The Sweet Chinese – Italian Connection
The 2012 year of the dragon, Chinese New Year is quickly approaching on January 23rd (4710 in the old calendar as I calculated from Wikipedia). And so, I started to wonder if there were any real relevant connections between Chinese and Italian food. My curiosity, led me to do a little bit of light research which resulted in a much more interesting tale than I could have imagined.
Of course we all know the Marco Polo story. Our boy starts off in Italy, makes his way to the Orient, kicks his heels back a while and then finally returns about 17 years later with noodles in hand. And presto! Macaroni is born.
But being a history buff, I didn’t stop there. I began to trace a path back and forth through time and taste to the ancient world all the way through to one of the most influential women in history, and coincidentally also Italian, Catherine de Medici.
Born to the Florentine, bank-rolling, wealthiest family in Italy, Catherine is loosely attributed with introducing several
noteworthy and well-received, items, to the French court in 1533, when she married, to become the Valois queen at only 14 years old, which have had a permanent and lasting imprint on culture.
The two pronged fork is one of them. She evidently was hell bent on civilizing the eating habits of the known world starting with French dinner tables (oh Mamma!), and at court thoroughly did away with the distasteful practice of “shoveling” food into ones mouth. The Fork not so widely used previous to her arrival, had gained popularity by the 16th century through Italian etiquette and through her entourage, the requirement of a guest to arrive with his or her, own fork and spoon in a small box or cadena, was introduced.
Another was the corset. Although there is evidence of various body shaping garments in the ancient world, the corset as we know it is erroneously attributed to Catherine. In fact, so concerned with retaining her feminine figure, she even enforced a ban on thick waists at court attendance during the 1550s. Could that be ultimately why we are so in love with “tasting” menus? For sampling would have been perhaps all one could do with a tightly caged digestive tract.
A modern version of the high-heeled shoe is without a doubt one the sexier deliveries designed by her fashionistas-in-tow. Wearing them at her wedding they created an unmistakable and awesome stir. “So fashionably Italian!”
But my favorite, as I was surprised to discover, was that through Catherine and her bevy of Italian confectioners who accompanied her to France, most specifically, Bernardo Buontalenti for the de’ Medici of Florence in 1565, (although some also credit Giuseppe Ruggeri who was said to have produced a sorbetto for Catherine during a contest and later after surviving physical attacks secretly, as some history books would have it, urged by jealous French chefs, left her with the recipe in hand) she introduced — and you might not ever have guessed — ICE-CREAM. *
“No other food boasts of more legends of discovery than ice cream.”
Now where the connection gets really fun here is that ice-cream is said to have been invented in none other than China. The Chinese are generally credited for creating ice creams as early as 3000 B.C. Other stories note the first “concoction” resembling modern ice cream, as being made in China during the Tang period (A.D. 618 to 907). Ice cream makers for King Tang of Shang are said to have heated buffalo, cow, and goat milk together, then fermented the brew to form yogurt which they thickened with flour and rice, and finally, flavored with camphor.
But we Italians are most famous for what we’ve borrowed and perfected, and so as legend would also have it, Mr. Polo, as it has been claimed through the ages, also returned from his spectacular journey with a recipe in hand for what, by the sixteenth century, credited Italians as “the undisputed masters in developing methods of chilling and freezing.”
Since introducing ice cream to Europe in the Middle Ages, Italy has never relinquished its lead. And ice cream over the centuries has, in many countries, been the province of Italian émigrés. *
From granite and sorbetto, famous through the Sicilians for flavors like lemon and coffee, to sherberts originally made as wine coolers from fruit, spices, leaves, honey and mountain ice, which refreshed rulers like Nero during the Roman Empire, to creamy egg yolk based Florentine gelato in the 16th century, to more complicated confections like Neopolitan Bricks (aka Spumoni) in the 19th, it seems Italians have had more than a hand in historically pleasing millions of taste buds all over the world.
And last but not least – what would our famous frozen dairy dessert be without the ice cream cone.
Before the invention of the waffle cone, ice cream was either licked out of a small glass or taken away wrapped in a paper which was in later centuries sometimes called a “penny lick” or a “hokey pokey” derived from the Italian “ecco un poco” meaning “here is a little”. The first cones can be traced back to as early as 1888. There are also cookbooks that trace waffles back as early as the 1700s.
But in 1902 Antonio Valvona of Manchester, England received a patent for an “Apparatus for Baking Biscuit Cups for Ice Cream”; and in 1903, when, tired of people walking off with or breaking the glasses with which he served his ice cream from his New York City street, pushcart, Italian street vendor, Marchiony, invented and patented a Waffle Cup with tiny handles.
So much history and so much deliciousness in one tiny little invention. I can’t wait to celebrate with my neighbors this year in China Town, Los Angeles. I’ll take some Lychee or Green Tea Bing Chi Lin (ice cream) with those noodles please!
Gung Hay Fat Choy!
