A JOURNEY FROM LONDON TO ITALY, THROUGH PARMEZANT CHEESE, GARLICK, AND MACARONI OR TOUR DE COOKERY: FOOD ON THE GRAND TOUR Allaire-Graham, E. Sunny BGC793 Grand Tour Professor Collins Final Paper Allaire- Graham 1 Food on the Grand Tour If you were a British tourist to Italy during the eighteenth century, one of your main concerns while abroad would be eating. A British tourist faced some difficulties during his travels such as the forced observed of lean days with the rest of the Catholic locals unless he obtained a certificate that allowed him to eat meat in Lent.1 Constant complaints of the overwhelming use of garlick and oyl attest to the fact that British tourists often found their polite senses accosted by the exotic cuisine of their mainland counterparts.2 They complained, sometimes bitterly, of the poor quality of the meats which they were served, an opinion so widely held that it is parodied in caricatures throughout Britain during this time. Yet despite complaints about unfamiliar cuisine and untraditional preparation, some British tourists did enjoy their culinary journey through Europe, or at least parts thereof. Often they remark on the new and exciting regional varieties of produce, such as broccoli and pears and of course, local wines.3 Nearly every tourist who wrote about Parma mentions parmezant cheese in their accounts. And while British tourists both lamented and lauded the cuisine of mainland Europe, they played an important role in the transmission of cookery and its related knowledge throughout Europe during this time. * * * Sources This paper begins with a discussion of the sources for our knowledge of food on the Grand Tour. An analysis of the sources is important to understanding the context of these difference sources and their varying degrees of reliability, objectivity, and intention of the 1 Jeremy Black. Italy and the Grand Tour. (New Haven: Yale University Press), 77. Black, 77. 3 Black, 78. 2 Allaire- Graham 2 Food on the Grand Tour source based on its context. For the purpose of this paper, the sources are largely letters, journals, written travel accounts, and cookery books and manuals, both published and unpublished. However, it is important to keep in mind that information about food, and people’s reception to food, both at home and abroad, can be gleaned from many sources including paintings and other visual media, songs, literary references, account ledgers and of course, from the objects that were used to make and keep food during this time. The context and intended audience of the accounts is particularly important when analyzing the comment. The context calls into question issues of reliability and especially intentions. For example, references to food in personal correspondence reflect a greater degree of sincerity than published travel accounts which are intended for the market. Take for example an excerpt from one of the letters of Lady Anna Miller, which were published anonymously in 1776, five years after her Grand Tour. On tasting the food in Genoa, Lady Miller complains of ―…their constant use of oil (which is seldom good)... and is extremely disgusting to us.‖4 Although Lady Miller was known for her somewhat affected personality, we can assume she is being truthful, if somewhat exaggerated in this response to Genoan cuisine. There is a certain authenticity to the personal letter. Another important source of food knowledge from the Grand Tour comes from published travel accounts and travel guides, beginning with Richard Lassel’s The Voyage of Italy from 1670. In discussing Milan, Lassels tells the reader a story about the Milanese cuisine. ―This town is famous for excellent Neats tongues and cheese and big as millstones. A gentleman of the town, caused four cheese to be made each one weighing 4 Lady Anna Miller. Letters From Italy, Describing the Manners, Customs, Antiquities, Paintings, &c. of That Country, In The Years 1770 and 1771, To a Friend Residing in France. (London: Printed for E. and C. Dilly), 1:161. Allaire- Graham 3 Food on the Grand Tour 500 pound weight.‖5 Lassels often anecdotal way of referencing local cuisine, and especially local food customs, is a way for him to establish his credentials and show off his knowledge and expertise as a seasoned traveler. Although the reader is left unaware of how Lassels acquired his knowledge of this man and the 500 pound cheese, the assumption is that one does not gain this kind of inside knowledge without having an intimate connection with the locals. Unlike accounts from personal letters, guides and accounts prepared for publication are far less in earnest. It is telling that Lassels’s comment is strikingly similar to another well-written traveler, Leandro Fernández de Moratín. On commenting on the food in Lodi, Moratin is writes, ―Lodi is famous for its cheeses and salted beef tongues, which are exquisite.‖6 It is as if by this time, there was an accepted vocabulary thru which to comment on food in these written accounts. Although Moratin praises the food, the comment is stale and passive. These excerpts are not part of a larger story about an actual experience, but a generalized statement, as if rehearsed. They are formulaic even. ―In ___ town, the ___ is exquisite.‖ Lassels frequently comments on the local specialty of a town in his accounts in much the same way. On the cuisine of Piacenza he says, ―The Country round about this Town is very rich in pasturage: Hence their excellent Cheeses and rare Cream.‖7 A few pages later he discusses Parma in nearly the same words, ―The Countrey round about the Town is most fertil, and begets such credit to the Cheeses, that Parmesan cheeses are famous over all the world.‖8 5 Lassel, Vol I, The Voyage of Italy, Volume , p. 134 Translation from Billy. 7 Lassels, 134. 8 Lassels, 136. 6 Allaire- Graham 4 Food on the Grand Tour * * * Complaints about Local Cuisine “..We were eating a very bad supper, composed of liver and brains (to what animals they had belonged, I do not pretend to decide)…”-Lady Anna Riigs Miller, 1770.9 For many travelers, new and unusual food and preparations was a source of contention.10 It was the use of olive oil and garlic that was of particular dislike for the tourists.11 In 1769 Jean-Pierre Grosley writes in his New Observations of dining in Capua. The preparations consitsted of a very foul table-cloth, laud over three boards supported by two benches, with two old bicchieri, or earthen ewers, full of very bad wine. They told us we should drink round in the bichhieri. The repast itself was a leg of an old he goat, a fricassee with lamp-oil and a sallud, with bread as bad as the wine. Such fare we could not touch, so we made our supper of some fruit, and this we devoured without bread. 12 Grosley’s sensibilities have been so offended by the meal with which he was presented, that he and his company actually seem to have refused the food completely in favor of fruit—a familiar and comfortable food for many of the tourists. In one of Lady Miller’s letters, she veils her nostalgia for home in a criticism of the food of Geneva. I think the trout of this Lake inferior to that common English trout. The victuals here are dressed in the fashion of Geneva, or rather in the old English style, boiled and roasted, with puddings of various sorts, codling-pies, &c. The Genevans and Swiss boast a resemblance in their manner of living to the tables of England, but they are totsal strangers to the luxuries of our modern repasts— 9 Miller, 41. Black, 76. 11 Black, 76-77. 12 Grosley, 197. 10 Allaire- Graham 5 Food on the Grand Tour As to what you have heard in regards to their eating cats, if there is any truth in that report, it is not at Geneva that animals is in vogue, but in the more remote and uncivilized parts of Switzerland.13 This passage is particularly rewarding because of Lady Miller’s comments about the practice of eating cats. Like her medieval counterparts who believed in the wild men and exotic beasts that were said to inhabit the periphery of the world, so too does Lady Miller cling to superstitious and xenophobic stereotypes. Rather than become enlightened and experience what the Grand Tour has to offer, we read this letter by Miller as evidence of quite the opposite experience. She has not come into this experience with her eyes open, but with her mind quite made up. While the written evidence tells the personal stories of people’s horror at their fare, the visual evidence tells a more widely encompassing story. During this time, caricatures and prints began circulating that satirized a portion of the returned Grand Touritsts who were dubbed ―macaronies‖ after returning home from the tour with Italian affectations. Lassels warns against the dangers of falling to deeply into the customs and ways of other countrymen in his preface to The Voyage of Italy, and artists such as Matthew Darly quickly pick up on this trend.14 In an etching by Hogart in 1749 entitled, O, the Roast Beef of Old England (Figure 1) the artist depicts one of the Grand Touists most frequent complaints, the (lack of) quality roast beef in mainland Europe. In the work we see a gluttonous looking monk and a cook carrying a slab of beef, while French soldiers stand by staring longingly at the meat. It was a scene that many British tourists would have understood fondly, and stands as evidence to the widespread acceptance of food criticism during the Grand Tour. 13 14 Miller, 14. Lassels, preface. Allaire- Graham 6 Food on the Grand Tour * * * Enjoying New Foods Despite the numerous complaints of the English travelers throughout Europe, they as often remarked upon the delicious new foods that they encountered. Notorious travel writers like Tobias Smollett had the talent to both praise and criticize the cuisine of a region within a single sentence. On eating in Nice, Smollett remarks, ―The beef which comes from Piedmont, is pretty good, and we have it all the year. In the winder we have likewise excellent pork, and delicate lamb, but the mutton is indifferent.‖15 In Smollett’s travel writings he also comments on the ―delicious‖ wild boar in Nice, as well as a rare instance of enjoying the use of oil for cooking when he writes that ―Nothing can be more delicious than fresh anchovies friend in oil, I prefer them to the smelt of the Thames.‖16 In Letter III dated September 25, 1770, Lady Miller compliments the food she has in a small town called Friangean. She writes, ―They have dressed an elegant little supper, consisting of a fine young turkey, a tongue a la daube, two sallads, one anchovy, the other of lettice; a dessert composed of cheese, biscuits, Maspinerie, almonds in shell, butter churned since our arrival, and very good wine both white and red.‖17 In one of her later letters, Miller devotes an extensive section to describing their dining experience at Pellegrino. The provisions are excellent in every respect, and extraordinarily well dressed. Our host provides us much more than we can eat and drink, dinner and supper, for eleven livres and a half (French) by the day; our firing, lodging and wine included. Our dinner today consisted of a white soup, 15 Tobias Smollett. Travels Through France and Italy, (London, 1776), 156. Smollett, 156-159. 17 Miller, Letter III, 18. 16 Allaire- Graham 7 Food on the Grand Tour with vermicelli and fine Parmesan cheese rasped over the surface, half a Bologna hog’s-head admirably dired and dressed, superior to any hog-meat I ever tasted in England; une friture tres recherché, a dish of boullie, a poularde, one of the finest I ever saw; it ravlled those of Git; a forequarter of lamb roasted, a fricando with small navees, spinage dressed the French way, colliflower, fricasseed truffles dressed with butter and anchovy, a dish of mortadello: for dessert the finest white grapes imaginable, white Bury-pears, the best chestnuts and walnuts, being of an uncommon size and sweetnes. The wine is exceedingly good here, so is the water, which I think a most material object in the article of luxury. I have given you this detail of our diner, to shew you the great different in respect of eating between one part of Italy and another. Our dinner we mutually agreed was too abundant for twp persons only to sit down to; as some of the dishes went away untouched, our host was shocked, fearing we did not like them: I sent for him, and told him we were perfectly satisfied with what he had provided…‖18 In this excerpt not only does Miller praise her meal, and detail it for the reader, but she also gives a rare example of expressed intent. She is telling us this because she wants the reader to know that dining can vary greatly from place to place. And this would have been the experience for most of the tourists. They may find themselves eating stale bread for breakfast, and then an ―exceedingly good‖ fricando during their supper. Whichever the case, they recorded it was gusto. * * * Dining Practices It was not solely the food itself which warranted comment by British travelers during their Grand Tour. They also frequently wrote about the dining practices of the people with whom they ate. As was the case with their opinions of the cuisine, so too did the tourists both disparage and approve of the varying customs of the locals. In a eighteenth century painting titled Supper at the Nani House, in the style of Pietro Longhi, 18 Miller, 245. Allaire- Graham 8 Food on the Grand Tour the anonymous artist captured a remarkable banqueting scene from Venice (Figure 2). We learn as much from the details of the painting as we do from the extensive inscription below the image. According to the inscription, the ―illustrious‖ banquet is being held in honor of a travelling dignitary, His Royal Highness Clement August, Elector of Cologne on September 9, 1755 at the Palazzo di Ca’ Nanna alla Giudeca.19 Details of a painting of this sort can reveal information about dining practices during this time that might otherwise be lost. It is however important for the visual information held within a painting to be corroborated by another source, such as a trusted literary source. We find such invaluable evidence in the writings of Richard Lassels. In his introductory remarks to The Voyage of Italy, Lassels describes in vivid detail the dining practices of the Italian people, much of which are depicted directly in the Nani painting. At dinner they serve in the best meats first, and eat backwards, that is, they begin with the second course, and end with boyled meat and pottage. They never present you with salt, or braines of any fowle, least they seem to reproach unto you want of wit. They bring you drink upon a Sottocoppa of silver, with three or fours glasses upon it; Two or three of which are strait neck glasses (called there caraffa’s) full of several sorts of wine or water, and one empty drinking glasse, into which you may powr what quantity of wine and water you please to drink, and not stand to the discretion of the waiters as they do in other Countries. 20 Figure 3 show a detail of the painting where two anonymous English travelers, identified as Cavalier Inglesse according to the inscription, are being attended by the waiter. The attendant behind the men holds a silver tray upon which are place three glasses, two of like shape, and one smaller. Even the shapes of the glasses are 19 20 Thank you to Professor Jeffrey Collins for help with this translation. Lassels, Volume I, 16. Allaire- Graham 9 Food on the Grand Tour reminiscent of Lassels description, as the Longhi painter depicts straight necked beakers of wine. Lassels description of dining in Italy is not limited to the order of courses and the serving of drinks. He continues on with the carving of meats and handling of food. At great feasts, not man cuts for himself, but several Carvers, cut up all the meat at a side table, and give to the waiters, to be carryed to the Guests, and everyone hath the very same part of the meat carried unto him, to wit, a wing, and a legg of wild fowl, &c. least anyone take exceptions that others were better used than he. The Carvers never touch the meat with their hands, but only with their knife and fork, and great silver spoon for the sauce. Every man here eats with his fork and knife, and never toucheth anything with his fingers, but his bread, this keeps the linnen neat, and the fingers sweet. If you drink to an Italian, he thanks you, with bending, when you salute him, and lets you drink quietly, without watching (as we do in England) to thank you again when you have drunk; and the first time he drinks after that will be to you, in requital of your former courtesy.21 As with the drinks, details in the Longhi painting, reveal the presence of waiters with trays of cut meat coming in from back rooms and serving the diners directly (Figure 4). On the far right side of the painting we see an inset ―side table‖ set up from which the drinks are being served (Figure 5). Lassels mentions the use of utensils and the purity of the hands and the linens as a result, all of which are depicted in the Nani painting. The guests hands are seemingly rendered in an atmospheric perspective with illustionistic strokes of white. However, taken in the context of Lassels, one can understand this artistic choice as a reflection of the ―neat‖ and ―sweet‖ nature of Italian dining. Although the painting and literary account are separated by nearly eighty years, it seems that many of the dining practices remained relatively static during the Grand Tour years. 21 Lassels, Volume I, 16-17. Allaire- Graham 10 Food on the Grand Tour * * * Bringing the Food Home: Foreign Influences in English Cookbooks Remembering the Grand Tour was nearly as important as experiencing it first hand for many Britains. And for those nostaglic tourists, recipes were one way to bring the food home with them. In the book, Eat My Words, Janice Theophano discusses the etymological roots of the word ―recipe‖ which comes from the Latin recipere, meaning ―exchange.‖ Recipes and receipts are therefore an extremely appropriate link to the cultural exchange that was the basis for the Grand Tour.22 Theophano also calls attention to the existence of global networks of recipe sharing, going on to say that, ―The women who exchanged recipes with one another did not necessarily live next door, although they often did; they did not have to be kin, although they often were. In truth, they did not have to know one another at all.‖23 Networks of individuals sharing recipes for both food and medicine from the early modern period onward are beginning to be documented by scholars such as Elaine Leong. It is common sense that recipes would be shared within families, and not surprising to learn that links exist between neighbors and extended friends and family as well. According to Leong’s Introduction to the Receipt Collection at the Folger Library, recipes also feature, sometimes prominently in well-known networks of letters.24 As Leong is the preeminent scholar in this field, a portion of her introduction concerning networks is worth quoting in full. Social occasions proved to be sites for recipe exchange. Archdale Palmer, a gentleman from Leicestershire who compiled a recipe collection dating from the 1650s, gathered recipes from all 22 Janet Theophano. Eat My Words: Reading Women's Llives Through The Cookbooks They Wrote. (New York, N.Y.: Palgrave, 2002), 41. 23 Theophano, 14. 24 Elaine Leong, Intro to Receipt Books at Folger Library. Allaire- Graham 11 Food on the Grand Tour types of social events. Certain entries in his recipe collection betray the fact that dinner guests would contribute to the collection after the meal… He also seemed to have had the habit of extracting recipes out of friends and acquaintances in pubs – several recipes were collected at the Mitre Tavern and others at the Red Lion at Leicester. While Palmer might have been a more than the average enthusiast as far as recipe collecting was concerned, his collection reveals the diverse social occasions and places at which recipes might have been exchanged.‖ 25 Note that Leong mentions travelling as a means of acquiring new receipts. There are various examples of receipts that show evidence of being acquired while Englishmen travelled abroad. Take one from an early modern cookery manuscript, probably penned around 1700 in London. #254, (p. 149) A Receipt [which] Lord Burlington was told of at Rome for the Chollick Take a pint of the Strongest white wine, & put into it the peels of six civill (sic, probably Seville) oranges pared very thin, let all these boyle together till it’s reduced to half a pint, then let the Patient drink it as hot as possible, when the fit is on him, 254: 26 Aside from sources which mention acquiring receipts from Grand Tourists, the evidence of the Grand Tour can also be found within the recipes themselves. In the first edition of Elizabath Raffald’s edition of The Experienced English Housekeeper (1769) 25 Leong, Intro. Anonymous MS, early eighteenth century, ―A Collection of Choise Receipts,‖ New York Academy of Medicine. 26 Allaire- Graham 12 Food on the Grand Tour there is a recipe for ―To dress Macaroni with Permasent Cheese‖ a clear reference to Italian cuisine (Figure 6). Up to this point, there had been references in English cookbooks to making foods in the French way, but rarely if ever in the Italian way, or with distinctly Italian ingredients in this way. This fact is corroborated by author of Italy and the Grand Tour, Jeremy Black. According to Black, Italian food was a novelty for many travelers. There were few shops in London during this time that specialized in Italian foods.27 Chefs on the Grand Tour Like the grand tourists who use food as a boasting point brag about their travels through their knowledge of local cuisine from abroad, authors of certain cookbooks do the same thing. Robert May is an early and wonderful example of an author of a cookbook who went on his own sort of Grant Tour, akin to that of an artist, and then publishes about it. Robert May was born in 1588 in England. At age ten, May was sent to Paris by Lady Dormer—where he trained for five years to become a chef before he came back to England. He is best known for writing and publishing the 1660 cookbook The Accomplisht Cook, which went through numerous editions that included additions and modifications to the text. He is noteworthy for including images in his book, particularly of pie shapes, and is considered the father of English cookbooks so to speak. Of interest are the numerous recipes for foods cooked in the ―foreign-way,‖ including a rare illustrated recipe for ―other fried Dishes of divers forms, or Stock-Fritters in the Italian Fashion,‖ (Figure 7). Despite May’s numerous recipes ―in the fashion of,‖ 27 Black, 76. Allaire- Graham 13 Food on the Grand Tour he does not include any recipe comparable to the macaroni and parmesan cheese that Raffald includes 100 years later, a much more authentic recipe with clear links to specific knowledge of the methods of cooking, etc. * * * Conclusion Grand Tourists clearly had mixed feelings about the local cuisine and dining customs of the people they visited on their travels. On occasion, their writings turn nostalgic as they express the desire to return to the food of their native country. In A Journey From London to Genoa, Joseph Baretti makes the reverse trip, going home to his native Italy and remarks that ―about eight I breakfast Anglicé upon tea and toast, or bread and butter: this custom however I intend to break myself of; as soon as I am in Portugal I propose to reassume that of falling early upon grapes, figs, and melons, in order to qualify again for my native country, that I may not be a foreigner at home.‖28 Baretti’s concern over changing his appetite in preparation for returning home is similar to the way we might try to prepare for the time zone change. It is however, more intimate than that even. Baretti is expressing concern at the fact that he does not want to feel like a foreigner at home. He does not want to come home and be the Italian version of the macaroni. According to Theophano, ―A culture’s cuisine may be used to mark the complex negotiations groups and individuals undertake in a new land.‖29 This was absolutely the case for the Grand Tourists. Recipes and written travel accounts are evidence of the desire to translate and adapt what was seen on the Grand Tour when the traveller comes 28 Baretti, Volume I, A Journey From London to Genoa... (London: Printed for T. Davies, in Russel-Street, Covent-Garden; and L. Davies, Holborn, 1770), 59. 29 Theophano, 50. Allaire- Graham 14 Food on the Grand Tour home. With a healthy mix of skepticism and enjoyment, many British tourists found themselves on a grand culinary journey that would shape their relationship to food for years to come. Allaire- Graham 15 Food on the Grand Tour BIBLIOGRAPHY Black, Jeremy. 2003. Italy And The Grand Tour. New Haven: Yale University Press. Leong, Elaine Yuen Tien. 2006. Receipt books, c.1575-1800 Part 1, From the Folger Shakespeare Library. Marlborough, Wiltshire, England: Adam Matthew Publications. Theophano, Janet. 2002. Eat My Words: Reading Women's Llives Through The Cookbooks They Wrote. New York, N.Y.: Palgrave. Primary Sources Anonymous MS, Early Eighteenth Century, ―A Collection of Choise Receipts,‖ New York Academy of Medicine. Baretti, Giuseppe. 1770. A Journey From London to Genoa, Through England, Portugal, Spain, and France. By Joseph Baretti. London: Printed for T. Davies, in RusselStreet, Covent-Garden; and L. Davies, Holborn. Grosley, Pierre Jean. 1769. New Observations On Italy And Its Inhabitants. London: Printed for L. Davis and C. Reymers. http://books.google.com/books?id=eMVDAAAAYAAJ. Lassels, Richard, and S. W. 1670. The Voyage of Italy, Or, A Compleat Journey Through Italy in Two Parts: With the Characters of the People, and the Description of the Chief Towns, Churches… With Instructions Concerning Travel. Newly printed at Paris: [s.n.], and are to be sold in London, by John Starkey. May, Robert. 1685. The Accomplisht Cook, or, The Art & Mystery of Cookery Wherein The Whole Art is Revealed in a More Easie and Perfect Method Than Hath Been Published In Any Language. London: Printed for Obadiah Blagrave. Miller, Anna Riggs, and Alberto Fortis. 1776. Letters From Italy, Describing the Manners, Customs, Antiquities, Paintings, &c. of That Country, In The Years 1770 and 1771, To a Friend Residing in France. London: Printed for E. and C. Dilly. Rabisha, William. 1661. The Whole Body of Cookery Dissected, Taught, and Fully Manifested, Methodically, Artificially, and According to the Best Tradition of the English, French, Italian, Dutch, &c., or, A Sympathie Of All …. Newest Manner. London: Printed by R.W. for Giles Calvert. Raffald, Elizabeth. 1769. The Experienced English House-Keeper for the Use and Ease Allaire- Graham 16 Food on the Grand Tour of Ladies, House-Keepers, Cooks, &c. Wrote Purely from Practice ... Consisting of near 800 original receipts, most of which never appeared in print. ... By Elizabeth Raffald. Manchester: Printed by J. Harrop, for the author, and sold by Messrs. Fletcher and Anderson, London; and by Eliz. Raffald, Confectioner, Manchester. Smollett, Tobias George. 1766. Travels Through France and Italy ... With a Particular Description of the Town, Territory, and Climate of Nice: To Which is Added, A Register of the Weather, Kept During a Residence of Eighteen Months in That City. By T. Smollett, M.D. In Two Volumes. London: printed for R. Baldwin.