[Sca-cooks] Italian fish in oil spreads

[Volker Bach]

"Pixel, Queen of Cats" schrieb:
>
> But you don't kill the fish before you send it to Florence. You put it,
> still alive, in a barrel of water with a bunch of other living fish, and
> send it on a cart.
>
> Or you have fishponds. Does anybody know whether they used fishponds in
> Italy the same way they did in England and France?

I don't know too much about the details, but as
far as I know Italian fishponds were usually stone
or brick structures, and sometimes housed seawater
fish. They were definitely known from Roman times
onwards (quite fashionable in Augustan times) and
used in medieval Italy. However, as fish was a
high-status food in Antiquity but a low-status
item in Lombard and later medieval Italy, it is
unlikely (and definitely not provable) that the
elaborate Roman tradition continued in wide use.

Got it: Massimo Montanari, 'la fame e
l'abbondanza' (German translation Beck 1993), p.
48 (chapter 8, towards the middle): fishponds
built in swamps in Lombard Italy and later.
Unfortunately, no more than that. THese were
likely freshwater and very similar to our local
ones.

Volker