Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well (80 page)

200 grams (about 7 ounces) of chestnut flour

50 grams (about 1 -2/3 ounces) of chocolate

30 grams (about 1 ounce) of sugar

25 grams (about 4/5 of an ounce) of butter

20 grams (about 2/3 of an ounce) of candied citron

12 sweet almonds and a few pistachios

1/2 liter (about 1/2 a quart) of milk

3 eggs

150 grams (about 5-1/4 ounces) of whipped cream with a dash of vanilla

First blanch the almonds and the pistachios, cut the latter in half, and the former into little strips or chunks and then toast them. Mince the candied fruit into small pieces.

Melt the chocolate in 1 deciliter (about 2/5 of a cup) of the milk, then add the sugar and the butter, and set aside. Place the flour in a baking pan and add the rest of the milk a little at a time, stirring all the while to prevent lumps. Then add the chocolate and cook over the fire. When done, allow to cool before adding the eggs (first the yolks, then the whites, beaten until stiff), and lastly the almonds, the pistachios and the candied citron. Now take a metal mold with a hole in the middle, grease it with cold butter, and pour in the mixture. Bake in
bain-marie
until the pudding has firmed up. Before removing from the mold, place cracked ice mixed with salt all around the mold to chill the pudding, then send to the table filled with the vanilla flavored whipped cream.

This recipe serves seven to eight people.

500 grams (about 1 pound) or about 30 large whole chestnuts

130 grams (about 4-1/2 ounces) of confectioners’ sugar

60 grams (about 2 ounces) of chocolate

3 tablespoons of citron cordial

Cook the chestnuts in water, just as you would normally do when making boiled chestnuts. When done, peel and puree them while still hot. Reduce the chocolate to a powder, then combine all the ingredients and make a paste. Take a large round decent-looking platter and place a small coffee saucer upside down in the middle of it. Place a strainer with a soft mesh on top of the saucer and pass the mixture through it, rotating the platter from time to time, so that the mixture is distributed evenly. When you have completed this procedure, carefully remove the saucer and fill the empty space left in the middle of the platter with 300 grams (about 10-1/2 ounces) of whipped cream.

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This recipe serves eight people.

Those of the sex that is rightly called gentle, not so much because of the gentleness of their manners as for the refined moral instinct that by nature inclines them to do whatever it takes to uplift and console suffering humanity, have contributed greatly to making my catalogue of recipes rich and varied.

A lady from Conegliano writes to me to express her surprise at not finding in my book the “pinza delPEpifania” (Epiphany Sweetbread) and—don’t laugh—“biscottini puerperali” (Cookies for Birthing Mothers), two items which according to her are of some importance. This good woman states that on the eve of the feast of the Epiphany, peasant families in the hills and throughout the countryside around her lovely town of Conegliano set huge bonfires and make merry through the night in their farmyards and recite prayers designed to invoke the powers of fructifying Heaven to assure the success of the next harvest. Then they go into their homes delighted with themselves, where “la pinza sotto il camin annaffiata con del buon vin” (“sweetbread by the fireplace, washed down with good wine”) awaits them.
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While the good country folk are eating their sweetbread—which I will not describe here because it is a dish suitable only to those folk and to the climate of they live in—I shall now return, as the lady demands, to the “Biscuits for Birthing Mothers,” which she considers nourishing and delicate, just the thing for restoring the strength of women who have grown weak bringing a baby into the world.

8 egg yolks

150 grants (about 5-1/4 ounces) of confectioners’ sugar

40 grams (about 1-1/3 ounces) of powdered cocoa

40 grams (about 1-1/3 ounces) of butter

a dash of vanilla sugar

Place these ingredients in a bowl, and then stir with a wooden spoon for more than fifteen minutes. Then distribute the mixture equally into four paper boxes, each 8 centimeters long (about 3-1/4 inches) and 6 centimeters (about 2-2/5 inches) wide. Place these in a covered copper baking pan with very little heat above and below, so that the mixture solidifies without forming a crust, because you are supposed to eat this sweet with a spoon. For this reason, the name “cookies” is quite inappropriate.

300 grams (about 10-1/2 ounces) of red currants

120 grams (about 4-1/4 ounces) of sugar

2 deciliters (about 4/5 of a cup) of water

Remove the stems from the currants and put them on the fire in the water. When they start to boil, add the sugar. Two minutes boiling time is enough, because the currants must remain whole. Place in a compote dish and serve cold like stewed fruit. The seeds, if you do not wish to swallow them, should be sucked and spat out.

Using the same method of preparation, you may also prepare maraschino cherries without removing the pit, boiling them with a little piece of cinnamon.

Use Bosnian prunes, which are large, long and pulpy, unlike the small round and lean Marseille prunes, which are covered with a white fuzz the Florentines call “flower” and are unsuited to this dish.

Wash and soak 500 grams (about 1 pound) of Bosnian prunes for two hours in cold water, then strain and put on the fire with the following ingredients:

4 deciliters (about 1-2/3 cups) of good red wine

2 deciliter (about 4/5 of a cup) of water

1 small glass of Marsala

100 grams (about 3-1/2 ounces) of white sugar

a little piece of cinnamon

Allow to simmer for half an hour in a covered saucepan. That should be long enough. But before removing from the fire, check to see if the prunes are sufficiently soft, because the length of cooking time will depend on the quality of the fruit you use.

Strain the prunes and place in the bowl you want to serve them in. The remaining syrup should be returned to the fire for approximately 8 to 10 minutes more, in an uncovered saucepan until it thickens. Then pour it over the prunes. For the cinnamon, which seems to me the spice best suited to this dish, you may substitute a dash of vanilla, or citron or orange peel.

This is a dessert that keeps for a long time and has a delicate flavor that will especially delight the ladies. At the risk of sounding like a grumbler, I should like to touch upon the subject of Italian industry once again, and point out that Bosnian prunes cost 1.5 lire per kilogram, whereas I am certain that here in Italy we could cultivate the kind of plum that best lends itself to being dried and sold for such uses as this.

8 deciliters (about 3-1/3 cups) of milk

150 grams (about 5-1/4 ounces) of semolina

100 grams (about 3-1/2 ounces) of sugar

4 eggs

3 tablespoons of rum

a pinch of salt

lemon zest

Some people add pieces of candied fruit, but an excess of flavorings sometimes spoils the result. After mixing everything together and removing from the fire, place in a smooth or decorated mold greased with butter and dusted with bread crumbs. Then bake as follows.

If you don’t have an oven or Dutch oven, puddings can be cooked on the hearth.

Serve this pudding hot.

1/2 liter (about 1/2 a quart) of milk

130 grams (about 4-1/2 ounces) of semolina

15 grams (about 1/2 an ounce) of butter

2 eggs

a pinch of salt

lemon zest

different fruit preserves

Cook the semolina in the milk, add the sugar and the butter when it starts to boil, and, when you remove it from the fire, add the lemon zest and the salt. Fold in the eggs while the mixture is still warm and mix thoroughly. Prepare a smooth or decorated mold, greasing it with butter and dusting it with bread crumbs. Then pour in the mixture (after it has cooled) a little at a time, adding in between the layers the fruit preserves, either chopped in small pieces or in small spoonfuls, depending on whether they are firm or runny. However,
make sure that the fruit preserves don’t touch the sides of the mold because otherwise they will stick to the metal. And don’t use too much, or the pudding will be sickeningly sweet. Place the mold in a Dutch oven in your hearth to bake, then serve hot.

The preserves that to my taste are best here are raspberry and quince, but you can also use apricot, currant and peach.

If you are serving eight to ten people, double the quantities.

This very simple dessert possesses, in my opinion, a very delicate flavor, and although almost everyone has tried it at one time or another, it would not hurt to learn the exact ingredients and quantities, which I think should not be increased or decreased.

1 liter (about 1 quart) of milk

200 grams (about 7 ounces) office flour

120 grams (about 4-1/4 ounces) of sugar

20 grams (about 2/3 of an ounce) of butter

6 eggs

a pinch of salt

a dash of vanilla

First, dissolve the rice flour in a fourth of the cold milk; then put on the fire. When the mixture starts to boil, add a little more warm milk, and finally pour in the rest of the milk when it is at a full boil. This is to prevent lumps from forming. When cooked, add the sugar, the butter and the salt. Remove from the fire and wait until lukewarm before folding in the eggs and the vanilla. Now bake the pudding as in the previous recipe.

This recipe, which in all likelihood is not very old, makes me think that dishes, too, are subject to fashions, and that tastes change in accordance with progress and civilization. Now we prize light cuisine and dishes that are pleasing to the eye, and perhaps there will come a time when many of the dishes I consider good will be replaced by
others even better. The sweet, heavy wines of an earlier era have given way to the dry, full-bodied vintages of today; the baked goose stuffed with garlic and quinces, regarded as a delicacy in 1300, has been replaced by turkey fattened domestically and stuffed with truffles, and by capon in galantine.
¹²³
In the olden days, on great occasions they used to serve boiled or roasted peacock, still arrayed in all its plumage, which was removed before preparing the bird and replaced after the bird was cooked. Then the peacock was served surrounded by aspics of various shapes, colored with mineral powders injurious to the health, and flavored with such spices as cumin and scented red clay (“bucchero”)
^124A
—about which I will tell you shortly.

In Florence, sweet pastries and baked goods remained rather primitive and simple until the late 16th century, when a company of Lombards arrived and set about baking pies, little cakes, puffy turnovers and other pastries made with eggs, butter, milk, sugar, and honey. But before that, ancient records mention only the donkey-meat pies Malatesta gave as gifts to his friends during the siege of Florence, when shortages of every kind of food, particularly meats, were acute.
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