Have you been invited to a dinner party and find yourself in 16th century Italy?
Here are a few notions of what you might find on your plate, and don't forget your manners!
Generally, the prince of the Renaissance table was sugar. So it was time for sweet tastes and the birth of pastry as we know it today, an art that began to evolve during the Renaissance. People also began to appreciate the many possible uses of the 'skin of milk', i.e. cream, which until then had been largely ignored.
At the noble Renaissance tables, however, some imaginative creations from the Middle Ages endured, such as animals served 'as if alive', i.e. cooked, stuffed and reassembled in their original state with their plumage and head, or potato cakes and meat pies and roasts.
Unlike today, a diner at the table in those days could start his meal with a few grapes or a fruit, and accompany each dish with light sauces made from herbs and oil.
A diet that was by no means meagre, but which certainly delighted the palate, and the eye, thanks to the birth and development of the first forms of tableware. The taste for beauty that was gradually developing also saw an increase in the taste for table setting and service.
The cook in fact, although of fundamental importance, was usually trained in the field, and was of humble social extraction, while the servants at the table, such as the wine waiter, were carefully chosen from among the members of the aristocracy, as was the case for the ladies-in-waiting of the courts throughout Europe. The service also involved a series of movements and theatrical acts that made every banquet a real spectacle for the joy of the local lord and his diners.
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