Leaves from our Tuscan kitchen; or, How to cook vegetables

OR HOW TO COOK VEGETABLES
A.H. Hallam Murray. The Kitchen Poggio Gherardo.
LEAVES from OUR TUSCAN KITCHEN or How to Cook Vegetables
by JANET ROSS
LONDON JM DENT AND CO. 29 & 30 BEDFORD STREET W.C. 1899
Edinburgh: T. and A. Constable, Printers to Her Majesty
To Mrs. G. F. Watts
Dear friend, will you accept this little book? It may sometimes bring a thought of Italy into your beautiful Surrey home
The innate love of change in man is visible even in the kitchen. Not so very long ago soup was an exception in English houses—almost a luxury. A dish of vegetables—as a dish and not an adjunct to meat—was a still greater rarity; and even now plain-boiled potatoes, peas, cabbages, etc., are the rule. When we read of the dishes, fearfully and wonderfully made, in the old Italian novelle , we wonder whence the present Italians got their love of vegetables and maccaroni.
Sacchetti tells us that in the fourteenth century a baked goose, stuffed with garlic and quinces, was considered an exquisite dish; and when the gonfalonier of Florence gave a supper to a famous doctor, he put before him the stomach of a calf, boiled partridges, and pickled sardines. Gianfigliazzi’s cook sent up a roasted crane to his master as a delicacy, says Boccaccio; and a dish of leeks cooked with spices appears as a special dish in the rules of the chapter of San Lorenzo when the canons messed together. Old Laschi, author of that delightful book L’Osservatore Fiorentino , moralises on the ancient fashion of cooking in his pleasant rather prosy way: ‘It would not seem that the senses should be subjected to fashion; and yet such is the case. The perfumes, once so pleasing, musk, amber, and benzoin, now excite convulsions; sweet wines, such as Pisciancio, Verdea, Montalcino, and others mentioned by Redi in his dithyrambic, are now despised; and instead of the heavy dishes of olden times, light and elegant ones are in vogue. Whoever characterised man as a laughing animal ought rather to have called him a variable and inconstant one.’