I couldn't finish writing today, and I'm going to change tomorrow morning. Sorry.

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The joy of wine

The only time I saw you happy... is when we tasted the red wine. Do you remember? You forgot all your sorrow... That night, we laughed and we talked...

——Francesco Datini to SerLaoMazzei, about 1400 years

Although the budget ratio of high-class people to spend on bread is not too high, the palace's imperial kitchen still bakes fragrant bread, just as farmers bake bread themselves. Regarding toasting, Platina has the following suggestions:

I suggest all bakers toast bread like this: the flour needs to be selected for wheat semolina, grind it carefully, sifted through a high-quality sieve, placed in a bread baking tray with warm water, and then sprinkle salt like the Italian Ferrari. After adding an appropriate amount of yeast, place it in any moist place you can find to ferment. This way, making bread is simple and easy. The only thing to note is that the amount of yeast must be moderate. Too much will the bread will have a sour taste; too little will the finished bread will not fluffy and will be difficult to digest and is not conducive to health. Bread needs to be carefully baked in an oven, so it is best to spend more time; never bake too much in a day, because only bread made with fresh flour is the most nutritious.

The above-mentioned budget data for bread and wine do not apply to “companagium” (other omnivorous foods that diversify the dietary structure). Shepherds with low social status only spend 14% of their total food expenses, while those who manage them spend nearly 40%. “In short, bread accounts for an increasingly significant proportion of the dietary structure of the lower class of society,” Grico wrote, “instead, this proportion decreases with the increase of social hierarchy.”

Unlike beer, wine has always been regarded as a noble drink. Drinking water has the lowest status. A story tells this that a traveler asked the local farmers for water in Emilia (E) province. "My sir," replied the kind farmer, "Water, even the fence will be eroded by it, but if you want wine, I'm happy to give you some."

Since the Italian Renaissance, people have begun to give wine more meaning than just a drink with bread. Roy Strong explained: "Now, people will carefully select different wines to match various dishes - low-degree white wine with appetizers, red wine with barbecue, and strongly intoxicated wine with desserts." Of course, people from different classes use different quality wines. Farmers have to make do with cheap wines, which are raw materials from pressed residual grapes, and virgin

The original juice was used to make high-end wines for the upper class. "People choose the corresponding wines according to their social status, occupation, age and physique," wrote Odile Redon, a food historian. White wine and dry red wine are more suitable for the upper class because they have a more "exquisite" and "soft" taste; red wine is suitable for physical laborers because it is nutritious and "just" cheap. At that time, people often dilute wines with water to add portions and reduce alcohol content.

Vines with many uses

Even if not in all Italy, but in Tuscany, the unparalleled vines are the most valuable practical products in the area. Vines have the following uses: their fruits can be juiced and made of fine wine; their branches can be tied into small bundles for firewood; their branches can be fed to cows, and their grape kernels can be fed to pigeons.

——Sir Robert Dallington, 1605

Da Vinci agreed with diluted wine. He wrote in his notes: "Drinking alcohol requires dilution, only a small sip per mouth, and do not drink it on an empty stomach." In this way, Da Vinci is a gentle person and is not a drunkard.

Italian spice trade

Italian spice trade

Jean Louis Flandrin commented: "In the long river of European history, the importance of spices reached its peak in the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; it was also during that period, because of their numerous species, frequent use and large amounts of use, the role of spices in cooking was more prominent than in other periods." The Republic of Venice was a major city-state participating in the spice trade. In the 11th century, ships made in Venice arrived at the holy land of Palestine with the crusaders of the Eastern Expedition. On their return, these ships were loaded with a large amount of pepper and other spices purchased in Alexandria. Among them, a large Venetian ship returning from Alexandria can bring back spices worth 200,000 dacarats, and the total amount of the year's trade in Venice is estimated to reach millions of dacarats.

Therefore, Venice is a well-deserved spice trade center, and with Europe importing more than 6.5 million pounds of pepper each year, pepper became the king of spices. Although the spice involved in the trade is not a type of pepper, the import of pepper accounts for more than half of all imported spices. No other spice is worth more than one tenth of pepper. Why do people love pepper so much? Henry Hobson explained: "At that time, the most common method for Europeans to preserve food was salt, and there was no other spice that could be paired with meat marinated with large amounts of salt. Salt and pepper were the tools of carnivorous humans to fight hunger, especially during the sailing or during the famine years when crops were poor."

The perfect sauce with a strong flavor

To make a strong sauce, you need cloves, cinnamon bark, cardamom, and hazelnuts heated over hot charcoal (swept the heated hazelnuts to peel); a little peeled bread and sugar. Mix the ingredients as above and mash them gently, plus vinegar to make the perfect sauce that suits all the barbecue dishes.

——Selected from "Libropercuoco", about 1,500 years

Historian Wolfgang Schivelbusch mentioned: "People not only use spices in cooking, but also treat them as precious gifts like jewelry, or treasures suitable for collection." Schivelbusch further pointed out that the rich taste of spices, the origin of exoticism and the extremely expensive price tied them to heaven. "Pepper, cinnamon and nutmeg symbolize the identity of the ruling class, which show the world the power of the ruler and then be penetrated by the ruler's fruit. When entertaining guests, the more peppers are sprinkled on the plate, the higher the respect the guests will be given to the host of the banquet."

People usually think that in the past, the use of large amounts of pepper and other spicy seasonings in cooking was to conceal spoiled meat, but this was not the case. For modern diners, the spicy spices used in dishes were simply unbearable, but chefs did not do this in order to conceal the rancid smell of spoiled meat, as commonly suspected. The only thing that this extraordinary amount of spoils can be explained is that wealthy families have sufficient reserves of meat, game and fish. In addition, the rulers at that time had a certain sense of hygiene. They forbid butchers from selling rotten meat, and stipulated that fish and meat that were not sold within a day after the capture or slaughter must be salted. Several historians also pointed out that the meat products people consumed at that time were not too stale.

Renaissance who loves carnivore (Part 1)

Renaissance who loves carnivore (Part 1)

Renaissance Italians consumed a lot of meat every day, even far exceeding the amount of meat eaten by modern Americans. This amount is enough for Italians who are now mainly pasta. For example, at a "family dinner" in Mantua in 1532, the diners were eight gentlemen. In addition to salads, breads, fruits and desserts, the dishes served include eighteen plates of pheasant salads, five castrates, ninety sausages, meatballs, delicious liver dishes, five ducks, three tongues, five prosciutto and Motelara sausages () pie, fifteen quails, fifteen Milan sausages and a buck—and these are just the first dishes.

——Berengario delle Cinqueterre in Cinqueterre

According to Renaissance cookbooks, at that time, chefs tried hard to buy various spices on the market. There are two cookbooks in the UK, known as "HarleianMs.279, about 1430) and "TheHarleianMs.4016, about 1450) that are recommended to cook 90% of fish and meat dishes without hesitation. The most commonly mentioned spices in these two books are ginger, black pepper, nutmeg rind, clove, cinnamon and ginger. "Medieval domination rank"

The class loves dishes with strong taste," Wolfgang Schfellbusch commented, "the higher the social status family, the greater the amount of spices used." Martino and Platina, a member of the aristocratic class, also emphasize the use of large amounts of spices in their recipes. This is definitely a form of conspicuous consumption in the upper class, because we can clearly see from their recipes that the use of spices is closely related to wealth, status and reputation. Indeed, it is common to use spices in the kitchen, but this is by no means accidental. The amount of spices is carefully arranged under the hierarchy and is parallel to the rank of food.

There is another reason for the fact that people used spices in the late Middle Ages and early Renaissances - spices have medicinal effects. Each kitchen spice was first introduced as a medicine and was later used for cooking. From the 13th to the early seventeenth century, almost all physicians recommended adding a large amount of spices when cooking meats so that people could digest them better. During this period, it was generally believed that digestion was also a form of cooking, which occurred in the stomach and was accomplished with the human body's "animal heat energy". Because of this, spices that are regarded as "hot" can help digestion. People judged that pepper has a fourth level of "fire" and "drying", while cloves, galangal, cardamom belong to the third level; cinnamon, cumin, crocus and nutmeg are the second level, and so on.

Interestingly, although spices help digestion, the sick are forbidden from contact with them. Patients with fever cannot use spices because hot and dry spices can worsen the condition. Patients' foods are usually cooked and added sugar instead of spices, because sugar is the "generally mild" condiment.

Of course, the basic reason for using spices in cooking in any era is that they can add flavor to the dishes and make light foods delicious; but spices can also be sterilized - the above two theories are inseparable. Jennifer Billing and Paul W. Sherman in their book "The Bactericidal Function of Spices: Why People Love Spicy" (Anti?sofSpices:Wh

The recipes mentioned in ySomeLikeItHot) are actually an endless competition. This competition for food occurs between us and parasites. Everything we do in cooking: washing, drying, cooking, adding salt, and seasoning is all about avoiding food being contaminated by these parasites. After all, most of the spices used for seasoning have a bactericidal effect. The two writers concluded: "We believe that the most fundamental reason for using spices when cooking is to eliminate bacteria and fungi produced by food."

In the era of Leonardo da Vinci, spices were extremely popular, but this situation did not last long. There was a problem that had always restricted the Venetian spice trade, that is, the tortuous route of transporting spices such as peppers - from India to Egypt and Syria, from Suez Isthmus to Alexandria, after completing loading and transporting to Venice, it also cost expensive transportation costs to cross the Alps to Central and Northern Europe. When the Venetians made excessive profits in this trade, merchants from other countries began to enter the field of spice trade. Obviously, eliminating trade

The method of Yi Middlemen is to open a sea route from India to Europe. Therefore, when the route to India was discovered, the Portuguese and the Dutch followed it snatched the spice business from the Venetians. This fact led to a sharp drop in the price of spices, and more people were able to buy these spices. In this way, spices were no longer as mysterious and exotic as before, and they became common. In addition, nutritionists in the middle and late Renaissance suggested that spices be used more carefully, so that the popular spices gradually declined in Europe.

There are many types of spices available for Renaissance chefs, and there are three types of pepper: black pepper (Pipernigrum), long pepper (Piperlongum) and Pipercubeba. The chefs may also have cinnamon, valley of heaven (Moroccan cardamom), nutmeg, dried nutmeg (mace), saffron and cloves) in their cabinets. Chefs usually use powdered spices, add them to the juice or sauce, filter and re-water them on the dishes. Use this method to ensure that the spices do not lose their original taste during cooking with the food, thereby maximizing the rich flavor of the spice.
Chapter completed!