Paolo Mantegazza as Didatic Gastronome: Food, Art, Science and the New Italian Nation

Abstract

It is in Risorgimento Italy that there is an incessant quest for a definition of what it means to be Italian amongst a reality of economic paucity and clear social divisiveness. During this tenuous yet crucial epoch, there is a cohesive attempt to define Italian taste with an ideological terminology previously absent from sensorial and aesthetic discourse. A fundamental purveyor of this novel approach is the self-defined "poligamo delle scienze," Paolo Mantegazza. To the plurality of roles attributed to the medic (anthropologist, pathologist, senator, writer, etc.), there is one yet to be explored-Mantegazza as didactic gastronome. In the attempt to combat what he considers the anti-hygienic conditions plaguing the nation, the medic inaugurates a pedagogic process that would ideally lead to the formation of the Italian citizen. With the goal of creating a stronger and more capable Italian populace, the author goes to great lengths to provide guidelines for maximizing nourishment through the humblest of foods. Ultimately, Mantegazza's pedagogic gourmandism is integral in the propagation of a social model of comportment that defines the Positivist framework of biological and nationalistic renewal and to a new vision of taste.Keywords: Mantegazza; Artusi; Italian taste; food as art; Italian nationalism Nell'amore il prima è spesso un prurito che fa male o un uragano che schianta gli alberi e rovina le messi. Il mentre è dolcissimo, ma ahimé, dura troppo poco. Non dirò coll'epicurea francese, che cela ne dure que le temps d'avaler un oeuf, ma dobbiamo pur confessare, che il mentre si misura non a giorni, né a ore; ma coll'orologio a minuti secondi.Il poi, poi, è ora acido, è ora amaro: nei casi più fortunati è un languore, cioé una forma di stanchezza. Nei casi più disgraziati, che pur son frequenti, è un dolore o un pentimento o l'uno e l'altro insieme.

Science in the Kitchen and beyond: Cooking with Pellegrino Artusi in Post-Unified Italy

“…Mantegazza published widely on food, its medical use and political significance. See Turbil (2018) and De Feo (2016).…”