Leaves from our Tuscan kitchen; or, How to cook vegetables

_LEAVES FROM OUR TUSCAN KITCHEN_

                                 _OR_

                       _HOW TO COOK VEGETABLES_

                            [Illustration:

                         _A.H. Hallam Murray._

                    _The Kitchen Poggio Gherardo._]




                                LEAVES

                                _from_

                              OUR TUSCAN
                                KITCHEN
                                 _or_
                              How to Cook
                              Vegetables

                                 _by_
                              JANET ROSS

                                LONDON

                  JM DENT                29 & 30 BEDFORD
                   AND CO.       1899      STREET W.C.




        Edinburgh: T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to Her Majesty




                         _To Mrs. G. F. Watts_


  _Dear friend, will you accept this little book? It may
  sometimes bring a thought of Italy into your
  beautiful Surrey home_




                                PREFACE


The innate love of change in man is visible even in the kitchen. Not
so very long ago soup was an exception in English houses--almost a
luxury. A dish of vegetables--as a dish and not an adjunct to meat--was
a still greater rarity; and even now plain-boiled potatoes, peas,
cabbages, etc., are the rule. When we read of the dishes, fearfully and
wonderfully made, in the old Italian _novelle_, we wonder whence the
present Italians got their love of vegetables and maccaroni.

Sacchetti tells us that in the fourteenth century a baked goose,
stuffed with garlic and quinces, was considered an exquisite dish; and
when the gonfalonier of Florence gave a supper to a famous doctor, he
put before him the stomach of a calf, boiled partridges, and pickled
sardines. Gianfigliazzi’s cook sent up a roasted crane to his master
as a delicacy, says Boccaccio; and a dish of leeks cooked with spices
appears as a special dish in the rules of the chapter of San Lorenzo
when the canons messed together. Old Laschi, author of that delightful
book _L’Osservatore Fiorentino_, moralises on the ancient fashion of
cooking in his pleasant rather prosy way: ‘It would not seem that
the senses should be subjected to fashion; and yet such is the case.
The perfumes, once so pleasing, musk, amber, and benzoin, now excite
convulsions; sweet wines, such as Pisciancio, Verdea, Montalcino, and
others mentioned by Redi in his dithyrambic, are now despised; and
instead of the heavy dishes of olden times, light and elegant ones are
in vogue. Whoever characterised man as a laughing animal ought rather
to have called him a variable and inconstant one.’

The dinner which set all Siena laughing for days, given to a favourite
of Pius II. by a Sienese who substituted wild geese for peacocks, after
cutting off their beaks and feet, and coloured his jelly with poisonous
ingredients, forms the subject of one of Pulci’s tales:--

‘Meanwhile it was ordered that hands should be washed, and Messer Goro
was seated at the head of the table, and then other courtiers who had
accompanied him; and they ate many tarts of good almond paste as a
beginning. Then was brought to Messer Goro the dish on which were the
peacocks without beaks, and a fellow was told to carve them. He not
being used to such office gave himself vast trouble to pluck them,[1]
but did it with so little grace that he filled the room and all the
table with feathers, and the eyes, the mouth, the nose, and the ears
of Messer Goro, and of them all. They, perceiving that it was from
want of knowledge, held their peace, and took a mouthful here and
there of other dishes so as not to disturb the order of the feast. But
they were always swallowing dry feathers. Falcons and hawks would have
been convenient that evening. When this pest had been removed many
other roasts were brought, but all most highly seasoned with cumin.
Everything would however have been pardoned if at the last an error had
not been committed, which out of sheer folly nearly cost Messer Goro
and those with him their lives. Now you must know that the master of
the house and his councillors, in order to do honour to his guest, had
ordered a dish of jelly. They wanted, as is the fashion in Florence and
elsewhere, to have the arms of the Pope and of Messer Goro with many
ornaments on it; so they used orpiment, white and red lead, verdigris
and other horrors, and set this before Messer Goro as a choice and new
thing. And Messer Goro and his companions ate willingly of it to take
the bitter taste of the cumin and the other strange dishes out of their
mouths, thinking, as is the custom in every decent place, that they
were all coloured with saffron, milk of sweet almonds, the juices of
herbs, and such like. And in the night it was just touch and go that
some of them did not stretch out their legs.