Sauces in all sauces
Crusades and the Holy Land
With the Crusades began to change the tastes of the table in Europe. Although many spices have been known since Roman times, the activities of the "spice shops" spread above all following these unspeakable predatory religious wars.
In Italy the first to take advantage of it were the Venetians, also thanks to Marco Polo's oriental journeys, the Pisans and the Florentines. We find news about pepper, which was kept "stricado" in leather handbags, in the ingenious "Maccaronea” by Merlin Cocaio, who redeemed Italian literature from the gullibility of Orlando Furioso.
In Venice, the Mocenigos were known as “del pevere” and there are numerous documents in the State Archives which attest to their important trade, above all with Spain and Northern Europe. The Fugger family in Augusta in Germany, with the huge earnings from the spice trade with the Venetians, went so far as to endanger the Italian banking monopoly. The Medici and Salutati in Florence who managed the products of the textile industry and the cash market, were great spice merchants.
It can be said that apart from the "agliate" made with bulbs imported from Spain and from the gardens of the Mauri of the Sahara, all the sauces, from the "peperata" to the "cominata", including the "garofolata", were based on drugs colonial. Among these certainly the most famous was the camelina or cannellina, composed of cinnamon, cloves (°), gengevaro (ginger), raisins.
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In France
In France, under Charles IV, a guild was formed, that of the saucers (saulciers) which in 1514 gave life to the “vinaigrettes–moustards”, that is, to the mustarders of vinegar, an acidic liquid that has long fascinated alchemists and cheaters. Later under Louis XII they were divided into distillers of brandy or spirit of wine and credenzeri. These were also the years in which sauces, especially mostarda, were sold on the street corners of the main cities of Central Europe. Even if mostarda is all in all a Roman preparation – as stated by a famous doctor Hermannus Boerhaave (1668-1738) (°°) – it is the cities of Dijon and Angers that manufacture this sauce as we still know them today
A classic of the medieval tables of half Europe.
The camelina sauce was never lacking in banquets to be combined with boiled meats, roast game, but also fish (especially during religious fasts).
Someone argues that the name "camelina" may be linked to the presence of cinnamon or even to the "color of the camel's hair".
In its French version the dominant spice was ginger, in English sauces and in the Nordic countries both cloves and nutmeg were used, as the cookery treatises tell us since the fourteenth century.
Camelina was one of the most common sauces used in the Middle Ages. It was so common that it could be bought ready-made from vendors in late 14th-century Paris. When the Menagier instructing his new wife about shopping, he wrote: "At the butcher's, three half-pints of camelina for dinner and supper and a quart of sorrel juice."
Ingredients:
- 70g. of blanched almonds
- 40g. of raisins
- 40g. of stale breadcrumbs
- 30 cl. of verjuice or 20 cl. of apple cider vinegar diluted in 10 cl. of water
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon powder
- 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves (maximum amount – for a less strong taste reduce the amount)
- salt
Preparation:
Wash and then soak the raisins for 1 hour in warm water. Finely chop the almonds, then dilute them in a little water.
Blend the raisins together with the spices and the breadcrumbs soaked in a little water.
Add the almond milk with the raisins and add the verjuice. Mix well, salt lightly and adjust the seasoning if necessary.
The consistency must be fluid, the color bright blond.
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