On 4 August 1820 a gastronome was born in Forlimpopoli in Emilia Romagna who went down in history for having written Science in the kitchen and the art of eating well, a cooking manual and a collection of recipes, the result of the knowledge acquired in numerous trips up and down Italy and the experimentation of the recipes themselves by the cooks of his home.
A work by a self-taught man who has become a real long seller: from the first edition published in 1891 at his expense up to a large number of editions and a very wide circulation still today, it collects 790 recipes, from broths to liqueurs, passing through soups, appetizers, main courses and desserts.
Moving to Florence, bachelor, he had entrusted his home and his life to two servants and a cook. Economic stability allowed him to abandon the profession of textile trader and to cultivate his passions, especially travel and gastronomy. He visited several Italian cities, including restaurants and trattorias, taking notes on how the local culinary specialties were prepared, especially loving the simple and local cuisine. His is a book based on observation: Artusi traveled, tasted and noted every taste experience. More contemporary than that! He was the first to speak of domestic cooking, of those knowledge that once belonged only to the hosts and professional cooks, lacking a real culinary writing, restoring dignity to the dishes of the house by speaking with simplicity to women, and listening to them, transforming himself into weaver of the Unity of the Italians through that connective context constituted by the kitchen, by the domestic hearth. And, last but not least, highlighting the importance of the quality and seasonality of food.
In addition to the instructions for cooking, sometimes using anecdotes and quotes, he included suggestions for the preservation of food, together with advice on good taste and dietetics, underlining the importance of hygiene in food processing, which was little considered until then. In 15 editions edited personally, the book has undergone an intense work of correction, from a linguistic as well as a gastronomic point of view, always enriching itself with new recipes, thanks to a rich correspondence with the many, especially women, who wrote from all over Italy asking for clarification and advice on dishes or by sending recipes themselves, each with a different dialect and vocabulary, turning into a real collective work. He decided to print his address on the title page of the book to let people know where to send the new recipes to be added in subsequent editions. Thus was born the first recipe book dedicated to home cooking in simple Italian to reach the general public.
After 200 years, due to the pandemic, we have returned to talk a lot about home cooking, creating a new digital collective work. In recent months we have all found ourselves changing our lifestyle habits and among these our eating habits. An event that has such a profound impact on social, economic and working life cannot fail to influence our relationship with food, on the ways of eating, of supplying oneself, of cooking and of eating. Nutrition takes on the consolatory function or as an outlet valve, we eat to distract ourselves, stop boredom, suffocate the sense of loneliness.
This emergency forced us to readjust our daily routine, with a return to simplicity, with easy recipes and genuine ingredients. With printed cookbooks, but especially online, we all experienced endless recipes during the lockdown. Conviviality has moved to social networks: if you couldn't share a meal with friends, you could at least share the recipe or prepare it together live. Artusi did not know digital, but he wrote himself with cooks from all over Italy and it worked! He didn't have internet, but he used the rail and postal network. Different tools, but with the same purpose.
Today, several apps have exploded globally including CookPad, launched a while ago in Japan, where users upload photos of freshly cooked dishes, which has become the best place to find and share home cooking recipes. Yesterday, always celebrating home cooking, Pellegrino contributed to enhancing and protecting amateur cooking, codifying the recipes on paper, indicating the ingredients with precision, but without unnecessary dogmatism.
According to research conducted by GlobalWebIndex on the impact of Covid-19 on our habits, half of the population said they spent much more time cooking since the quarantine began. Online searches related to cooking and recipes have doubled. Specifically, searches for recipes for making pizza, pasta and desserts increased approximately 3–4 times after the lockdown and they have replaced research dedicated to recipes of dishes based on more refined ingredients. This growth confirms an already important trend that reflects the need to cook basic dishes for daily sustenance and the need for comfort food and a change in the more family-oriented way of cooking. Searches related to homemade bread increased by about six times during the quarantine: in particular the absolute protagonist of this period was the yeast, which was often in short supply in supermarkets, and which has seen online searches increase more than 10 times since the pre-quarantine period. Above all, we dived into baked goods: 74% prepared pizzas and focaccia, 65% cakes, 50% bread, 33% biscuits. There has also been a substantial increase (+ 66%) in searches for foods with functional benefits with a surge in searches for simple and quick recipes to prepare, which can please the whole family and have "replaceable" ingredients with what you has in the pantry. In this way, food waste has also been significantly reduced. In addition, the focus on local products has increased: shoppers seem to be moving away from products that have traveled long distances with multiple human touchpoints, especially products such as milk, fruit, vegetables and meat.
Artusi also emphasized the healthiness of the dishes, suggesting to eat little and well. Today we know that many of the recipes collected have an excessive caloric intake, that vegetables should be eaten preferably raw and not only in soups and stews, and that it is good to vary between animal and vegetable fats. At the time, however, food knowledge practically did not exist and yet he talked about the quality of the ingredients, the effectiveness of food and human health. Like so many of us, he didn't know how to cook, but he could eat well.
"To get by in the kitchen you don't need to be born with the casserole in your hand, you need love and self-denial" - he wrote - "because there is no need for complex ingredients to make good dishes, excellent raw materials are enough: with the simplicity of bread, béchamel, you can do anything with butter, combining a lot of passion, practice and commitment ». It is interesting to read about how you treat both high quality raw materials, but also the use of less valuable resources such as offal and entrails, such as marrow and brain, provided they are healthy according to the principles of the time, and describe the most suitable types of products to be used in the different seasons.
Supporter of km 0 ante litteram, Artusi sums up the essence of true cuisine: simple, poor ingredients, recipes to be made with care and dedication, knowledge that comes from popular traditions, some tricks to enhance everything in the eyes of the diners. And great love for good food, even in restaurants.
Domestic tradition and professional tradition. Even today two different ways of eating, both important, and never in opposition, not even in times of emergency. Two different but parallel modes, which complement each other and allow us to travel in a fantastic world. Let's reread theArtusi, let's cook it, eat it and go to the restaurant too.
