserves, made with sugar and honey.
- Ten different “torte,” and an abundance of candied spices.
In the 15th century, two important gastronomic works were published: the first is the Libro de arte coquinaria, a technical guide to cooking by Masetro Martino of Como, chef to the Patriarchate of Aquileia in Rome; and the second is De honesta voluptate et valetudine, by Bartolomeo Platina, who transformed the culinary information presented by Maestro Martino into a real doctrine. Probably composed around 1450 and conserved, in its original form, in the Library of Congress in Washington D.C., Maestro Martino’s cookbook is the most complete and systematic of the works that came before. The book received considerable praise also from Martino’s contemporaries, to the point of being frequently plagiarized. An almost identical text was published and printed in Venice in 1516 by “Maestro Giovanni de Rosselli francese” with the title Opera nova chiamata Epulario (Venice, 1517). This text continued to be reprinted until it reached its seventeenth edition during the middle of the 18th century and only recently has it be “substituted” with the original.
Even Bartolomeo Sacchi (1421-1481) from Piadena, known as Platina, who was a major player in Italian humanism, greatly admired the work of Maestro Martino, referring to him as the best chef of his time. Platina even used Martino’s book as the technical base of this treatise, De honesta voluptate et valetudine, published for the first time in Rome in 1474 in Latin. It was the first printed cookbook to circulate throughout Italy. It was later published in Italian in Venice, where most of Europe’s books were published during the 15th century, and then spread across Europe in French, German and English translations that quickly followed. From the gastronomic point of view, the two treatises record the presence of sweets and sugar in Italian cuisine. Sugar was considered the “new spice” of the 14th century and was used in combination with or in place of traditional spices.
The trade in cook books reveals a much broader historical trend in play by the late 15th century: an information revolution that was disseminating culture across Western Europe. An increasingly literate public (at least among the upper bourgeoisie and nobility) could, for the first time, via the book, share ideas about the pleasures of everyday living.
And of course each family developed its own traditions:
The Po Valley and the amazing Bologna, ‘The Fat One’ (this is a seriously good video about much more than food):
and Montefeltro’s Urbino and more:
And of course – Rome, or near enough:
European History 