Food history in Italy

Intriguing stories of lavish banquets, free bread, starving nuns, rise of macaroni and whorish love apples ...

Food history in Italy dates back to ancient civilization of Greece, which significantly affected the Roman cuisines. Rather than painting the entire picture of Roman cuisine, I thought I would focus on some significant moments (and their folklores) in the Italian food history.

Food history in Italy – Distribution of Free Bread

Roman poet, Juvenal, once complained that Romans were interested in nothing, but bread and circuses. He was not the only one who made complaints about Romans’ obsession with bread. In fact, it was not the bread that they were so keen on, but the annona – the distribution of free bread – that obsessed them.

Food history in Italy shows us that annona began as an official attempt to relieve poverty, but soon grew into a large public subsidy that impacted economic and social structure of the state. By 123 BC, when the cost of living grew so large, Gaius Gracchus let all citizens to buy their grain from public granaries at below market prices.

By 71 BC, free grain was being distributed to 40,000 adult males in the city of Rome. In subsequent centuries, the number went up to 320,000. This was unprecedented in the food history in Italy. In the third century, Severus Alexander decreed that the people should have ready-made bread instead of grain.

Aurelian, another Roman emperor, increased the daily ration to almost one and a half pounds, adding pork fat and wine to the list. When he proposed this to become regular feature of annona, an official exclaimed,

“Before we know where we are, we will be giving them chickens and geese as well!”

In the dying day of the Roman empire, the state of economy became so serious that free food distribution ceased, although the state continued to pay basic provisions at unrealistic low prices.

Needless to say, handing out so much free food meant that the grain had to come from some place. No worries as the empire was in a highly ‘expansionist’ mode occupying regions including Egypt, Sicily, North Africa, Carthage. Food history in Italy is greatly tied to Roman military excursions in foreign lands.

When Rome defeated Carthage in the second century BC, it tore down the city and with quite dramatic tones, ploughed its very foundations into the soil. However, it didn’t dare destroy any of the wheat fields.

Transporting grain became a well-developed operation in ancient Rome. Special docks and lighthouses were built for the grain ships. When the ships reached the port, wheat was unloaded and checked for quality and quantity. A sample of the shipment was sent in sealed bags to insure against adulteration and fraud. Finally, the rest was sent up the rivers to Rome where it was delivered to the millers.

Food history in Italy - The Roman banquet

Food history in Italy shows us that the Roman banquet was the ultimate glutton fest. Some of these recipes and foods may seem a bit bizarre and disgusting to us, but they do show the life of riches in the might empire. The most detailed historical depiction of Roman banquet is in a Roman novel, Satyricon, written by Petronius in the late first century.

As noted by banquet served by a noble, Trimalchio, starts by ``a waiter first trimming the guests` toenails. Then a glass of Flalerian wine from a century-old Opimian vintage is served. A servant singing a poem written by the host, brings out a platter of cold cuts: spiced sow udders, roosters combs, winged rabbits, testicles, flamingo tongues, and ostrich brains. Then the dinner begins. Milk-fed snails the size of tennis balls served in a sweet-and-sour sauce gets rolling, followed by amuse-gueule of dormice, eaten while after being dipped in honey and poppy seeds. Fish are killed a table by pouring scalding hot sauce onto them. They`re still moving as you dig in. The fowl course begins with a pastry ``egg`` containing a minuscule bird called beccafio, or fig-pecker, covered in raw yolk and pepper. You eat it in one mouthful, bones and all. Whole roast geese and swans are brought out, but when you bite, surprise! They`re made of pork.... Dessert comes in the form of cakes that descend from the ceiling and squirt saffron-scented juice in your face. For those guests still peckish, there are pickled rabbit fetuses to nibble while Trimalchio stages his own funeral and has his obituary, praising his good taste and generosity, read out loud.``

Indulgences of these types did begin to be questioned by the Roman senate, which banned hundreds of dishes around the first century B.C. Novel approaches were used by the state in this period of food history in Italy to food police its citizens. Guards were posted at markets with orders to seize any banned foods up for sale. At times, clerks recorded the weight of animals at the dinner table to make sure the rich were not exceeding the allotted amount allowed to be served at the table.

Moralists like Cato the Elder required that people dine with their doors open so everyone can see what they were eating. He limited the number of dinner parties per week and punished guests as well as the hosts. His attitude becomes a bit problematic when I learn that he campaigned against the admirable fad of building statues in honour of chefs instead of generals.

Food History in Italy – The spice trade, peppers, and fall of the Roman Empire

Spice trade reached its peak in first century AD when the Roman appetite for the spices became huge. They accounted for forty-four of the eighty six classification of goods imported to the Mediterranean from Asia and east coast of Africa.

Within the food history in Italy, Pepper was the spice par excellence of the Classical time. Indian pepper was so important that it became one of the five `essential luxuries` on which the foreign trade of the empire was based. The others were Chinese silk, African ivory, German amber, and Arabian incense. Of these five, pepper became the most vital because it transformed the food of the everyday life.

Although the rich flaunted with extravagant banquets, it is still clear from historical records that Romans kept connected to their rustic diet. Their simple breakfast included bread layered with olives or raisin and lunch was leftovers of cold meat and eggs. Plain foods like grain-pastes, beans, and breads needed spices. A strong sauce with spices, even in small amounts, can change the quantities of starchy food consumed. This impacted the whole essence of the cuisines.

Added to this transformation was another major event within the food history in Italy. The Roman aristocracy began suffering from lead poisoning, which suggests that city Romans had a need for strong flavours. Among the symptoms of lead poisoning are loss of appetite and a metallic taste in the mouth. It is inferred that the chronic sufferers would need to consume dishes that would stimulate their appetites and kill the taste of the lead.

It was the Arabs, strategically situated in the middle, who monopolized most of the traffic with the East until the first century AD. As the level of market demand for spices grew in Roman Empire, the Arab monopoly on the trade broke. This is because Rome began building ships strong enough to sail from the Red Sea coast of Egypt all the way to India. This was a long and dangerous trip and the spices remained scarce. At one point, pepper reached a price that would be equivalent today to about 250 British pounds or more per Roman pound (12 ounces).

However, by the middle of the first century AD, Roman mariners discovered the monsoon winds, which helped them get to south India and back in less than a year. `The beautiful ships of the Yavanas (foreigners)` soon became a familiar sights in the ports of Malabar. Roman demand was such that it began to eventually drain Malabar of its spices. Indian merchants had to make up for the shortage by buying in from places like Takkola (`Market of Cardamoms`) and Karpuradvipa (`Camphoe Isle`) in south-east Asia.

A few decades after the discovery of the monsoon winds, the Chinese opened the land route called the Silk Road. Rome`s desire for China silk became insatiable. Exquisite Chinese silk and spices were traded for Roman merchandise that included glassware, pottery, asbestos cloth, coral beads, intaglio gems, grape wine, gold and silver.

Even before the monsoon winds were discovered or Silk Road opened, it is estimated Rome was losing the equivalent of about 50 million pounds to today`s value to Asia every year. Later, the drain on gold increased and money became seriously devalued. Further bartering, with the help on monsoon winds and Silk Road, eventually ruined not only the international trade but also the Roman Empire itself. Thus came the end of another era in food history in Italy.

Food History in Italy - Catholic church and starving saints

Another remarkable period in Italian food history came with the advent of the Christian religion and founding of the Roman Catholic Church.

It was the Christian culture and the Catholic Church that challenged the pleasures of eating. Food deprivation among Judeo-Christian originated as form of penance and reaction to indulgence of pagan Rome. Sexuality became linked to guilt of food pleasures. The sin of Adam and Eve in earthly Paradise was a sin of pride, involving a woman, and solidified by the act of eating.

Spiritual perfection was obtained through abstaining from food and starvation fasts. Medievel holy women, half of whom were in compulsive dieting, often to death, were twice as likely as their male counterparts to engage in starvation fasts.

St. Veronica spent most of her life eating spiders and cat vomit, but then settled into regime consisting of vegetable soup and two ounces of fruit for breakfast. Dinner was a few grapes. Margaret of Cortonoa, in 1200s, live on dry bread and small amounts of raw vegetables.

The female Christian mystics used starvation fasts to alter their consciousness, as pointed out by Margaret of Cortona's comment that she fasted obsessively "in order to be more light headed and allow her sould to be fervent." This controlled deprivation often lead them to have popular "visions" which consisted of sexual encounters with the Christ.

"At first she kissed Christ's breast," tells Angela of Foligno's biographer in 13oos. "And then she kissed his mouth from which, she said, an admirable and sweet fragrance emanated... then she place her cheek on Christ's cheek and Christ placed his hand on her other cheek, and drew her close to him."

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