[When did Italians start making tomato-based sauces?]
Probably in the late 17th century. But it was not initially used with pasta, which probably happened a century later.
The culinary world of the Mediterranean in the sixteenth century was rocked by the introduction of the tomato (from the Americas) by the Spanish. Europeans first came into contact with the tomato in 1521 after Spain’s Hernan Cortes victory near present day Mexico City. During the Spanish colonization of the Americas, the Spanish distributed the tomato throughout their colonies in the Caribbean. They also took it to the Philippines, from where it spread to southeast Asia and then the entire Asian continent. Of course, the Spanish also brought the tomato back home to Europe. It grew easily in Mediterranean climates, and cultivation began in the 1540s. It was probably eaten shortly after it was introduced, and was certainly being used as food by the late 16th and early 17th centuries.
The tomato was especially adaptable in southern Italy. At this time the Kingdom of Naples was in royal union with Spain. The Kings of Spain were also the Kings of Naples (and also Sicily), as one and the same. Southern Italy was in effect a vice-royalty of Spain and subject to Spain’s administration under the Council of Italy at the Spanish Court. The tomato may have reached the Kingdoms of Naples and Sicily, at the time part of the Spanish Empire, through Pedro Álvarez de Toledo (an early viceroy between 1532 and 1553) in the 16th century. [See Gentilcore, David (2010) Pomodoro!: A History of the Tomato in Italy. Columbia University Press, p.19]
The earliest discussion of the tomato in European literature appeared in an herbal written in 1544 by Pietro Andrea Mattioli, an Italian physician and botanist, who suggested that a new type of
Figure 1: Pietro Andrea Mattioli
eggplant had been brought to Italy that was blood red or golden color when mature and could be divided into segments and eaten like an eggplant—that is, cooked and seasoned with salt, black pepper, and oil. [“Portansi ai tempi nostri d’un’altra spetie in Italia schiacciate come le mela rose e fatte a spicchi, di colore prima verde e come sono mature di color d’oro le quali pur si mangiano nel medesimo modo (delle melanzane).”] It was not until ten years later that tomatoes were named in print by Mattioli as pomi d'oro, or "golden apples". [See Mattioli, Pietro Andrea, Di Pedacio Dioscoride libri cinque. Della historia et materia medicinale tradotti di lengua volgare... Venezia, 1544; Commentarii, in libros sex Pedacii Dioscorides Anarzabei, de materia medica. Venezia, 1554, p. 479] Unique varieties were developed over the next several hundred years for uses such as dried tomatoes, sauce tomatoes, pizza tomatoes, and tomatoes for long-term storage. These varieties are usually known for their place of origin as much as by a variety name. For example, Pomodorino del Piennolo del Vesuvio is the well known and highly-prized San Marzano plum tomato grown in that region.
However, tomatoes were NOT an easy product to introduce into the European diet: they did not look or taste like any known plant, they had a strange consistency and texture, they were very acidic when green, and once ripe they were soft, and disintegrated in the lengthy cooking characteristic of Renaissance cuisine. However, the Mediterranean climate and soil were ideal for growing tomatoes, and they did not compete with local crops. The tomato was a supplementary crop which did not interfere with traditional ones. The route taken in its preparation as a food was to turn it into a sauce by lengthy cooking, the indispensable accompaniment to all food in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries which largely succeeded in modifying its natural qualities and making it a more suitable food for human consumption.
There are references to the presence of tomatoes at the court of the Medicis in October 1548 [See The Medici Archive Project.] and in the purchase book of the Hospital de la Sangre in Seville in 1608. [HAMILTON, EARL J. “What the New World Gave the Economy of the Old”. In: CHIAPPELLI, Fredi, ALLEN, Michael J.B. & BENSON, Robert L. First Images of America: The Impact of the New World on the Old. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976, vol. 2, pp. 861–65.] On this basis an investigation with the object of discovering early allusions both to growing and to eating tomatoes, because, “the civilization based on written texts can thus allow us to salvage something from an oral culture that, while not recorded directly in writing, has been reflected in an indirect but no less visible way”. [MONTANARI, Massimo. Food is Culture. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006, p. 41. Original title: Il cibo come cultura. Roma & Bari: Laterza, 2004.] For example, in his study on tomato recipes in Spain and Italy in the first centuries after Columbus, Rudolf Grewe points out that even in Italy the earliest references that included tomato were called alla spagnuola or “in the Spanish style”. [TAX FREEMAN, Susan. “Cocina española: platos españoles vestidos de viaje”. In: VELASCO, Honorio M. (coord.). La antropología como pasión y como práctica: ensayos “in honorem” Julian Pitt-Rivers. Madrid: CSIC, 2004, pp. 95–104.] No recipes with tomatoes in printed cook books before the end of the seventeenth century exist, and in the Spanish Monarchy the first example is that of Juan de la Mata in his book published in 1747. [GREWE, Rudolf. “The Arrival of the Tomato in Spain and Italy: Early Recipes”. Journal of Gastronomy, 3, No. 2 (1987), 67-81] The earliest recipe for tomato sauce (in Italy) was published in 1694, by Neapolitan chef Antonio Latini in his book "Lo Scalco alla Moderna" -- "The Modern Steward." It mentions that if you mix onions, tomatoes and some herbs you get a very interesting sauce that can be used in all sorts of ways on meat, especially boiled meat.
Figure 2: Antonio Latini
In 1835 none other than Alexandre Dumas describes pizza served with tomato as a street food in Naples:
“The pizza is ... round in shape and kneaded from the same dough as bread. It comes in different widths, depending on the price. A two farthing pizza is enough for a man; a two-penny pizza should satisfy a whole family.
At first glance, pizza seems like a simple dish; after examination, it is a mixed dish. The pizza is with oil, the pizza is with bacon, the pizza is with lard, the pizza is with cheese, the pizza is with tomatoes, the pizza is with small fish; it is the gastronomic thermometer of the market: it rises or falls in price, according to the price of the above-mentioned ingredients, according to the abundance or the scarcity of the year.”
Unfortunately, Dumas’ description is not clear as to whether the topping is a tomato sauce or the fresh variety.
Figure 3: Alexandre Dumas
The first recipe for tomato sauce and pasta was published in Italy, for “vermicelli co le pommadore” -Neapolitan dialect for spaghetti with tomato - in 1837, when Ippolito Cavalcanti published his cooking manual Cucina Teorico Pratica. The first edition, which contained many of his original recipes, found great success all over the Italian peninsula. From that moment, the tomato and tomato sauce, starting from Naples, spread to the rest of Italy. Cavalcanti published over nine editions. Here’s how he described his recipe for pasta al pomodoro (in the dialect of the era):
Figure 4: Ippolito Calvacanti
“Vermicielli co le pommadore. Quann’è lo tiempo, pigliarraje tre rotola de pommadore, le farraje cocere, e le passaraje; po piglia no terzo de nzogna, o doje mesurelle d’uoglio, lo faraje zoffriere co na capo d’aglio, e lo miette dint’a chella sauza. Doppo scauda doje rotola di vermicielli, e vierdi vierdi li levarraje, e nce li buote pe dinto: falle chini di pepe, miettence lo sale, e poi vide che magne.”
“Spaghetti with tomatoes. When it’s the season, take 2.7kg (6 pounds) of tomatoes, cook them and then pureè; take 100 grams of lard or 200 ml of oil, pan fry a garlic bulb in the fat and add it to the tomato sauce. Boil 1.8kg (4 pounds) of spaghetti, remove from the water when still a bit under-cooked, and toss with the sauce; add pepper, add salt and you will see what you will be eating.”
No comments:
Post a Comment