Popes, Peasants, and Shepherds. Oretta Zanini De Vita
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on the lands of the great archaeological parks that had made Rome one of the most prestigious gardens in the world, encouraged by a building-boom bureaucracy insensitive to the charm of the old city. The races run at Carnival became increasingly dangerous because of the enormous influx of spectators, and fatal accidents multiplied, including one witnessed by Principessa Margherita di Savoia, the future queen of Italy, from the windows of Palazzo Fiano on the Corso.
In 1884, the races were abolished, and the old Roman Carnival passed into history.
The Jewish Kitchen of the Roman Ghetto
Jewish food, in Rome as elsewhere, means kosher food, ancient food, food prepared according to principles laid down in the Bible, and food that still respects ancient laws regulating diet and hygiene.
Locked in the Ghetto from the sixteenth century until the middle of the nineteenth, the Jews of Rome, isolated and forced to be self-sufficient, including for food, were the most faithful keepers of the popular gastronomic tradition, which remained completely untouched by foreign influences or fashions. In fact, many recipes thought of today as typically Roman are actually of Jewish origin.
From the tenth century, after the struggle between empire and papacy, the Roman Jews were forced to live in the Trastevere quarter, around the Ponte Fabricio, which came to be called Pons judaeorum, and later crossed the river to the rioni101 of Sant’Angelo and Regola, where they built their synagogue. In 1555, a papal bull turned what had been (and is now) the Jewish quarter into a true ghetto. Jews were restricted to the area bounded by the Ponte dei Quattro Capi, the Portico d’Ottavia, Piazza Giudia (no longer in existence), and the Tiber. The territory at their disposal was a rabbit warren of little streets and alleys overlooked by insalubrious dwellings, without light and often invaded by the floodwaters of the Tiber. The quarter was locked at sunset and reopened at dawn; transit was permitted through eight gates, one of which opened opposite the church of San Gregorio della Divina Pietà. And yet, it is precisely in this ambiance, in these poor, ill-equipped kitchens, that the Roman Jewish cuisine developed. It was poor, to be sure, but rich in flavors. In it, the loving hand of the housewife, who worked the humblest ingredients into something downright appetizing, is always evident.102
Outdoor cobbler’s shop in the Jewish Ghetto in Rome (Biblioteca Clementina, Anzio)
When Rome became capital of a united Italy, the gates of the Ghetto were unlocked, but only the wealthier Jews sought to live elsewhere. The others stayed in the Ghetto, which became the Jewish quarter as we know it today. Those osterias and fraschette that kept alive the gastronomic tradition of the forefathers of today’s Roman Jews are now smart restaurants where one can taste the best products of the Roman Jewish kitchen.
In the Bible, there is everything, says the Jewish cook. Kosher cooking excludes the flesh of animals considered “unclean,” such as the pig, the hare, the rabbit, and shellfish, that is, animals that do not chew a cud and have neither hooves nor cloven hooves and fish without fins and scales. In Exodus 12 it is written, “Do not cook the kid in its mother’s milk,” so meat and dairy products must never be served at the same time, and different dishes must be used. This explains why in Jewish cooking, and Roman Jewish in particular, the use of fats is limited to oil or, in part, bone marrow. Meat is butchered according to ancient laws, by specialized butchers who must kill the animal without making it suffer and so that it loses all its blood. Only in this way can the meat be considered kosher, which is to say pure.
Like other cuisines, Roman Jewish cooking is closely keyed to religious holidays. Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement) is celebrated with sweet-and-sour red mullet and turkey meat loaf. Shavuot, the harvest feast, has sumptuous stuffed cabbage. For Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights, when one candle is lit on the
Boys taking turkeys to “pasture” through the streets of Rome (Fondazione Primoli, Rome)
menorah each day, spinach and ricotta ravioli and fried chicken are eaten. Children in particular celebrate Purim (the Festival of Deliverance) with almond sweets and struffoli (small fried dough balls coated in honey), while the traditional dish for Sukkot (Festival of the First Fruits and Vegetables) is gnocchi alla romana. Each festival has, in addition to its own menu, its own special sweets, often based on ground almonds, which, with their high oil content, can partially replace butter.
The Papal Table
Like that of the other Italian courts, the kitchen at the papal court was in the hands of able scalchi (high-ranking food-specialist butlers). It was elaborate and costly, completely unrelated to what the general population was eating at the time. Rich and sumptuous or specialized as it might be, it changed not only with the times but also with the tastes of individual popes. Many chroniclers have given us an account of food habits at the papal court, beginning with the rigid ceremonial that regulated the meals of the cardinals when they met in conclave to elect a new pope.
In the Renaissance, a cardinal who attended the conclave103 was followed into his own little room by a large trunk, called a cornuta, which contained the dishes for his meals,104 and by a borsa di credenza, a large bag bearing his family’s coat of arms, which contained various other objects for the cardinal’s table. His seclusion was not exactly golden if the election went on for a long time. Whether it was held in the Sistine Chapel or, later, in the Quirinal Palace, or in some other place, the only means of contact with the outside world was a special passageway for the food, made of two large, revolving doors mounted on a partition. (A kitchen was not installed in the apostolic palaces until the end of the 1700s. Before that, meals were brought, in a colorful procession, directly from the home of each cardinal.)
Just outside the clausura (cloister), a committee of bishops, called the Reveditori (Reviewers), sat behind a long table and carefully checked the bags of food before letting them through. Silver utensils, on which messages could easily be engraved, had recently been prohibited, and so were certain foods, such as pasticci in crosta, or “pies in a crust,” which made perfect hiding places for documents that might influence the nomination of the pontiff.
An army of cooks, scalchi, credenzieri (in charge of the inventory of tableware), and wine stewards was on duty to prepare the meals and serve the fine wines that each cardinal had brought, sometimes from very distant parts.
On occasion, the elections went on too long. Gregory X, elected after three years of balloting, later issued a provision to prevent such a thing from ever happening again. According to these measures, three days after the cardinals entered into the conclave, their meals would be drastically reduced to a single course; and if five days passed without the hoped-for white smoke, a draconian regime of bread and water would go into effect until a successful election took place. Later the rule was eased, but frugality became ritualized.
Once elected to the papal throne, each pope put his particular stamp on his kitchen. Innocent III, for example, who reigned from 1198 to 1216, had very frugal habits and ordered that only one course should appear at his table. Benedict X, on the other hand, owed the brevity of his pontificate (1303–04) to his passion for figs. On a visit to the Dominican monastery in Perugia, some conspirators took advantage of this weakness and served His Holiness a basket of beautiful fresh figs—filled with so much poison that he died within a few hours.
Martin IV (1281–85) was a glutton for eels, especially the tasty fat ones from Lake Bolsena,105 north of Rome. According to a legend reported by more than one historian, he had them brought to his personal apartments, where there was a special tank in which the unfortunate eels were drowned in Vernaccia wine and then roasted. Not satisfied, evidently, to devote himself to affairs of state, this pope saw personally to the preparation of his favorite dish. Dante put him in Purgatory and stigmatized him with the famous lines:
Ebbe la Santa Chiesa in su le braccia;
dal Torso fu, e purga per