THEORETICAL-PRACTICAL CUISINE by Ippolito Cavalcanti – 1837
Academia Barilla - Gastronomic Library
"Did you know that Ippolito Cavalcanti, a Neapolitan nobleman and descendant of the poet Guido Cavalcanti, friend of Dante Alighieri, published ten editions of ""La Cucina teorica-pratica""?
A treatise on Campanian cuisine which, also including recipes of French inspiration, documents the influence of French gastronomy on aristocratic tables in the mid-19th century."
"Theoretical-pratical Cuisine" by Ippolito Cavalcanti holds notable importance in Italian gastronomic literature from a historical point of view.
Ippolito Cavalcanti, Duke of Buonvicino (1787–1859), was a Neapolitan nobleman and a descendant of the Dolce Stil Novo poet and friend of Dante Alighieri, Guido Cavalcanti.
Passionate about gastronomy, he wrote this treatise on traditional Neapolitan cuisine, which also includes some recipes of French inspiration, since cuisine from across the Alps was, in the mid-1800s, very widespread on aristocratic tables.
Ippolito Cavalcanti’s work would go through ten editions, the last one in 1877, and is part of the collection in Academia Barilla’s Gastronomic Library.
The author winks at territoriality rather than the ideal of a “national” cuisine and reveals the first description of a vermicelli dish dressed with tomato sauce.
At that time, spaghetti had already been widespread in Italy for several centuries, while tomato preserves began to spread only at the end of the eighteenth century. Lazzaro Spallanzani, a natural sciences scholar, first discovered in 1762 that by placing boiled tomatoes in airtight containers, they could be preserved longer. But it was Nicolas Appert who popularized this method, soon adopted by the emerging food industry in the nineteenth century.
And did you know the origins of the most iconic traditional Italian pasta dish, pasta with tomato sauce?