Massimo Montanari - Italian Identity in the Kitchen, or Food and the Nation

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ARTS AND TRADITIONS OF THE TABLE: PERSPECTIVES ON CULINARY HISTORY Albert Sonnenfeld, Series Editor

Salt: Grain of Life, Pierre Laszlo, translated by Mary Beth Mader

Culture of the Fork, Giovanni Rebora, translated by Albert Sonnenfeld

French Gastronomy: The History and Geography of a Passion, Jean-Robert Pitte, translated by Jody Gladding

Pasta: The Story of a Universal Food, Silvano Serventi and Franoise Sabban, translated by Antony Shugar

Slow Food: The Case for Taste, Carlo Petrini, translated by William McCuaig

Italian Cuisine: A Cultural History, Alberto Capatti and Massimo Montanari, translated by ine OHealy

British Food: An Extraordinary Thousand Years of History, Colin Spencer

A Revolution in Eating: How the Quest for Food Shaped America, James E. McWilliams

Sacred Cow, Mad Cow: A History of Food Fears, Madeleine Ferrires, translated by Jody Gladding

Molecular Gastronomy: Exploring the Science of Flavor, Herv This, translated by M. B. DeBevoise

Food Is Culture, Massimo Montanari, translated by Albert Sonnenfel

Kitchen Mysteries: Revealing the Science of Cooking, Herv This, translated by Jody Gladding

Hog and Hominy: Soul Food from Africa to America, Frederick Douglass Opie

Gastropolis: Food and New York City, edited by Annie Hauck-Lawson and Jonathan Deutsch

Building a Meal: From Molecular Gastronomy to Culinary Constructivism, Herv This, translated by M. B. DeBevoise

Eating History: Thirty Turning Points in the Making of American Cuisine, Andrew F. Smith

The Science of the Oven, Herv This, translated by Jody Gladding

Pomodoro! A History of the Tomato in Italy, David Gentilcore

Cheese, Pears, and History in a Proverb, Massimo Montanari, translated by Beth Archer Brombert

Food and Faith in Christian Culture, edited by Ken Albala and Trudy Eden

The Kitchen as Laboratory: Reflections on the Science of Food and Cooking, edited by Csar Vega, Job Ubbink, and Erik van der Linden

Creamy and Crunchy: An Informal History of Peanut Butter, the All-American Food, Jon Krampner

Let the Meatballs Rest: And Other Stories About Food and Culture, Massimo Montanari, translated by Beth Archer Brombert

The Secret Financial Life of Food: From Commodities Markets to Supermarkets, Kara Newman

Drinking History: Fifteen Turning Points in the Making of American Beverages, Andrew Smith

ITALIAN IDENTITY

in the Kitchen, or Food and the Nation

MASSIMO MONTANARI

translated by

Beth Archer Brombert

Columbia University Press

New York

ITALIAN

IDENTITY

in the Kitchen, or Food and the Nation

Arts and Traditions of the Table

Columbia University Press

Publishers Since 1893

New York Chichester, West Sussex

cup.columbia.edu

Copyright 2010 Gius. Laterza & Figli. All rights reserved. Published by arrangement with Marco Vigevani Agenzia Letteraria

Translation copyright 2013 Columbia University Press

All rights reserved

E-ISBN 978-0-231-53508-3

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Montanari, Massimo, 1949

[Identit italiana in cucina. English]

Italian identity in the kitchen, or Food and the nation / by Massimo Montanari; translated by Beth Archer Brombert

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-231-16084-1 (cloth: alk. paper)ISBN 978-0-231-53508-3 (ebook)

1. FoodItaly. 2. Cooking, ItalianHistory. 3. ItalySocial life and customs. 4. ItaliansEthnic identity. 5. National characteristics, Italian. I. title. II. Title: Food and the nation.

TX360.18M6613 2013

394.120945dc23

A Columbia University Press E-book.

CUP would be pleased to hear about your reading experience with this e-book at .

Jacket design by Julia Kushnirsky

Jacket photograph by Veer

References to websites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the author nor Columbia University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared.

CONTENTS

Massimo Montanari has devoted some thirty years and thirty books to the study and diffusion of Italian alimentary history and, more broadly, to the role of food as culture. As a medievalist his training provided him with a rich background in the literature, politics, economics, and sociology of medieval Europe and of an Italian cultural entity that lacked a political reality, an Italy that was not to become a nation for another half millenniumnot, in fact, until 1861. His prolific writings, erudite but never pedantic, investigating the history of eating, from the hunting and meat-eating of barbarians to the civilization of agriculture and bread, the significance of foods, the origins of customs, markets, locutions, productsall the many factors that entered into the alimentary culture of Europe, and ultimately of the New World as wellhave reached a wide audience, from scholars to gastronomes. Thanks to his close readings of medieval and Renaissance literature and to his generous quotations, nonspecialist readers have been granted a rare glimpse into the medical thinking and early cookbook writing that created an Italian cuisine when much of Europe was still unaware of such refinements.

The present volume, on Italian identity in cooking, has a personal resonance for me. Long before I knew what, or even where, Italy was, I had become acquainted with its culinary identity, or to be more precise, the identity that had been exported beyond its borders. As an only child growing up in downtown Manhattan I was frequently taken to restaurants, most often Italian. My familiarity with Italian food was not, however, limited to restaurant dishes. My mother, a great consumer of fresh fruits and vegetables (I dont remember ever seeing cans of either in our kitchen), was a regular client of the municipal market on 10th Street near Second Avenue, whose stalls were operated exclusively by Italian immigrants. They spoke their local dialects to each other and broken English to their customers. Before the construction of that indoor market, some of these same vendors and many of their earlier fellow Italians had stands, really pushcarts, all along First Avenue and the side streets. Many of those pushcarts were still to be seen when I was child, piled high with fruits, vegetables, dried fish, tripe, olives, all things never sold in non-Italian grocery stores. I remember eating artichokes, prickly pears, fennel, broccoli rabe, beet greens, broad beans, fresh peas that I learned to shell when my schoolmates ate peas out of a can. And when most people were eating iceberg lettuce, if they ate salad at all, we had romaine, escarole, radicchio, dandelion greens (my mother drew the line at garlic). Not even my college roommates had ever seen an artichoke.

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