Recently Jim and I went to Italy for our 25th wedding anniversary. Before we went we researched museums that we wanted to visit. Jim found a food museum called Garum, Biblioteca e Museo della Cucina, the history of Italian food from the fifteenth century to the present. The museum has very limited opening hours so we took a chance and decided to go and find it to see if it might be open. much to our pleasant surprise the curator was there and let us in to look around. I mentioned to her that I was interested in seeing the first edition of the Opera of Bartolomeo Scappi that was on display, and that I use it frequently. She told me that it wasn't on display but it was in the museum and that when we were done looking around she could let me see it. what I did not expect was that she would bring me the book and let me hold it. What an amazing and wonderful experience.
My thoughts were too numerous to to put into words at that moment, but now that I have had some time to digest what I got to hold, a (500 year old) book. Just feeling the old paper, looking at the printing, and the inscription hand written on the title page was so vastly different from the books we read today. Mere words cannot do the experience justice. How do you reconcile yourself to knowing that the thing you study(medieval & renaissance cooking) is laying in your grasp? I had just cooked a feast using the book, and to know the very recipes I used were between my fingers. As I looked through the pages of the book, written in Italian, I truly wished I could read Italian. But knowing that this book was the foundation that modern cookbooks are modeled after, amazed me. This was an experience that will never be forgotten.
The other books, a 1540 copy of Apicius, and a first edition 1549 of Banchetti. While I did not get to hold them, just seeing them was a thrill. The museum also had bread pans from the sixteenth century to jello molds from the 1950's on display.
The photos I am including from top to bottom,
.jpg)
.jpg)
