Читать книгу A History of Food in 100 Recipes - William Sitwell - Страница 26
Оглавлениеcirca 1450
AUTHOR: Unknown, FROM: Harleian Manuscript 4016, British Museum
Take nessh chese, and pare it clene, and grinde hit in a morter small, and drawe yolkes and white of egges thorgh streynour, and cast there-to, and grinde hem togidre; then cast thereto Sugur, butter and salt, and put al togidre in a coffin of faire past, And lete bake ynowe, and serue it forthe.
Don’t get too hung up on what might or might not constitute ‘nessh’ cheese – your idea of a nice cheese possibly being rather different to mine. The author of this recipe for a cheese tart is in fact instructing you to use a ‘mild’ cheese. So, if attempting it today, you might try Gouda, for example. And while I’m at it, you’ll then need to ‘pare it clene’ (take off any rind or mouldy bits), ‘grinde hem togidre’ (whizz the ingredients up in a blender), ‘then cast … al togidre in a coffyn of faire paast’ (pour it into a pre-baked pastry case) and bake ‘ynowe’ (enough) or at any rate for 35 minutes in an oven preheated to 200°C (400°F).
Straightforward and delicious, this recipe comes from a fifteenth-century manuscript that rests today in the British Museum. It is one of a number of recipes from manuscripts owned at various points by Elizabeth I and the Earl of Oxford, collected together and published for the first time in 1888 as Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery-Books. Although it appears that the editor of the book, one Thomas Austin, did not quite have the stomach for what he was transcribing. ‘Many of the recipes which are given here would astonish a modern cook,’ he wrote. ‘Our forefathers, possibly from having stronger stomachs, fortified by outdoor life, evidently liked their dishes strongly seasoned and piquant.’
Austin clearly recoiled from the endless tossing of large quantities of pepper, ginger, cloves, garlic, cinnamon and vinegar into almost everything. Not to mention lashings of wine and ale. ‘Such ingredients,’ he wrote, ‘appear constantly where we should little expect them.’ Then again he was living in the Victorian age when, the extravagance of flavour was frowned upon.
The cheese tart recipe, however, would have seemed less outrageous and it is one of many that uses milk or a derivative of it. (It is worth noting, however, that nothing is employed more constantly than almond milk – made by steeping ground almonds in hot water then straining – which was used in cooking everything from salmon to pork.)
Milk was a common ingredient for most during the medieval period, with your average peasant keeping a couple of cows on common land. Healthy, flavoursome and versatile, it would have helped to bridge the hunger gap as stores from the previous year’s harvest diminished and the first crops of the new year were still to appear. Of course the downside of milk is that it goes off very quickly, particularly in the warmer months. So milk’s separation, on heating, into solid curds, which could provide a staple part of a poor man’s diet, and whey – a refreshing drink – gave it valuable longevity. The curds themselves could then be turned into a simple cheese by being wrapped in a cloth and then hung up to allow any remaining liquid to drain away.
But by the fifteenth century, cheese-making had become considerably more advanced, right across Europe. While the cheese mentioned in early English manuscripts isn’t brand specific, we do know that there was a wide range. English pasture was excellent and the cheeses were delicious and highly varied – there was even one a bit like Parmesan.
This we know because of one man: a cheese-obsessed physician from Italy called Pantaleone da Confienza. Pantaleone travelled around Europe tasting and thinking about cheese and then he wrote a book about it. The reason we know that he took his mission seriously lies in the book’s name. He didn’t just call it ‘A Guide to Cheese’. Summa Lacticiniorum means ‘Compendium of Milk Products’ – not a very sexy title, but it harks back to another Summa book, the heavy-weight Summa Theologica (‘Compendium of Theology’) by Thomas Aquinas.
Many people reckon that Aquinas’s book is one of the most influential pieces of Western literature, a classic in the history of philosophy. Even during Pantaleone’s time it was regarded as the seminal work on the subject. Many just called it Summa. But then, 200 years later, came another Summa, except this one wasn’t about the existence of God, or man’s purpose; it was about cheese.
Now I’ll leave it to others to discuss which is more important, eternal law or where to find a nice Cheddar, but Summa Lacticiniorum was undoubtedly ground-breaking in its own way. Until its publication in 1477 there had been recipe books, a growing number of them – some more useful than others, as we have discovered. Cooking methods were described, ingredients were championed in passing, but no one had ever written a whole book about one single foodstuff.
No one, that is, until Pantaleone travelled across Europe on a serious cheesy mission. As ever, like all the early writers on food, he had a patron. His day job was as a professor of medicine at universities in Turin and Pavia, but he also advised the noble Savoy family on health matters. And the head of the family, the Duke of Savoy of that time, was Ludovico. He loved his cheese and he loved it so much that he suggested his health adviser should write a book about it, the first book in the world dedicated to cheese. (Commissioning employees to pen books on food was in the family, as it happens, because Ludovico’s father was Amadeus VIII, who, as we saw on here, had encouraged his chef Chiquart Amiczo to write Europe’s first cookbook.)
Ludovico loved cheese almost as much as he loved siring children – he had nineteen of them (by the same wife) – and he dispatched Pantaleone to study the subject at a time when cheese had fallen from favour. The prevailing view during the Renaissance was that it was unhealthy. So perhaps the book was Ludovico’s way of arguing for his passion (although sadly the book wasn’t published in his lifetime as he died in 1465). He trusted Pantaleone implicitly to do the job and in his favour the latter had a good reputation as a man to be taken seriously on matters of health. Not only was he a professor of medicine, but he had also, while travelling around with his boss in 1464, apparently found a cure for a friend of the King of France, a General Nicolas Tigland, who had been declared incurable by doctors. History does not record what he suffered from, or how Pantaleone cured him, but his reputation soared as a result. Maybe he got him eating cheese.
In the course of his research, Pantaleone visited markets and cheese producers; he questioned those he met about methods of cheese-making, thought long and hard about flavour and texture, and in his book presents a strong case in favour of his subject. The prevailing view may have been that cheese wasn’t good for you but, he claimed, he had met ‘kings, dukes, counts, marquises, barons, soldiers, nobles and merchants’ all of whom regularly consumed and loved cheese.
His book begins with a description of the different types of milk used to make cheese, reflecting on the different ages and breeds of animals used – whether cows, goats or sheep – and the variety of places and climates that cheese is made in. He explains the different shapes it comes in, that you can buy cheese with holes in, for instance, and that some have crusty edges. And he goes on to detail all the cheeses he has discovered. The list is impressive: there are cheeses from France and Switzerland, there are Flemish cheeses and British varieties – the latter discovered not by crossing the Channel, but in a market in Antwerp. They are, he says, as good as the best to be found in Italy. The German types of cheese he has less time for, however – they are mediocris saporis (of unexceptional flavour). Of those he champions in his home country, which include Robiola from Piedmont and a variety from the Aosta Valley, he particularly likes Piacenza Parma, a Parmesan-style cheese.
Panteleone explains how cheese can be good for your health, which type would suit your age, how you should eat it and, interestingly, which cheese you should eat to match your temperament. There is much more going for cheese than just taste, he argues, and it is eminently practical: ‘Cheese is eaten after lunch, or gluttony, to remove the greasiness which remains in the teeth after chewing meat fat, or to remove any taste in the mouth after other foods.’ He glories in its qualities as a palate cleanser and bemoans that so many people spurn it. ‘I grieve at the thought of living in an era when I, a great eater of cheese, should refrain,’ he writes.
To his great consolation he discovered that cheese-making was flourishing across Europe. Producers were pooling their efforts and creating co-operatives. The product was clearly developing well from its ancient origins.
No one can pinpoint when cheese into being, although as cheese came into being, although as cheese historian Andrew Dalby says, ‘It was surely no momentous event.’ As milk curdles quite quickly if not kept cool, it can’t have been long after man (Neolithic, around 7000 BC) started to keep domesticated animals for milk that he discovered cheese.
We can imagine the scene. An Arab nomad jogs through the desert one warm sunny day. Over his shoulder he carries some milk in a container made of animal stomach. Reacting to the rennet in the stomach lining, the milk quickly curdles. Then, when our nomad pauses for a swig, he finds there are white lumps (curds) in the mixture. It might not refresh him, but he likes the taste. Thus cheese is born.
Given that, naturally, milk would be seasonal, cheese becomes the way to store and consume it and its valuable nutrients. Historians describe the discovery of cheese as part of the ‘secondary products revolution’, which marks the time before which animals were just used for their meat, bones and hide.
By the time Pantaleone was writing, cheese-making had become sophisticated, as had its consumption. He champions cheese made in the Aosta Valley as being particularly good when cooked. ‘It becomes stringy,’ he says, no doubt having enjoyed a good fondue. In fact cheese-makers from the region still quote his recommendation of their cheese when publicising it today.
He also discovers cheeses in Piedmont that are ideal for those on a tight budget. These have ‘a spicy flavour, so much so it is said they are useful to the poor; firstly, because of their hot flavour, they eat very little of it’. It’s not a very right-on argument but he redeems himself a little as he continues: ‘Secondly, it is said to be useful to the poor because in the dishes prepared by them, thanks to the sharp taste of the cheeses, there is no need for spices and salt.’
Pantaleone was a pioneer of taste. He encouraged a more sophisticated view of food and demonstrated how writing about a specific foodstuff could be used to encapsulate ideas on the economy, well-being and culture. His enthusiasm still encourages one to sniff out a good Brie or cook up some Gouda in a cheesy tart. For my money he’s up there with Aquinas.
