The role of sauces in meat dishes
In an earlier article, we introduced this magnificent book, written by Maino de’ Maineri, by talking about its basic principles. Read 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, since “quod est delectabilius est ad digestionem melius” states Maino de’ Maineri in his Regimen. And in the Opusculum de Saporibus he specifies that these are condiments to be used in moderate quantities: “saporibus non est utendum in sanitatis regimine nisi in pauca quantitate et ut corrigatur quorundam ciborum malizia seu saltem remittatur.” This is because the nature of sauces, consisting mainly of spices and acidic elements, is more medicinal than culinary.
They have beneficial effects on bodily functions: they stimulate appetite, aid digestion, and have both laxative and astringent actions. The use of spices in cooking with a medicinal function began to establish itself in the early Middle Ages. As early as the 9th-10th centuries, there was a significant flow of spices to the markets of Italy and France, and there was growing interest in such products in culinary and dietary circles.
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Roman cuisine (according to the late fourth-century compilation 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 seasonings were indigenous flavorings. It is precisely in dietary treatises that spices make their first appearance. Antimo, a Greek physician who lived in the first half of the 6th century and 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 involving the use of spices not preheard in Roman cuisine. In it he designates “good” foods and the correct way to cook them.
In this sense, spices play a definite curative role: for example, pepper, ginger and cloves (the last two not found in Apicius) are used in a seasoning assigned to a hare meat dish for the purpose of aiding digestion. Again, cloves are mentioned in a spice-based seasoning to go with cow meat.
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The Spices
Other early medieval recipe texts testify to this gradual establishment of spices in medieval cooking and dietetics.
Subsequent to the 8th century, there is a gradual evolution in the use of spices attested in 13th-14th century cookbooks.
In the dietetic treatises of the same period, spices perform the dual function of correcting the bad (or excess) “humors” of foods, and improving their taste by aiding digestion. Magninus himself in Opusculm de Saporibus develops some considerations of practical utility about the consumption of sauces and their combination with foods. First of all (this is the first consideratio), healthy individuals should make use of spices as little as possible.
This suggestion does not appear in the Regimen, while the second and third consideratio are present, of which one prescribes that “quanto sapor plus distat a natura cibi, tanto minus ex eo est comedendum.” The other, the third, concerns the alternation of seasons: “quod temporibus etate conclusioni 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 employ ingredients such as agresto, lemon juice, vinegar, cetrangolo grains, along with sugar, rose water, almonds and roasted bread. Sometimes parsley or serpyll (spicier herbs) are added. In the winter season, however, it is appropriate to employ sauces with strong and very spicy flavors: mustard, eruca, ginger, cloves, cinnamon, garlic, and not very strong vinegar are suitable. These are culinary and dietary prescriptions, the theoretical supports for which refer to the aforementioned theory of the four humors and the importance accorded to the climate/season factor in the regimen. It is through this theory that the considerable use of spices in so-called winter sauces in medical works coeval with that of Maino de’ Maineri is explained. For example, Arnaldo di Villanova recommends for the composition of winter sauces mustard, ginger, pepper, cinnamon, cloves, wine, vinegar; some of them are the same as those mentioned by Magnino (ginger, pepper, cloves, wine, vinegar).
“Summer sauces”
While (also in Arnaldo) summer sauces are composed of agresto, lemon juice, sugar, and rosewater. Quite similar is the composition of the summer sauce-base in Maino de’ Maineri. The importance accorded to the seasonal factor, which we have seen operating in the choice of sauces, is also a more general value that has ancient origins; for example, in the pseudo-Hippocratic treatise De diaeta (late 5th century B.C.) a seasonal regimen is given; in the epistles of Diocles of Caristo, a Greek physician who lived in the 4th century B.C., the daily diet is not divorced from climatic considerations connected with the changing of the seasons.
Again, in upper-imperial Rome (1st century CE) the physician[1]encyclopedist Celsus devotes the first four books of the eight components of his treatise De medicina to dietetics and, within it, provides a seasonal regimen modeled after the Hippocratic one. The theme of diet connected to the seasons persists in medieval dietetics, although the treatises of the 13th and 14th centuries accord greater prominence to diet than to other “res non naturales” (including climate), and reveal a less broad meaning of diet than was understood in classical dietetics.
Maino de’ Manieri’s treatise is an exception, as the Milanese physician is an astrologer, and therefore interested in precisely defining astrological time even before medical time. It is no coincidence that an entire chapter in the third part of the Regimen is devoted to the seasons of the year (De temporibus anni).Not only climatic factors are important in Magnino’s work; the intrinsic qualities of foods should not be overlooked either.
For example, in the Opusculum de Saporibus the fourth (and last) consideratio (also found in the Regimen) concerns the choice of sauces according to the “temperament” of meats. According to this caveat, the more temperatiores foods are, the less they need spicy (or pigmented) seasonings; inversely, the more they are lapsi to temperament, the more they require the use of sauces to balance their excess “humors.” The “principle of contraries” (of Hippocratic derivation) comes into play, according to which foods that tend to be “cold” and “moist” in nature should be paired with “hot” and “dry” sauces, and conversely, foods that are “hot” and “dry” in nature should be paired with “cold” and “moist” sauces.
Still, in the concrete realization of recipes, it is necessary to harmonize with each other quality of meat, cooking methods, compositions of sauces. For example (this is the Regimen), for meats of animals such as castrated ram, veal, roe deer, boiling is suggested as cooking and, as condiment, the green sauce very common in the cuisine of the 14th and 15th centuries. It is composed in the summer version from agresto 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 composition-base remains the same, but more spices and some garlic, wine and little agresto are added. Or, the use of mustard or eruca is sufficient.
Winter salsa verde differs from summer salsa verde in the use of wine, which replaces vinegar, and in the use of more spices. This sauce is considered in medieval cooking to be “hot” and “dry,” since among its components is parsley, an herb to which all authorities, from naturalists to botanists to physicians assign grade 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 sauce ingredients, fluctuating between 1 and 2; in fact, ginger is closer to a temperate value of “moisture” and “heat. “74 In the treatise of the Milanese physician, such a scale of values from 1 to 4 concerning different degrees of “moisture”/”dryness,” “coldness”/”heat” does not appear.
However, the author assumes a certain range of nuances among substances, whereby some are more “dry,” or more “hot” than others.75 The absence in the Regimen of numerical indications also affects the quantities of ingredients to be used in recipes. This is a characteristic feature of many dietary treatises (and cookbooks) written in late medieval Europe, due, it seems, more to a professional destination of such literature than to a lack of precision in recipe formulation.
Maino de’ Maineri’s Regimen does not deviate from this trend; in it the focus is mainly on the sauce-food-season combination: green sauce is recommended for roasting pork, in summer; in winter, a liquid sauce, consisting of wine, onions and mustard, is appropriate. Neither the amounts of the components of the sauces nor the amount of meat are mentioned; the same applies to 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 agresto in summer; without agresto in winter. There is no indication of measurements and weights, or cooking times.
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