Popes, Peasants, and Shepherds. Oretta Zanini De Vita
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of the new mothers,’ that is, a grandiose machine with bizarre designs, entirely covered with long threads of tagliolini or other egg pasta, the whole surrounded by a swarm of capons and hens for the use of the illustrious patient.”
Also well established at the time was the custom of offering a plate of pasta to the masons who had reached the roof of a house under construction. This curious practice is still alive and well in the towns of the Roman hinterland: when the last tile is placed on the roof, the Italian flag is raised and the owner makes a hearty lunch for the workers.
We must stop to talk about one of the most famous pasta dishes in all Italy, the celebrated pasta all’amatriciana. The dish takes its name from the town of Amatrice, where all the inhabitants are aficionados of their gastronomic monument. Today it has become a mainstay of the popular Roman kitchen, but to make it exactly right, never use pancetta in place of guanciale, which has a much more delicate flavor. The quantity of tomato, which was added later, as its use became more common, is just as important, since the pasta should be colored only light red. The types of pasta to use are bucatini or spaghetti, period.
Polenta is another important dish in the region’s kitchen. Cornmeal was a late arrival on the Roman gastronomic scene. Shepherds brought it from Abruzzo, as food for the transhumance, and even today it is still less common in the capital than in the towns of the hinterland, toward Rieti to the northeast and Latina to the southwest, where it was introduced by the peoples of the Veneto who came to populate the Pontine area after the marshes were drained.52
The Romans make polenta with finely ground yellow cornmeal, and they give it an almost creamy consistency. They serve it with various sauces—such as sugo d’umido, sugo finto, and others—but their favorite is with sausages and pork rinds, which today can be tasted in numerous towns of the Roman countryside.
Rome and Its Gardens
Green spaces were an important feature of the Roman cityscape until the founding of the Kingdom of Italy in 1861 (Rome became its capital only in 1870). Most such spaces were parks, but some were kitchen gardens and vineyards. There was plenty of water: in addition to the Tiber, Rome was traversed by numerous marrane, or streams, which were canalized and used for irrigation. The largest marrana, known as the Marrana, began in the Castelli (the hill towns south of Rome), ran outside the city walls at the Via Appia, and emptied into the Tiber, after passing under the Via Ostiense at the Basilica of Saint Paul’s Outside the Walls. Another one, the Aqua Crabra, ran along the walls outside the Porta San Giovanni, entered the city under the Caelian Hill, ran along the Circus Maximus, and emptied into the Tiber at the Temple of Hercules Olivarius (formerly believed to be of Vesta), where it fed a spring.
Water deviated for irrigation often wound up invading the streets, which thus became bogs. But by the end of the sixteenth century, a law attempted to impose order on the deviation of water by prohibiting drawing water without the authorization of the consuls, on penalty of a fine of fifty gold scudi and three lashes. Drinking water was sold in the street and was delivered to homes by water carriers. To quench their thirst during the summer, in addition to the fontanelle, or small street fountains, still a feature of the city today, passersby could, for a few coins, buy a glass of water flavored with a couple of drops of lemon juice from the acquafrescaio (the cold-water man), who kept it cool in special ice-filled containers.
During the Renaissance, “gardens” also came to mean green spaces owned by literary figures or artists, which became the headquarters for learned gatherings. Far from the pomp of the courts, humanists met in a serene green setting to dine and discuss arts and letters. Among the most celebrated gardens was that of Messer Coricio, near the Piazza della Cancelleria, frequented by the most illustrious humanists and men of letters of the sixteenth century, such as Cardinal Bembo, Paolo Giovio, and Pomponio Leto. The famous garden of Jacopo Sadoleto, cardinal and man of letters, was on the Quirinal Hill near the Church of Santa Susanna. In the Renaissance, Rome began to build palazzi with large internal courtyards, in the Florentine style, with the idea of having open spaces for parties and banquets, and also for growing vegetables.
The secret of the Roman gardens’ luxuriance was abundant water and a particular microclimate. For centuries the gardens supplied the city. The sector was regulated by the powerful and wealthy University of the Vegetable Gardeners, one of the most important in the city’s hierarchy of guilds. The members of the university and the confraternity met at the Church of Santa Maria dell’Orto (of the Vegetable Garden) in Trastevere (to this day headquarters of their spiritual descendants). By the end of the nineteenth century, this guild possessed one of the largest real-estate holdings in the city.
The produce of the gardens constituted a basic part of the people’s diet. On the Colle degli Orti (Hill of the Gardens), the present-day Pincio, the best artichokes and celery in town, as well as famous cabbages, were grown. Famous too were the artichokes and celery picked in the gardens around the Trevi Fountain. Celery, rare on the table until the sixteenth century, was brought to Rome by Cardinal Cornaro, who grew it in his gardens at the Trevi Fountain and was so proud of his crop that, says one historian, as soon as the plants ripened, he would send “a pair as a gift for the pope, one to the cardinals, and one to the princes.” These ingredients are still basic in Roman cooking, along with tender sweet peas and green lettuces, chards, and many different kinds of cabbage.
A feature of Latian popular cooking is the combination of vegetables with other ingredients. They can be added to fish (cuttlefish with peas or artichokes) or meat (oxtail with lots of celery), or served in tasty combinations with other vegetables and flavored with one of the many wild herbs that grow in abundance in the Roman countryside. The masterpiece of expertly mixed flavors is the sublime salad known as misticanza, which consists of greens collected on the banks of streams or, better yet, in the middle of vineyards, and then dressed with olive oil, vinegar, salt, and pepper. Today it is difficult to put together all the traditional greens, but some can occasionally be found in the city’s markets. Among the most common were arugula (rocket), wild chicory, rampions, salad burnet, wood sorrel, cariota, monk’s beard, borage, bucalossi, caccialepre, crespigno, wild endive, lamb’s lettuce, oiosa, poppy greens, piè di gallo, and purslane (many with no equivalent term in other languages). To make the misticanza sweeter, large peeled grapes could be added.
Vegetables and legumes were widely used in the ancient Roman diet, their preparation becoming more elaborate as the citizenry developed more luxurious tastes. Practically every poet and writer has left a record in his writings of fresh salads or flavorful purées of vegetables or legumes. In antiquity, the most common vegetables seem to have been the squashes, the chards, peas, mushrooms (porcini were already greatly appreciated in ancient Rome, along with chanterelle and fly agaric mushrooms), wild asparagus, turnips, and rampions. Turnips and onions were an essential part of the diet, since they were considered therapeutic as well as nutritious. If we believe the satirist Martial, the legendary Romulus himself ate turnips, even in the afterlife. Turnips embodied republican probity when the consul Curius Dentatus, in the early third century B.C., was eating roasted turnips as he received a delegation of Samnites expecting to bribe him with expensive gifts. The humble turnips told them their man was incorruptible. The best turnips came from the Sabine country.
The ancient Romans did not have artichokes, but did eat cardoons, their relative, and their flowers. The earliest mention of artichokes is not until the Renaissance, in a fifteenth-century document on agriculture.
In antiquity, fava beans and wheat appeared on the everyday tables of the poor. Fava beans, usually boiled or grilled, were valued for their high caloric content. They were especially enjoyed by farmers, gladiators, and blacksmiths—in other words, by anybody who did heavy physical labor. Everyone loved them, except the Pythagoreans, for whom the beans were taboo: they were believed to house reincarnated souls.
Conservation of fresh vegetables was a problem then just as it is now. Apicius advised cutting off the tops and covering the stems with wormwood. To keep the brilliant green of vegetables, he suggested adding a pinch of soda to the cooking water. He has a famous recipe for leeks cooked in embers, well washed, salted, and wrapped in cabbage leaves. Pepper and a little olive oil were the only condiments needed.
Many kinds of vegetables were found on the wealthy tables of the empire. The emperor Tiberius