Food is culture and expresses personal identity: each of us communicates our own characteristics through our food choices. Through food, we express our roots, our heritage, and our belonging to a community. The selection, preparation, and consumption of specific foods are a powerful tool for cultural expression and a privileged channel for dialogue between different culinary identities.Every act related to food carries with it a story and expresses a complex culture. Nutrition is thus connected to emotional life and is linked to cultural values. The close connection between food and family is not only a way to transmit values, but also a tool for socialization.
A book that shows all these aspects is Recipes from Casa Manzoni, edited by Monja Faraoni (Maria Cosway Foundation), Jone Riva (National Center for Manzonian Studies), and Mariella Goffredo (Braidense Library). Presented in May at the Salita dei Frati Library in Lugano, it reveals a previously untold story of Alessandro Manzoni, a foodie who made chocolate bars at home, loved good wine and fine food, cultivated fruit and vines using cutting-edge practices in his gardens, and was among the first in Lombardy to import exotic plants and essences.
A book that allows us to discover a more private side of the author of The Betrothed and the tastes of a family that held a prominent position in Lombard society of the time, thanks above all to the key female figures in the writer's life: his mother, Giulia Beccaria; his first wife, Enrichetta Blondel; Vittoria, one of their ten children; Matilde, Vittoria's daughter and therefore Manzoni's niece; and Teresa, his second wife; and the protagonists created for his novels, from Lucia to The Nun of Monza, influenced by real women. Pages that recount the products the family grew on the Brusuglio estate, near Cormano, where Manzoni loved to retreat to write in the summer.
An interesting storytelling through letters that his mother Giulia Beccaria sent to her friend Maria Cosway, one of the most fascinating female figures of the time, a cultured personality, artist and educator, director of the women's college in Lodi where Vittoria, daughter of the writer and his first wife Enrichetta Blondel, studied.
And then there are those between his second wife, Teresa Borri Stampa, and their son Stefano, from a previous marriage, in which she describes in detail lunches, dinners, and breakfasts. And those between Vittoria and her daughter, Matilde Schiff Giorgini, who loved hosting receptions. But also those written by Manzoni to his son Pietro. These letters reveal the daily life of the Manzoni household in Milan, of the country residences in Brusuglio and Lesa, and of the era in general, a period of great social change.
The nineteenth century saw the art of gastronomy move from the kitchens of the great courts to restaurants and salons, which became new meeting places. The new bourgeois social class emerged, a new environment developed, including the dining room. The role of women changed, and ladies were instructed by a series of manuals to best handle their new tasks.
The main source of information is primarily the accounts in Teresa Stampa's letters and those of Alessandro himself, describing meals consumed with fine silver cutlery kept in green velvet cases. Teresa, from her vacation, speaks of breakfasts with milk, coffee, and pan di Erba, a white bread that was difficult to find when they were in the countryside, and the panatone, for which they had a real passion. When he is at home, he says he asked for some for lunch beefcakes, floured and cooked steaks, because she felt weak, or a broth of old chicken and beef, or a fried egg and Lake Maggiore perch, "the king" of perch. And then how much she loves duck with cabbage and sausage, frog or legume soups, shrimp, mutton chops, quail, eggs with tomato sauce.
The writer was especially attentive to the taste of sauces and jams, frog soups, quails on the spit and on the table there was never a lack ofelderberry vinegar to season boiled meat, seasonal fruit or jams and desserts.
In Brusuglio, he cultivated a vegetable garden and orchard, and gave precise instructions to the farmer regarding planting certain varieties and how to care for them. Alessandro Manzoni had a profound knowledge of the rural world, which in his time was the world of ordinary people, and which is often found in his masterpiece par excellence. His passions were cherries, which he then preserved or dried, and strawberries, which in a letter he proudly described as "as big as lobsters" and which he enjoyed with cream. He also loved chestnuts, homemade marrons glacés, and chestnut purée. He also attempted to make wine with the grapes from his land, which he intended to be better than those "from Champagne or Burgundy." Once his vacation was over, he asked for fried foods, boiled meats, and spinach "Milanese-style" to be ready.
In the years spent in France With his mother, he had learned the art from a famous master chocolatier. Once back in Milan, he made his own chocolate bars, using cocoa he purchased from a trusted dealer or a special Caracas variety he had shipped from Genoa. Disliking bitter flavors, he mixed milk and cocoa to approximate the taste of Parisian chocolate, which he believed to be tastier and sweeter.
A simple cuisine, however, using the fruits of the countryside, hunting, and fishing, depending on the season. And the day she received a lobster and a basket of truffles as gifts, it was a disaster: the new house cook, "Giudittona," not knowing them and not asking for directions, boiled them to make a delicious puree!
Many details and curiosities paint a truthful picture of a significant transitional phase in society. Until then, Lombardy had lacked an identity and a true gastronomic tradition. It was only at the beginning of the 19th century that Milan began to change and become an important gastronomic center, though still tied to French traditions. This was the era that saw the emergence of Italian regional cuisines, the result of a fusion of popular cuisines and the legacy of French cuisine, although it would take over a hundred years for them to fully emerge. Only at the end of this transformation, in the first decade of the 20th century, did the picture of Italian regional cuisines emerge clearly.
