Free Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well by Pellegrino Artusi, Murtha Baca, Luigi Ballerini Page A

desirable qualities,” as the old Italian adage goes. As for the inevitable temptation to suggest that Artusi is to Italian gastronomy what Escoffier is to French, heeding it is by far less heretical than many culinary theologians are prepared to admit. It is true, however, that the analogy is not proportional and, consequently, neither specular nor infinitely reassuring. It may, however, offer some help, if only by way of contrast. The role played in Italy by Artusi’s historic persona and the symbolic values attached to it is likely to differ in kind, not just degree, from the role played in France by the celebrated author of
La guide culinaire
. To appreciate the difference within the analogy, all we have todo is turn to some edifying examples of “European” gastronomic literature. Following in the footsteps of the
Larousse gastronomique
(where Escoffier is treated with all the respect he deserves),
The Oxford Companion to Food
wholly ignores the name of Pellegrino Artusi and assumes “assafoetida” to be the first possible entry after “artichoke.” (It is worth noting, by contrast that all Italian gastronomic dictionaries honor the name and the talent of the French virtuoso.)
    A much nobler attitude transpires from the behavior of the good people of Forlimpopoli and those of Villeneuve-Loubet (in the south of France, where Escoffier first saw light, in 1847), who agreed to “twin” their townships and, to make sure that even the most distracted traveler would not miss the significance of their gesture, set up road signs, each acknowledging the existence of the other. Whether real or merely wished for, the seductive energy of this “egotisme à deux” in which
here
and
there
merge into one aspiration, at a time when public attention seems to be monopolized by a resurgence of inflated patriotism and embarrassing episodes of pseudoheroic behavioral patterns, may be read as an auspicious sign that difference and equanimity can still go hand in hand. 117
    Escoffier was a professional cook who, in 1859, as a mere thirteen-year-old boy, began to apprentice in his uncle’s Restaurant Français, in Nice on the French Riviera. From such humble beginnings, he moved on to supervise the kitchens of the most famous eating establishments of his time, ranging from the Petit Moulin Rouge restaurant in Paris to the Grand Hotel in Monte Carlo, the Savoy and the Carlton in London, and, of course, the Ritz in Paris. He blossomed into a larger-than-life personality – “le roi des cuisiniers … le cuisinier des rois,” as he was called. He was a celebrity who often overshadowed the celebrities he served and after whom he occasionally named his dishes: Kaiser Wilhelm II, Marcel Proust, Frederic VIII of Denmark, Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria, actress Sarah Bernhardt, singers Adelina Patti and Nellie Melba, 118 and dozens of Sagans, Vanderbilts, and Radziwills -in a word, anybody who, before, during, and after la Belle Epoque, was a bona fide regular of the
beau monde
or resembled one.
    As Chef Gualtiero Marchesi, one of the earliest and most gifted exponents of
nouvelle cuisine
, has recently remarked: “Artusi’s recipes should be read in the context of the era in which they were written and the audience to whom they were addressed. “We are at the end of the ninteenth century, when there was no codified Italian cuisine. We are not in France, where at the end of the 1920s August Escoffier published his
Guide culinaire
, which delved not only into the ambit of French cuisine but international cuisine as well. In his rigorous exposition, he leaves nothing to chance. Artusi, instead
00gives complete freedom to the cook in his recipe book, and by doing so he foresaw the current tendency of the present era which runs against the orthodoxy of classic cuisine
.”’ 119
    But that’s just it: Is the time not yet ripe to hail freedom and even individual whims as signs of a much needed and long-awaited culinary emancipation? In