To make matters worse (or better, depending on your sense of humour), the “Italian” cuisine that conquered the world was not the one Italians carried with them when they emigrated. They had no such cuisine to carry. Those who left Italy did so because they were hungry. If they’d had daily access to tortellini, lasagne and bowls of spaghetti as later imagined, they would not have boarded ships for New York, Buenos Aires or São Paulo to face discrimination, exploitation and the occasional lynching. They arrived abroad with a handful of memories and a deep desire to never eat bad polenta again.
Worth reading that piece. It’s good.
Meh! Italy is a collection of countries stuck together late in the nineteenth century. He is writing about the poor folk of the Kingdom of Naples and Sicilly not those who stayed, not those of more affluent classes and not those of the northern republics, duchies, city states.
Not wholly so, no. Polenta is more a Northern than Southern dish.
The North was riddled with abject poverty. The braccianti of the Po valley would have been lucky to get a full bowl of any sort of polenta.
Lynching?!?
Possibly if they were communists who had committed crimes, not because they came from Italy.
The majority of immigrants were men who didn’t know how to cook, mamma or grandma did the cooking, so when they started eateries or did their own cooking they just made it up.
Ditto “Indian” food.
They had no such cuisine to carry. Those who left Italy did so because they were hungry. If they’d had daily access to tortellini, lasagne and bowls of spaghetti as later imagined, they would not have boarded ships…
I’m sceptical about this claim. It smacks of an axe-grinding Guardian victim narrative, spiced up with some trendy and sneering ‘deconstruction’ of the traditions loathed by the liberal-left elite.
The late 19thC/early 20thC Italian poor could surely forage, hunt and even grow stuff to cook. And there were definitely culinary traditions in the Italian peninsula. The Estruscans were making pasta in 4thC BC. The Romans developed a varied gastronomy. In the 12thC, the Normans noted the production of spaghetti in Sicily. Milan is home to the second oldest restaurant in Europe, the Antica trattoria Bagutto, which has existed since at least 1284. And there are several medieval and Renaissance Italian cookbooks extant…
So there is a tradition of Italian cuisine, with regional variations. That it has absorbed new ingredients and methods, and created new dishes, over the centuries is evidence that it is a living tradition – not a dead one.
It makes not a whole lots of sense to me. The places you can make wine are also the places you can grow other fruit, including tomatoes. And that’s something the world over Cheese and meat comes from animals that can graze almost anywhere.
Now, maybe Italy had some shortages sometimes but I doubt it was worse than anywhere else.
I’m dubious. Rich people’s food becomes everybody’s food. That doesn’t mean the rich people’s food wasn’t around. Elizabeth david in whatever it was, 1950, wasn’t describing newly invented dishes. What happened is (roughly, or as our host says, sorta) that sunday lunch became every day, and easter dinner became sunday lunch, as it has everywhere else since 1945.
I think we’ve gone into this before but tortellini only really took off when a guy in the 40s/50s mechanised the production. Yeah it was something some grannies made sometimes but it required mass production to become really popular. And yes agree with Theo – that don’t make it unauthentic its just yeah we can do this without granny now.
Apart from gnocchi, the spud ( lower case ) never really conquered Italy.
My mother in law who lived in Italy said that middle class housewives spent all morning making pasta parcels of one kind or another in the 1950s.
When I was a kid I remember a friend of my parents who’d been born in Yugoslavia who commented once when we were at their house for dinner on the irony of having eaten polenta when young because they were so poor and now he was serving it to guests as a treat.
“Italy is a collection of countries stuck together late in the nineteenth century.”
So’s Germany. Belgium is also 19th century. In terms of speaking French, so is France.
Norway you can date as late as early 20th century if you so desire. Spain is Izzy and Freddie. Portugal is … dunno, the Reconquista?
Whereas England is 1066 plus a mopping-up campaign.
Scotland is rather earlier: at the earliest 843AD, at the latest 1018. My own instinct is that the argument for 843AD is getting close to being as silly as the claim for England being dated to 927AD.
But what the hell: it all depends on what you mean by …
Neither Wales nor Ireland is an ancient historical country at all. The K of GB was 1707 and the UK of GB and NI is 1920s.
France in its current form is early 1960s, because Algeria was a department of France, like Martinique is (I think Martinique is the most westerly point of the EU).