In a first article, we introduced this magnificent book, written by Maino de' Maineri, talking about its basic principles. Find it here.
Sauces play a very important role in the preparation and consumption of meat dishes. By virtue of their corrective function they make food tastier and more digestible, as Maino de' Maineri affirms in his Regimen "quod est delectabilius est ad digestem melius". And in the Opusculum de Saporibus he specifies that these are condiments to be used in moderate quantities: “saporibus non est utendum in sanitatis depositine nisi in pauca quantitate et ut corrigatur quorundam ciborum malizia seu saltem remittatur”.
This is because the nature of sauces, mainly made up of spices and acidic elements, is more medicinal than culinary. They have beneficial effects on bodily functions: they stimulate the appetite, aid digestion, have both a laxative and astringent action. The use of spices in the kitchen with a medicinal function begins to establish itself in the early Middle Ages. Already in the 9th-10th centuries there was a notable flow of spices on the markets of Italy and France and there was a growing interest in these products in the culinary and dietary fields.
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Roman cuisine (according to the compilation of the end of the fourth century transmitted to us under the name of Apicius) used only, in terms of exotic spices, pepper and silphium (ginger, only for medicinal purposes), while the main part of the condiments it was made up of indigenous aromas. It is precisely in dietetic treatises that spices make their first appearance.
Antimos, a Greek physician who lived in the first half of the sixth century, arrived in Italy at the court of Theodoric king of the Goths in Ravenna, dedicates an epistle in Latin to Theodoric king of the Franks, entitled De observatione ciborum, containing recipes which foresee the use of spices not present in Roman cuisine. In it he designates "good" foods and the correct way to cook them. In this sense, spices play a specific curative role: for example, pepper, ginger and cloves (the last two not present in Apicius) are used in a condiment assigned to a dish based on hare meat in order to favor digestion.
Again, cloves are mentioned in a spice-based condiment to be combined with cow meat.
A cook … a scientist
The spices
Other recipe texts from the early Middle Ages testify to this gradual affirmation of spices in medieval cooking and dietetics.
After the eighth century there is a progressive evolution of the use of spices attested in the thirteenth-fourteenth century cookbooks.
In the dietetic treatises of the same period, spices perform the dual function of correcting the bad (or excess) "moods" of foods, and of improving their taste by promoting digestion. Magnino himself in the Opusculm de Saporibus develops some considerations of practical utility regarding the consumption of sauces and their combination with foods. First of all (this is the first consideration), healthy individuals must make use of spices as little as possible.
This suggestion does not appear in the Regimen, while the second and third Considerateo are present, one of which prescribes that "quanto sapor plus distat a natura cibo, tanto minus ex eo est comedendum". The other, the third, concerns the alternation of the seasons: "quod temporibus etate conclusions frigoris utendum est salsis calidis et converso".
In the intermediate seasons, spring and autumn, it is good to use temperate sauces. Thus, in summer it is good to use ingredients such as verjuice, lemon juice, vinegar, gherkin grains, together with sugar, rosé water, almonds and roasted bread. Sometimes parsley or serpillo (spicier herbs) is added. In the winter season, on the other hand, it is advisable to use sauces with strong and very spicy flavors: mustard, eucalyptus, ginger, cloves, cinnamon, garlic and not very strong vinegar are suitable. These are culinary and dietary prescriptions, whose theoretical supports refer to the previously mentioned theory of the four humors and the importance given to the climate/seasons factor in the diet.
It is through this theory that the considerable use of spices in the so-called winter sauces in medical works contemporary with that of Maino de' Maineri can be explained. For example, Arnaldo di Villanova recommends mustard, ginger, pepper, cinnamon, cloves, wine, vinegar for the winter sauces; some of them are the same ones mentioned by Magnino (ginger, pepper, cloves, wine, vinegar).
“Summer sauces”
While (still in Arnaldo) the summer sauces are composed of verjuice, lemon juice, sugar, rose water. The composition of the summer base sauce in Maino de' Maineri is quite similar.
Even the importance given to the seasonal factor, which we have seen operating in the choice of sauces, is a more general value that has ancient origins; for example, in the pseudo-Hippocratic treatise De diaeta (late 5th century BC) a seasonal regime is provided; in the epistles of Diocles of Caristus, a Greek physician who lived in the 4th century BC, the daily diet is not separated from climatic considerations connected with the changing of the seasons.
Again, in early imperial Rome (1st century AD) the encyclopedic doctor[1] Celsus dedicates the first four books of the eight components of his treatise De Medicina to dietetics and, within it, provides a seasonal regimen on the model of that Hippocratic. The theme of diet connected to the seasons persists in medieval dietetics, even if the treatises of the XIII and XIV centuries accord greater importance to nutrition than to the other "res non naturales" (including climate), and reveal a meaning of diet less extensive than it was understood in classical dietetics. The treatise by Maino de' Manieri constitutes an exception, as the Milanese doctor is an astrologer, and therefore interested in precisely defining astrological time even before medical time. It is no coincidence that an entire chapter of the third part of the Regimen is dedicated to the seasons of the year (De temporibus anni). Not only are climatic factors important in Magnino's work; also the intrinsic qualities of foods must not be overlooked.
For example, in the Opusculum de Saporibus the fourth (and last)consideratoo (also present in the Regimen) concerns the choice of sauces according to the "temperament" of the meat. Based on this warning, the more the foods are temperatiores, the less they need spicy (or pigmented[1]) seasonings; conversely, the more lapsi they are in temperament, the more they require the use of sauces that rebalance the excess "humors". The "principle of opposites" (of Hippocratic derivation) comes into play, according to which a "hot" and "dry" sauce must be combined with foods that tend to be of a "cold" and "moist" nature and, vice versa, with foods of a " hot" and "dry", it is good to combine "cold" and "wet" sauces.
Furthermore, in the concrete realization of the recipes, it is necessary to harmonize the quality of the meat, the cooking methods, the composition of the sauces. For example (this is the Regimen), for meat from animals such as castrated rams, veal, roe deer, boiling is suggested as a cooking method and, as a condiment, the green sauce very common in fourteenth and XV. In the summer version it is made from verjuice with a few spices without garlic, such as parsley and white ginger, with the addition of vinegar and pieces of roasted bread soaked in vinegar. In winter, the basic composition remains the same, but more spices and a little garlic, wine and a little verjuice are added. Or, the use of mustard or eucalyptus is sufficient.
The green winter sauce differs from the summer one in the use of wine, which replaces the vinegar, and in the use of a greater quantity of spices. This sauce is considered "hot" and "dry" in medieval cuisine, since among its components there is parsley, a herb to which all the authorities, from naturalists, to botanists, to doctors, assign degree 3 of "dryness", according to a scale of values between a minimum of 1 and a maximum of 4 degrees.
White ginger has the lowest degree of "dryness" compared to the other ingredients of the sauce, oscillating between 1 and 2; in fact ginger is closer to a temperate value of "humidity" and "heat".74 In the treatise of the Milanese doctor such a scale of values from 1 to 4 concerning different degrees of "humidity"/"dryness", "coldness" /“heat” does not appear.
However, the author assumes a certain range of nuances between substances, whereby some are "drier" or "warmer" than others.
The absence of numerical indications in the Regime also affects the quantities of ingredients to be used in the recipes. This is a characteristic datum of many treatises on dietetics (and cookbooks) written in late medieval Europe, due, it seems, more than to a lack of precision in the formulation of the recipes, to a professional destination of this literature. The regime of Maino de' Maineri does not deviate from this trend; in it the attention is above all directed to the combination of sauce-food-season: green sauce is recommended for roasting pork in the summer; in winter, a liquid sauce, made up of wine, onions and mustard, is recommended. Neither the doses of the components of the sauces nor the quantity of meat are mentioned; the same goes for the other recipes.
For example, boiled beef is combined with piper bulitum as a sauce: the ingredients are cooked in the meat broth with pieces of roasted bread (to make the sauce thicker) soaked in verjuice in the summer; without verjuice in winter. There are no indications of measures and weights, or cooking times.
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