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Leonardo da Vinci, Chef and Etiquette Authority?!?

Leonardo da Vinci, Chef and Etiquette Authority?!?
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  • Leonardo da Vinci, Chef and Etiquette Authority?!?

    Post #1 - September 14th, 2011, 3:48 pm
    Post #1 - September 14th, 2011, 3:48 pm Post #1 - September 14th, 2011, 3:48 pm
    Worked as a line cook and chef-for-hire, his notebooks include recipes and etiquette suggestions:
    Lapham's Quarterly wrote:He should not place his head upon his plate to eat.
    Neither should he sit beneath the table for any length of time.
    He should not place unpleasing or half-chewed pieces of his own food upon his neighbor’s plate without first asking him.
    He should not wipe his knife upon his neighbor’s clothing.
    Nor use his knife to carve upon the table...
    He should not set loose birds upon the table.
    Not snakes nor beetles...
    And if he is to vomit then he leaves the table.
    Likewise if he is to urinate.

    Source: http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundta ... master.php
    What is patriotism, but the love of good things we ate in our childhood?
    -- Lin Yutang
  • Post #2 - September 14th, 2011, 10:32 pm
    Post #2 - September 14th, 2011, 10:32 pm Post #2 - September 14th, 2011, 10:32 pm
    This was a delightful article, well worth reading in its entirety. Thanks, JoelF. Let me also call attention to the etiquette for a dinnertime assassination.
    Man : I can't understand how a poet like you can eat that stuff.
    T. S. Eliot: Ah, but you're not a poet.
  • Post #3 - September 15th, 2011, 8:48 am
    Post #3 - September 15th, 2011, 8:48 am Post #3 - September 15th, 2011, 8:48 am
    Josephine wrote:This was a delightful article, well worth reading in its entirety. Thanks, JoelF. Let me also call attention to the etiquette for a dinnertime assassination.

    Agreed!

    Some good planning advice here:

    After the corpse (and bloodstains if any) are removed by the serving persons, it is customary for the assassin also to withdraw from the table as this presence may sometimes be disturbing to the digestions of the persons who now find themselves seated next to him, and to this end a good host will always have a fresh guest, who has waited without, ready to join the table at this juncture.
  • Post #4 - September 15th, 2011, 12:36 pm
    Post #4 - September 15th, 2011, 12:36 pm Post #4 - September 15th, 2011, 12:36 pm
    Fascinating! The most entertaining thing I read today! Thank you for posting it.
  • Post #5 - September 15th, 2011, 5:54 pm
    Post #5 - September 15th, 2011, 5:54 pm Post #5 - September 15th, 2011, 5:54 pm
    Clever. I would have loved to see Legro re-write the entire letter to Sforza as an application for a line cook position. Put me in the mood to re-read Castiglione.
  • Post #6 - September 15th, 2011, 6:38 pm
    Post #6 - September 15th, 2011, 6:38 pm Post #6 - September 15th, 2011, 6:38 pm
    Only error is saying that he was cooking corn polenta. Corn would not have been available in Italy until after Columbus sailed to the Americas. Polenta then would have been made from wild grains, faro, millet, buckwheat, or spelt. (That said, the author could dodge this bullet by pointing out that corn really means dominant cereal grain of a region -- but then he'd still be in a bit of a bind, as none of the grains originally used for polenta were really dominant grains.)
    "All great change in America begins at the dinner table." Ronald Reagan

    http://midwestmaize.wordpress.com
  • Post #7 - September 15th, 2011, 8:39 pm
    Post #7 - September 15th, 2011, 8:39 pm Post #7 - September 15th, 2011, 8:39 pm
    Though I should add, despite the minor error, the article was fascinating. I had no idea that da Vinci had culinary experience. Clearly, there was nothing he couldn't do.
    "All great change in America begins at the dinner table." Ronald Reagan

    http://midwestmaize.wordpress.com
  • Post #8 - September 15th, 2011, 10:31 pm
    Post #8 - September 15th, 2011, 10:31 pm Post #8 - September 15th, 2011, 10:31 pm
    Polenta was the restaurant’s signature dish, a tasteless hash of meats and corn porridge.


    This is likely a British usage (along with "tasteless . . . porridge"), where "corn" typically refers to "wheat" ("oats" in Ireland and Scotland) as in "The Corn Laws." The grain Leonardo was dealing with was probably buckwheat (or grano saraceno), popular in his time and still used in Tuscany: http://www.lifeinitaly.com/food/polenta.asp
    "The fork with two prongs is in use in northern Europe. In England, they’re armed with a steel trident, a fork with three prongs. In France we have a fork with four prongs; it’s the height of civilization." Eugene Briffault (1846)
  • Post #9 - September 15th, 2011, 11:11 pm
    Post #9 - September 15th, 2011, 11:11 pm Post #9 - September 15th, 2011, 11:11 pm
    jbw wrote:
    Polenta was the restaurant’s signature dish, a tasteless hash of meats and corn porridge.


    This is likely a British usage (along with "tasteless . . . porridge"), where "corn" typically refers to "wheat" ("oats" in Ireland and Scotland) as in "The Corn Laws." The grain Leonardo was dealing with was probably buckwheat (or grano saraceno), popular in his time and still used in Tuscany: http://www.lifeinitaly.com/food/polenta.asp


    Except the magazine in question is based in NY -- so why would they use a British usage? I'm guessing the writer, however knowledgeable she is about da Vinci, simply made a slip. The term "corn" may have been used in a document about da Vinci, but she didn't realize that it was not what an American audience would recognize as corn (a lot of people don't know that "corn" doesn't always mean "maize.")

    But thanks for the info about grano saraceno. I knew buckwheat was one of the possibilities, but didn't realize it was particularly popular in Tuscany at the time.
    "All great change in America begins at the dinner table." Ronald Reagan

    http://midwestmaize.wordpress.com
  • Post #10 - September 16th, 2011, 1:01 pm
    Post #10 - September 16th, 2011, 1:01 pm Post #10 - September 16th, 2011, 1:01 pm
    It's satire. I don't think the writer is going for historical specificity with polenta. It's supposed to be funny.
  • Post #11 - September 16th, 2011, 1:35 pm
    Post #11 - September 16th, 2011, 1:35 pm Post #11 - September 16th, 2011, 1:35 pm
    happy_stomach wrote:It's satire. I don't think the writer is going for historical specificity with polenta. It's supposed to be funny.


    You mean there aren't actual rules for how to handle dinnertime assassinations?
    -Josh

    I've started blogging about the Stuff I Eat

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