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JULY/AUGUST 2004
“The Master
Cookbook”
Submitted by John Iorio
At fifteen, I worked with notable
apathy in a restaurant in Belmar,
New Jersey. The chef, Giovanni,
joyless from birth, reminded us
that cooking was a quest for the
absolute. “Read Platina on taste,”
he would shout. “Read Platina on
the nature of foods. Read
Platina....” I had no idea who
Platina was. The 16-hour day
prevented my going to the library;
the eleven dollars a week ruled out
book buying. Decades later, I
realized that Giovanni had not
been mispronouncing Plato.
Platina was a real person who lived
500 years ago.
The Renaissance, mother of many
visions, beginnings and attitudes
that we now claim as our own, had
a habit of categorizing all human
activity into major and minor arts
or, to calm Giovanni, fine and
useful arts. Cooking became a
useful art. Post-Columbian
imports, such as the potato and
tomato from the New World and
spices from the East, rose cooking
to where it had never been. Yet, a
few centuries earlier, priests
berated peasants for seasoning
their boiled pasta with salt and
pepper. Self-flagellation must have
followed when peasants began to
use tomatoes on their ziti.
The Romans under the Republic
had a very simple diet – bread,
honey, olives, and cheese for
breakfast; grains and vegetables
and fruit for dinner and always
wine, often diluted. Only the rich
were able to reach for the meat and
fish. Later, under the Empire,
excess reigned, giving us the
eating and drinking scenes that are
now a staple of Hollywood Roman
films. Some historians have even
seen the Roman kitchen as another
reason for the fall of Rome. The
wealthy had gone to pot – the lead
pot. The lead poisoning lowered
the birthrate and health of the
upper classes so that they were
unable to supply leadership during
the late stages of the Empire.
Moral: stay poor.
Not until the Renaissance did
cooking emerge as an art, and
Bartolomeo Sacchi penned the first
cookbook in 1474. Better known
as Platina, a Latin version of his
birthplace, Piadena, near Cremona,
his book, De Honesta Voluptate et
Valetudine (Of Worthy Indulgence
and Health), became for centuries
the final arbiter of culinary
disputes. The title was especially
apt for a time of corruption and a
weakening of church doctrine – a
time of skepticism. Once heaven
was shorn of its rewards and hell
of its terrors, humans were free to
pursue pleasures of the world. As
Platina said, “What evil can there
be in well-considered indulgence”
Platina, who studied science and
Greek culture, rose high in Vatican
circles and before going into the
kitchen, had written an acclaimed
History of the Popes. However,
Popes and power change and to be
out of favor was a euphemism for
PAGE 14
jail time. Platina’s view of Pope
Paul II as an ogre of vanity and
greed did not help his resume. For
almost a decade, Platina was in
favor and out of favor, in prison
and out of prison. The kitchen
seemed a good career move.
Platina’s cookbook gives not only
recipes but also advice on related
matters like sex and exercise (both
in moderation, he says). It is also a
guide to foods. His book rests on
two important Renaissance beliefs
– the science of humors and
ancient Greek moderation.
An ancient theory has it that the
body is governed by four humors
allied with the four elements:
Blood (air), choler (fire), phlegm
(water), and black bile (earth). The
humors gave off vapors that
ascended to the brain. An
imbalance among them (bad
humor) would make a person
sanguine, choleric, phlegmatic or
melancholy. Agita, for example,
indicates bad humor. A committee
meeting with everyone having
agita would make for a bad
afternoon. A balance of the humors
was called “good humor.” Platina,
in an old variation of you are what
you eat, argued that food could
regulate the humors.
Steeped in Greek culture, Platina
also believed in moderation and
proportion in all things. While his
major meal included three courses,
the portions are modest, beginning
with vegetables, followed by meat
and completed with fruit and
cheese. And of course, always
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