Maino de’ Maineri’s Regimen Sanitatis dates from the early 14th century and is part of a late medieval treatise, heir to the Greco-Latin and Arabic traditions, oriented toward the maintenance of health. In it, prescriptions of hygiene and dietary rules, in addition to providing instructions of a practical nature, respond to an idea of “right measure” related to the nature of food and its nutritional function.
We have already talked about Manio de Maineri( link: https://ailovetourism.com/maino-de-maineri-lo-chef-stellato-quando-le-stelle-ruotavano-intorno-alla-terra/) , a medical cook who, in fact, compiled a cookbook-recipe book called Regimen Salutatis.
Written book that dates from the early 14th century and is part of a late medieval treatise, heir to the Greco-Latin and Arabic traditions, oriented toward the maintenance of health.
Structure of the Regimen Sanitatis
The Regimen reveals in its structure the importance accorded to diet among the “res non naturales.” The page following the title page bears a dedication to the aforementioned Andrea Ghini Malpighi whose name never appears in the text. The practical nature of the treatise defers to an audience composed of students or medical science professionals.
The work is structured in five parts: in the first, consisting of two chapters, the author defines the state of health and justifies the need to follow the prescriptions of the Regimen Sanitatis.
The second part, divided into seven chapters, deals with “res naturales”; the third describes the regime according to the idea of “res non naturales,” and consists of twenty-six chapters. The fourth section, divided into five chapters, is devoted to “res contra naturam.”
Finally, in the fifth and final part, consisting of nine chapters, the author sets out to indicate some technical interventions to restore health (phlebotomy, leeches, drugs, enemas, vomiting, suppositories, etc.). The structure of the treatise refers back to that of Avicenna’s Canon divided into five books; in particular, it recalls the first book of that work entirely devoted to “res naturales” and “res non naturales”
This affinity is discernible in the very character of Magninus’ work, which takes the form of a kind of compendium of practical knowledge about the practice of medicine. From this perspective, the Regimen Sanitatis can be seen as a preservative summa with an encyclopedic imprint, at the intersection of university teaching and medical practice. Evidence of this is the very framework of the treatise, which moves from the first parts of a doctrinal character to the subsequent parts concerning the concrete explication of such knowledge. “De saporibus et condimentis” Condiments and sauces play a fundamental role in the prescriptions of the Milanese physician; to them the author devotes in the twentieth chapter of the third part of the Regimen, an extensive exposition concerning the uses of oil, salt, and butter, as well as an accurate description of the composition of sauces and their combinations with food.
The importance accorded to condiments and sauces is due to the widespread belief in medieval treatises that they exert a corrective action on foods, greatly improving their taste and digestibility. A dual function, dietetic and culinary, is assigned to them, involving the careful use of condiments and resulting in the prescription of gastronomic recipes that conform to dietetic rules, according to an ideal of balancing the “moods” and qualities of foods whose theoretical principles are to be found in ancient medical science. In this sense, dietetics and gastronomy are configured as two peculiar aspects of the same knowledge in which cooking becomes a combinatorial art, advocating not the consumption of products in their natural state, but rather their modification and manipulation, thus promoting the idea of the culinary act as something artificial.
In Maino de’ Manieri’s Regimen Sanitatis this connection between gastronomy and dietetics is very strongly felt, especially in the chapter entitled De saporibus et condimentis. In it the Milanese physician first considers the uses of oil, salt and butter, then those of sauces.
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Oil, butter and salt
The first condiment mentioned is salt, which is particularly suitable for food preservation and salting; of these functions the author is mainly interested in culinary and dietary uses.
Since salt has the property of humiditatem extraneam desiccare, it is convenient to use it in abundant quantities with “coarse” and “moist” meats such as, for example, porcine meats; to a lesser extent it is suitable for “thin” and “dry” meats such as partridges, pheasants, hens, larks, rabbits and hares. On the other hand, an intermediate degree of salting between the previous two requires beef, which is “coarse” in nature but lacks viscosity; while fish with “thin” meat do not require salt, especially if they are small animals. Conversely, “bestial fish” such as sea pig and whale, given the “coarse” and “moist” nature of their meat, require a considerable amount of salt. About vegetable dishes, salt and water are not sufficient as seasoning; it is good to add oil, butter and lard. This is the case with atreplice, or nasturtium, in whose recipe the author adds saffron. Again, salt is indicated to flavor suffocated eggs (seasoned, in turn, with water and oil) and meat broth; while it is absent in the composition of sauces, which consist mostly of herbs, spices and acidic elements, such as wine, vinegar and agresto. The other seasonings mentioned by Magninus, namely oil and butter, are also not mentioned among the ingredients of sauces; if they are used at all, they appear mainly in recipes concerning vegetables. In particular, oil is used to season foods of a “melancholic” and “terrestrial” nature, such as legumes, vegetables, mushrooms, and truffles, for which “bonum est ea condiri cum aliquo unctuoso eorum terrestreitatem obtemperante.”
Among the various types of oil, the best is Voleum olivarum, sweet and temperate, recommended for seasoning mushrooms together with spice powder (composed, for example, of white ginger and cinnamon). It is suitable as well combined with truffles with water, egg yolk together with a mixture of spices. As a substitute for oil, Magnino sometimes suggests the use of butter. Given its strong degree of “moisture” and unctuousness, it is good to use it in moderate amounts, exclusively as a condiment and never after other foods. Compared to olive oil, to which it is compared in unctuousness, it is calidius et multum humidus. However, as food and condiment non est tantum decoquendum sicut oleum, as it is more alterable in its characteristics. Oil, on the other hand, more viscous and less corruptible, sustains longer cooking times.
In fact, butter is only mentioned by the author in one recipe: it is a “pastilla” of pork and beef, to be eaten in summer, in which butter appears in the form of caseus butyrosus. It is completely absent in the remaining culinary prescriptions, both as a food and as a condiment. Oil is mentioned mainly in raw seasonings for vegetables; as a hot seasoning it is present in the recipe for ova suffocata and in those for mushrooms and truffles. The fact that oil and butter are not mentioned in the composition of sauces is part of a trend characteristic of medieval cooking, although as early as the 14th and 15th centuries there is an establishment of butter as a hot condiment, especially in northern European countries, but also in southern ones. Oil remains predominantly linked to Mediterranean cuisine.
In the Milanese physician’s work, the use of butter is discouraged (apart from the recipe concerning meat pastilla); oil is used exclusively as a dressing for salads, and sauces are composed mainly of acidic and lean elements. Not coincidentally, Magnino’s dietetics is placed in a phase prior to the transformation that began in the 14th century, which saw the rise of dietary fats in the various cuisines of Europe in the modern age.
“End of Part One”
In this first installment we talked about everything related to general food thickeners and seasonings; in the second part we will introduce seasonings with food preparation and cooking techniques described with an almost scientific view ( premature for that historical period ) with advice on the best raw materials.
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