[Sca-cooks] meats pizziola

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On Jul 7, 2005, at 11:49 PM, Adam N Bratcher wrote:

> Some one ask about where i heard about this Meats Pizziola dish.  I  
> read it in a book i read some years ago called Shogun.  I recall  
> one of the characters wishing he was back home in Italy where he  
> could eat Meats Pizziola and some other dish.  Here is one reciepe  
> i have found so far.  www.cooks.com/rec/doc/ 
> 0,1926,152182-245204,00.html Just for giggles i am going to try it  
> out on sunday.  I'll let you all know how it turns out.
>                                                                 Adam

Ah, okay. The trouble is, historical fiction isn't always a very good  
snapshot of genuine history, any more than Hollywood provides.  
Sometimes it's very accurate (George MacDonald Frazier's books, for  
example, are incredibly painstaking), but sometimes the author will  
throw in something from left field that people tend to remember for  
years (such as meats pizzaiola), but which may not be an accurate  
historical detail.

The evidence seems to suggest that it is unlikely that tomatoes, even  
though they had been discovered by Europeans in the late 15th / early  
16th centuries, had made too many incursions into European cookery by  
the late 16th century. There's a mention in Gerard's Herbal, as I  
mentioned, which is from the 1570's, I believe, but not a lot else.

If you're looking for 16th century Italian recipes, they're  
available. If you're looking to justify the serving of pizzaiola at  
an event, I don't think the recipes that have survived from 16th- 
century Italy really support that. However, it depends on your goal.  
If you just want to have a good time and eat pizzaiola, that's okay.  
If you want to learn and teach about life in 16th-century Italy, and  
also have fun, I'd probably go with something else.

Your call, though ;-).

Adamantius




"S'ils n'ont pas de pain, vous fait-on dire, qu'ils  mangent de la  
brioche!" / "If there's no bread to be had, one has to say, let them  
eat cake!"
     -- attributed to an unnamed noblewoman by Jean-Jacques Rousseau,  
"Confessions", 1782

"Why don't they get new jobs if they're unhappy -- or go on Prozac?"
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