SC - "Period" is not the enemy of "fun" (long, it's a slow day)

[maddie teller-kook]

On Thu, 5 Jun 1997 17:01:19 -0500 (CDT), Stefan li Rous wrote:
[brief description of late period Italian salad snipped]
>I'm not sure if I understand this description or not. Are you saying 
>that the empty bowl is rubbed with garlic and sprinkled with
>vinegar, salt and oil and then the salad is added? Rather than the
>salad being rubbed with garlic and then sprinkled with the other
>items?
>
>Definitely a different effect than "modern"salads. It seems like most
>of the garlic taste would end up on the bowl and not in the salad and
>that the medieval salad would be much drier.

Apparently Castelvetro is indeed proclaiming that the bowl itself is
rubbed with garlic. Personally I would go for this technique in a
salad anyways, instead of chopping garlic into it, because garlic can
be a bit strong. This way that hint of garlic would be imparted on the
flavor of the salad. Especially since we are used to finely chopped
garlic that has be made milder by a form of pickling in modern Italian
dressings. The rubbing on the inside of a bowl will certainly impart
some of the stronger oils there providing a scent as well at allowing
some of the oils to rub off onto the leaves. Besides, the garlic is
optional since not all of his salad recipes use it.

Now for the fuller explanation, Castelvetro basically states that in
Italy a good salad is made by taking herbs, such as mint, garden
cress, basil, fennel shoots, edible flowers, rosemary and tender
leaves or hearts of lettuce. All should be washed several times, (He
discusses swishing them in a bowl of water and draining several times
until all of the sand and gunk is off of them) dried well on a linen
cloth (the reason well explained by a good gentle in an earlier
posting) and then placed into a  bowl which has some salt in it. The
herbs and salt are then thoroughly stirred together and oil is added
"with a generous hand" and again stirred "so that each leaf is
properly coated with oil". Then vinegar is added last of all, but just
a bit to provide a good flavor. 

Castelvetro proclaims, "The secret to a good salad is plenty of salt,
generous oil and little vinegar". He also states that his experiences
in other countries show that Germans take poorly washed leaves and
without draining or drying will put on just a little salt, too much
oil and far too much vinegar, generally producing a more decorative
effect to the detriment of the flavor of the salad.

He also proclaims that the English are "worse" and that after a very
poor washing of the salad (he almost questions if the salads are
washed at all) that a good deal of vinegar is then put on the salad
and is not stirred in with either oil or salt, both of which are added
at the table. (Which implies that vials of oil and salt shakers were
evident as condiments already on the table in England by the early
17th Century. At least in the places Castelvetro went to. Kinda cool,
eh?)

Remember the accounts above are by an Italian traveling into areas of
these other countries, so while we might deduce that the English MAY
prefer more Vinegar than Germans or Italians, in general, we cannot
truly take into account what the real preferences were. After all,
Castelvetro may have just eaten at the "wrong" places.

So if you mean that a Renaissance salad was drier than an American
salad, where we usually pour on a big glob of dressing, then you are
probably quite right. But such salads were not completely "dry", since
Castelvetro expected the leaves to be lightly coated with (usually
olive) oil. Just remember that this is for a specific time and place
and that a hundred years earlier it's possible that people in Padua
despised salads, while those in Milano could have eaten vast
quantities with lots of vinegar, no oil and parmesan cheese (wild
examples only with no bearing on historical fact).

Honos Servio,
Lionardo Acquistapace, Bjornsborg
(mka Lenny Zimmermann, San Antonio)
zarlor at acm.org