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History of Food: The Origins of Excellence

Birth of the communes

As Professor Massimo Montanari writes, the Roman Empire had based its civil and political order on an organized network of cities. The collapse of this order brought about profound changes in the urban structure and its organization. A central element of this transformation was the presence of the bishop in the city, an expression of the urban senatorial classes converted to Christianity, who maintained great authority, elevating him to a sort of substitute for public authorities in the cities. During the tenth century, many episcopal sees in central-northern Italy obtained official recognition of their role in the urban sphere from representatives of royal power and, subsequently, imperial power, fully placing bishops among the legitimate holders of parts of public power.

The bishop was elected by the assembly of canons and city notables, including landowners, merchants, artisans, legal experts, judges, and notaries. The bishop's government of the city relied on this social class in everyday practice. In the twelfth century, the citizens broke away from the figure of the bishop, replacing him with elective assemblies that they called arengi or conciones. This assembly elected as its representatives "consuls" who were placed in political, military, and judicial leadership of the new organization that came to life from these institutional innovations: the commune.

Another factor that, together with political independence, characterized the history of the communal cities of central-northern Italy was the ability to project themselves beyond the walls to conquer the surrounding territory, a territory that originally largely coincided with the territorium civitatis, the vast area over which the Roman city had exercised a central coordinating function. Control of the contado constituted an essential objective, especially from an economic point of view.

Difference between city and territory

On the food level, the conquest of the contado gave rise to the contrast between an urban model and a rural model: the market defined the way city dwellers ate, with the presence of a great variety of products; while the countryside lived mainly on local products, therefore an economy based primarily on self-production and self-sufficiency of the peasants. From a cultural point of view, the urban classes developed consumption models and fashions different from those of the surrounding territories. For example, the typical elements of the peasant diet were inferior cereals: rye, millet, emmer, spelt, and, later, in the modern age, corn. All cereals that peasants used in the form of soups, porridges, flatbreads, and dark breads.

The city market, on the other hand, guaranteed the regular presence of wheat and thus white bread. Just as pork consumption was strictly peasant, while beef was found exclusively in the urban market.

This variety of prized products that arrived within the city, also coming from different geographical areas, was guaranteed by a very specific policy, called annona policy, that is, the procurement of products so as to guarantee market demand.

The relationship between the city and its territory was a complex relationship; it is true that the city in a certain sense opposed the territory and that the urban classes ate differently compared to the rural classes, but it is also true that the city absorbed the resources, culture, and food traditions of that same territory.

Italian gastronomic excellence

This phenomenon is typical of Italian food history: the city was at the center of a small or large state, in which the territory worked to supply the urban market, which in turn took possession of this local culture and put it into circulation through the market. Thus, products that were born in the territory assumed, however, names that referred to the city: the Alba truffle certainly was not born in the square in Alba; the Paduan hen was not born in the square in Padua, and the same applies to Ascoli olives, Parma ham, Bologna mortadella, etc. Many typical Italian products referred, and refer, to a city—what does this mean? It means that a typical perspective of Italian cuisine history is precisely that of having the city market at its origin, understood as a driving center, into which the goods, resources, and cultures of the territory flowed, which the city re-exported, networking these resources and, therefore, exchanging them with those of other cities.

The secret of Italian cuisine is that of being a cuisine made of local diversities that are networked through city markets. The role of the city in the dissemination of gastronomic culture is, therefore, a very important role through which the cities themselves have built their own image; a typical example is that of Bologna "la Grassa" (the Fat). This epithet derives from the gastronomic wealth that the city has been able to network, also thanks to the demand of the numerous students present at its University, among the oldest in Italy, coming from different parts of Italy and Europe. There is evidence attesting that since the Middle Ages in Bolognese taverns one could eat German or French. The city was able, that is, to respond to very diversified food needs, networking different culinary traditions. This peculiar trait of the Bolognese gastronomic myth can be extended to the entire history of Italian cuisine.

A learned Milanese scholar of the 16th century, Ortensio Lando, recounts and extols the gastronomic specialties of the Italian peninsula, simulating a journey from south to north that begins in rich Sicily, where one can taste its tasty maccheroni, then moving on to Taranto with its excellent fish, to Naples where one can sample exquisite breads, Sorrento veal, caciocavallo cheeses, sweets, ravioli, almond cakes, rose preserves, biancomangiare, chicken thighs, peaches to raise the dead. The itinerary then continues northward, between Tuscany and Umbria. It touches Siena with its almond sweets; Foligno famous for its candied melon seeds and other preserves, arrives in Florence where it finds marzolino cheese and panpepato, trebbiano wine and berlingozzi, and then Pisa with its biscuits, Lucca with its sausage and marzipan treats.

Emilia with its salsicciotti from Bologna, the salamis of Ferrara, the sausage of Modena, the quince paste of Reggio, the cheese of Piacenza. Following the great emporium of Milan and Lombardy: Lucanica, Tomacelle, sausages, the fish of Lake Como and Lake Lugano. In a south-eastern direction, Padua with its wine, bread, pike, and then Venice, Friuli, Vicenza, Brescia, etc.

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History of Food: The Origins of Excellence

Birth of the communes

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