Author:
Astarita, Tommaso, commentator, translator.
ImprintTempe, Arizona : ACMRS, Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2014.
Descriptionxii, 297 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.
Note:Introduction: Antonio Latini and Italian cooking -- Part I. The fat of the land: cooking without limits -- How to find quality help: the steward and his tasks -- Essay: "Latini's Naples" -- Creatures of land and air: the centrality of meat -- Essay: "Broccoli 'must be sold without leaves'" -- From soup to nuts: dish types and cooking traditions -- Essay: "Sweet and sour" -- Splendors of the baroque kitchen: "for professionals with the most skill and understanding" -- Essay: "Food in art" -- Taste, smell, sight: the special effects of high-end entertaining -- Essay: "The tomato comes into its own" -- Latini's apotheosis: banquets, weddings, princely visits -- Essay: "Protocol and magnificence in the baroque banquet" -- Part II. Lean cuisine: cooking for Lent -- Creatures of water: fish and seafood -- Essay: "Feast and fast" -- Cooking without meat -- Essay: "The French are coming" -- Side matters: from omelet to sherbet -- Essay: "Naples before pasta" -- The pleasures of drinking -- Essay: "Water, wine, and other beverages" -- Fun during Lent: Latini's "lean" banquets -- Essay: "Fruits and vegetables" -- Eating what's good for you -- Essay: "Food and medicine in seventeenth-century Italy".
Bibliography Note:Includes bibliographical references (pages 273-282) and indexes.
Note:"This book is about a book. Its author, Antonio Latini (1642-1696), was an experienced cook, steward, and banquet manager who worked in Rome and central Italy, and then served some of the leading families and individuals in Naples, at the time Italy's largest city and the capital of its largest state. The book is, in large part, what we may call a cookbook, but in fact includes much more (and something less) than we would expect to find today in a cookbook. Its title, in its full Baroque richness and length, is The Modern Steward, or the Art of Preparing Banquets Well, with the Choicest Rules of Stewardship, Taught and Applied to Benefit Professionals, and Other Scholars (Lo scalco alla moderna, overo l'arte di ben disporre li conviti, con le regole pił scelte di scalcheria, insegnate e poste in prattica a beneficio de' professori, ed altri studiosi)....Latini's text is massive: about one thousand pages, divided in two volumes....In this work I will offer edited translations of selections from both volumes...with accompanying notes and several short essays on related topics...."--Introduction, pages 1-2.
