[Sca-cooks] Documenting balsamic? Slow progress

[Johnna Holloway]

I have not yet attempted to trace Ludovico Antonio Muratori but I'll  
try later. I did some searching in another direction. Last night I  
checked Gillian Riley's Oxford Companion to Italian Food which goes  
into how it made but very little on the history. Also checked my new  
copy of The Slow Food Dictionary to Italian Regional Cooking.  
Interesting but no history. OED, etc. Harold McGee includes a detailed  
explanation on how to make it in On Food and Cooking.
It does appear in Food Journeys of a Lifetime: 500 Extraordinary  
Places to Eat Around the Globe. That entry says many couples now  
request a set of the barrels for making it as wedding gifts. They  
suggest websites: www.acetaiadigiorgio.it

Since Modena is in Emilia-Romagna, I suppose one source would be to  
write to NPR's The Splendid Table and ask Lynne Rossetto Kasper what  
she knows about the history. She does describe the process in The  
Splendid Table. Maybe you could even talk to her on the air. That  
might be fun.

There is this book: Balsamic Vinegar: Introduction to a Mysterious and  
Centuries-old Italian Vinegar by Paola Prati Nash, 2007 - 111 pages.  
It's self published so who can judge quality or contents. The one  
Amazon review notes:
"if a rich, detailed history of Balsamic Vinegar is what you're  
looking for, this book would perform wonderfully." But it doesn't have  
the recipes this person thought it should have.

Well when I recover from the Snowday here today, I'll do some more  
searching.

Johnnae

On Feb 2, 2011, at 12:34 PM, Raphaella DiContini wrote: a constant
>
> My first real lead is a mention on this website
> http://www.godoc.it/history.htm of a medical treatise " of the  
> government of the
> plague and of the ways of bewaring of it " snipped  Anyone with  
> interest or mad library skills are
> definately welcome to join in the hunt!
> From my preliminary searches it looks like he may be a post- period  
> historian so
> while his writing may not prove to be very useful in terms of  
> proving the use of
> Balsamic vinegar during our time he might provide further sources to  
> search
> backwards. snipped