Cooking. Reflections for an anthropological history of pizza

COOKING IS ONE OF MAN'S POSSIBLE CULTURAL RESPONSES TO THE NEED FOR NOURISHMENT.

An English study carried out between 2013 and 2015 reveals that, if properly educated, even chimpanzees are able to wait for the food to be "cooked", but these are obviously environmental conditions that are difficult to replicate in nature and, above all, a practice which consists in reheating or cooking at a “low temperature”. Over time, however, man has developed increasingly complex food cooking systems, trying to adapt the desire for healthy and tasty food to his own conditions.

CLAUDE LEVI-STRAUSS WAS THE FIRST TO EMPHASIZE "COOKING AS CULTURE"

the anthropologist who, perhaps more than any other, has influenced the way of seeing, understanding and analysing contemporary Western society starting from those populations that many considered (erroneously) "primitive" prior to his studies. Commenting on one of the most important works by Levi-Strauss (The Raw and the Cooked), one of his most passionate scholars (and friends), Marino Niola wrote in 2016 in La Repubblica: "In the beginning of everything is fire, incipit of every mythological epic, origin of every metamorphosis. Because, by allowing food to be cooked, it takes humanity out of the state of nature and into culture. That's cooking. As if to say that at the same moment in which men begin to produce fire, fire begins to produce men”. It would therefore be fire that transforms us "from animals to Gods" (to quote Yuval Noah Harari). And it is no coincidence that one of the most famous myths of antiquity attributes to an alterHercules, Prometheus, the ascent to heaven in search of the wisdom of the Gods not with a fruit (as in Genesis) but through the "theft of fire". However, Prometheus is not alone: in fact, there are numerous societies scattered across the four corners of the planet that tell similar cosmogonies (stories about the origin of the known world) where fire is at the center of the development of knowledge. Of course, not all the myths concerning fire speak of food: fire is in fact essential for heating, for keeping predatory animals away but also for cooking. However, it is the latter that "creates" culture more than any other. As beautifully summed up by Andrea Camilleri:

“When Eve took the apple from the tree and offered it to Adam, she created culture. The first mother who weaned her child on berries that she had discovered to be edible created culture. The first man who pointed a stone to hunt, and therefore to eat, created culture. The first man who engraved a buffalo on the rock to communicate that there was hunting there, and therefore food, created culture. The first man who realized that animal meat was tasty created culture. The first man who poked two holes in a dinosaur egg, drank it and advised his clan to do the same, created culture. The first man who made a spark by rubbing two sticks with which he lit a fire, with which he cooked the meat of buffaloes, created culture. The first man who, angry about the buffalo that had just escaped from him, crushed some olives with his hands and realized that they could be a good condiment for buffalo meat, created culture. The first man who, after an indigestion of buffalo meat, proceeded to warn others that one shouldn't eat too much of it, created culture. The first African and the first Indo-European who exchanged their different foods created culture”.

The Culinary Triangle

But which type of cooking is the most culturally advanced? That with the use of containers, that on stone (now soapstone) or the geothermal type, that exploits the natural heat of the subsoil? It is difficult to say but we can certainly agree that foods can present themselves to man in three conditions: raw, cooked or putrid. These categories that Levi-Strauss identifies as "universal" (because they are present in all societies) each represent an aspect of our community life: the raw constitutes the natural aspect of food, the cooked is the cultural transformation of the raw while the putrid is its natural transformation. This is what the author calls the "culinary triangle" on which we have the opposites of processed and unprocessed food on one side and that between culture and nature on the other. According to Lévi-Strauss, nothing is simply "cooked", but every "cooked" has its own way; likewise, there is no pure "raw" food: in fact, only certain foods can be eaten raw, but on the condition that they are first washed, peeled, cut and in many cases also seasoned. In practice "assimilated", or made similar to what for us is "good for thought" even before eating. It is no coincidence that even the societies that practiced cannibalism, before having the ritual lunch with the defeated enemy, disguised them as a member of their own community, precisely in order to "assimilate" them. As the anthropologist Remotti writes, this means that "otherness should not be eaten raw" or rather that everything that enters us must in some way "resemble us", that is to say be attributable to something already known, in terms of shape, taste or texture. Just as happens in the weaning of children which takes place gradually and not by shock.

The Pizza In Home And Public Cooking

Within the culinary triangle theorized by LeviStrauss, however, there are also differences between the types of cooking, in particular between roasted and boiled meat, the two most common cooking methods from which techniques and tools that have continued to the present day. Boiled meat is in fact cooked inside a container with different types of liquids, roasted is cooked outside the container, almost always in direct contact with the fire.

FOR THIS REASON, LEVI-STRAUSS

DEFINES THE BOILED MEAT TECHNIQUE AS AN "ENDO-COOKING" FOR DOMESTIC USE AND INTENDED FOR SMALL CLOSED, FAMILY GROUPS, WHILE THE ROAST IS CALLED "EXO-COOKING", THAT IS, COOKING MADE FOR GUESTS.

It is no coincidence that pizza supports this propensity in an almost didactic way: the "Neapolitan" pizza (as well as the "classical") is in fact cooked directly on the stone in "almost direct" contact with the fire and the ingredients are - according to tradition - placed on the pizza almost always raw and cooked with it, without preliminary treatments. The pizza in the wheel or pan is instead a direct descendant of that pizza that was cooked together with bread and which was a delicacy to bring to the table to delight the family. However, it requires one more step: a tool, a container on which to cook it.

Today, the constant search for innovation has brought the latter to a place of honour on the table, but the goal often declared by pizza makers is precisely that of taking up a family tradition, which confirms what has just been written. But what about the cooking of the ingredients? As mentioned a few lines above, originally it was not customary to place precooked products on the pizza, let alone add ingredients after cooking the dough disc. Today, however, contemporary pizza provides more and more preparations cooked separately, some of which require placing on the pizza after it has been cooked, exactly as happened on the mensae, the mixtures of water and flour which in ancient Rome served as cooking and serving dishes. Nothing new under the sun, therefore, but only a practice that reinvigorates the link with the tradition of a "legendary recipe".

CHEAP OR EXPENSIVE?

Before coming to conclusions, allow me to share a curios fact with you: if you love to place boiled meat on your pizza, i.e. meat cooked in a container (from the classic pot to professional trays up to the cooking boxes born during the First World War and back in vogue), you're reconnecting to the idea of home economics; if you prefer to use the roast, you are closer to the idea of prodigality. As stated in Taccuini Gastrosofici, the digital encyclopaedia of food cultures and policies accessible for free online and directed by Alex Revelli Sorini and Susanna Cutini for the San Raffaele University of Rome and the Italian Academy of Cuisine:

“Roast and boiled meat represent two methods of preparation that allow the meat to preserve its nutritional juices differently: boiled meat preserves them in the sauce created after cooking in water; the roast, based on the type of preparation, loses them partially”, which is why “one is popular, the other aristocratic”. For example, it is said that Charlemagne was particularly fond of roasts, ça va sans dire. As food historian Massimo Montanari argues: "eating behaviors are the result not only of rationally pursued economic, nutritional and health assessments, but also of choices linked to the imagination and symbols of which we are bearers and in some way prisoners". Meat cooked at a low temperature and then subjected to the Maillard reaction before being served presents a few more difficulties: does it belong to the group that practices home economics or the big spenders? But this is another story, it is up to us to interpret it according to the patterns we know. Marino Niola (who writes about it in the aforementioned article for La Repubblica) explains: "Raw and cooked, roasted and boiled, putrid and smoked, dried and marinated become the vowels and consonants of a universal grammar that serves to articulate words but also habits, customs, ways of living, thinking, feeling. In short, the kitchen is humanity's true start-up, the big bang from which civilizations are born”. I close with a suggestion. If you want to know everythingabsolutely everything - about the history and techniques of cooking, I recommend reading Cuocere by Eugenio Signoroni, a very current manual written by a true enthusiast.

BY MARISA CAMMARANO

Very often, the weight of food changes after cooking because, during this time, its structure varies. The final product also differs according to the cooking method. When boiling, food tends to double in weight, because it comes into contact with water and incorporates it. On the contrary, if you roast food, the water is removed and the weight can decrease. Understanding how the conversion of the weight of cooked to raw foods works can also and above all be useful both for calculating the yield in the preparation of a pizza or dish and for calculating the food cost of the dish itself. In order not to make mistakes, it is possible to bear in mind precise conversions, to know how the weight of the food changes from cooked to raw.