LEAVES FROM OUR TUSCAN KITCHEN
OR
HOW TO COOK VEGETABLES
A.H. Hallam Murray.
The Kitchen Poggio Gherardo.
LEAVES
from
OUR TUSCAN KITCHEN
or
How to Cook Vegetables
by
JANET ROSS
LONDON
JM DENT AND CO.
29 & 30 BEDFORD STREET W.C.
1899
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
[Pg vii]
PREFACE
The innate love of change in man is visible even in the kitchen. Notso very long ago soup was an exception in English houses—almost aluxury. A dish of vegetables—as a dish and not an adjunct to meat—wasa still greater rarity; and even now plain-boiled potatoes, peas,cabbages, etc., are the rule. When we read of the dishes, fearfully andwonderfully made, in the old Italian novelle, we wonder whencethe 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; andwhen the gonfalonier of Florence gave a supper to a famous doctor, heput before him the stomach of a calf, boiled partridges, and pickledsardines. Gianfigliazzi’s cook sent up a roasted crane to his masteras a delicacy, says[Pg viii] Boccaccio; and a dish of leeks cooked with spicesappears as a special dish in the rules of the chapter of San Lorenzowhen the canons messed together. Old Laschi, author of that delightfulbook L’Osservatore Fiorentino, moralises on the ancient fashionof cooking in his pleasant rather prosy way: ‘It would not seem thatthe senses should be subjected to fashion; and yet such is the case.The perfumes, once so pleasing, musk, amber, and benzoin, now exciteconvulsions; sweet wines, such as Pisciancio, Verdea, Montalcino, andothers mentioned by Redi in his dithyrambic, are now despised; andinstead of the heavy dishes of olden times, light and elegant ones arein vogue. Whoever characterised man as a laughing animal ought ratherto have called him a variable and inconstant one.’
The dinner which set all Siena laughing for days, given to a favouriteof Pius II. by a Sienese who substituted wild geese forpeacocks, after cutting off their beaks and feet, and coloured hisjelly with poisonous ingredients, forms the subject of one of Pulci’stales:—
‘Meanwhile it was ordered that hands should be washed, and Messer Gorowas seated at the[Pg ix] head