So there is a lot of fake history out
there and sometimes it is hard to tell what's fake and what's not. Even I have been
taken in on occasion because if the myth is old enough it often just becomes established truth, and perhaps no figure in history has been the subject of more fake facts than Leonardo da Vinci especially when it comes to food and so today I'm going to expose some of those
untruths as well as tell you some true truths, and to accompany it I'll be making armored turnips
from 15th century Italy. So thank you to Wondrium for sponsoring this video as we make armored turnips for Leonardo this time on Tasting History. So while some facts have absolutely no evidence to support them and others have
plenty of evidence to support them most actually kind of fit in the middle, like the
fact that Leonardo was maybe a vegetarian. Now what is definitely known is that the Renaissance man
was an avid gourmand and even owned a cookbook. 'De honesta voluptate et validudine' or "On honorable pleasure and health" by Bartolomeo
Sacchi better known as Platina, and Platina just so happens to have a number of vegetarian recipes like this one for Rapum Armatum. "Armored Turnips. Cut up boiled or ash roasted turnips; do the same with rich cheese, not too ripe, but the make the cheese pieces thinner than the turnip. In a pan greased with butter or other fat, make a layer of cheese first, then one of turnips; repeat pouring in spice and butter from time to time. It should be quickly cooked and quickly eaten." So I feel like these turnips are kind of like an early version of one of my favorite dishes: potatoes au gratin. So I'm really excited to try them. I'm also really excited by the name armored turnips and Platina says that
they are considered armored turnips as "They have been rolled in cheese, covered, as it were, with a
breastplate and cuirass, as if their descent into the lower regions would not seem safe without arms." And he says that while delicious they can be ruinous. I assume to your lower regions so fair warning. And besides Platina's wonderful little asides on this and other recipes what makes
this cookbook stand out historically is that it is the first printed cookbook and I will insert
a shameless plug for my printed cookbook now available for pre-order, and while Platina's book is mostly a compilation of other people's recipes that went before him the fact that it was printed allowed it to spread far and wide rather quickly and so it became the most influential Italian
cookbook until Bartolomeo Scappi nearly 100 years later, and I first learned about Platina and Scappi when I watched a course on Wondrium who just happens to be today's sponsor. It's called 'Cooking Across the Ages' and it features none other than friend of the show Ken Albala. I actually watched this well before I ever met Ken and his work is one of the things that got me into food history so getting to watch him cook and teach in this course is just fantastic. In the episode on 'Papal Rome' he
discusses the great feasts of the papal court and how changing attitudes during the reformation
affected the cuisine, and while Platina may have been the first printed cookbook it was Scappi's 'Opera' that was the first illustrated cookbook and even included the first image of a fork meant to
be used as an eating utensil. So if you just can't get enough food history, guilty, then I suggest you
watch this course but Wondrium isn't just food history. They have thousands of hours of courses
taught by experts like Ken on nearly every topic from music to business, science to travel, and even
in-depth tutorials on things like cake making and photography. So if you have a hankering to expand
your mind and learn something new then you can start your free trial at wondrium.com/tasting history or just click the link in the description. Oh and that picture of the first fork for
eating reminds me that often Leonardo da Vinci is credited with inventing the fork, who
I've also heard he invented the third tine on the fork. None of that's true. What is true is how simple this recipe for armored turnips is. So what you'll need is: one and a half pounds or
700 grams of turnips, three quarters pound or 340 grams of cheese. What cheese you use is really up
to you. You want something that is flavorful but not too strong like a blue cheese is not right for
this. I'm using Fontina and Taleggio because both would have been available in italy at the time
but so would have Parmesan and Mozzarella and a whole host of other cheeses so use what you want. Heck if you want Cheddar go ahead. One stick or 110 grams of melted salted butter, and then a mixture of spices often referred to as powdered douce or sweet powder. And each chef would have had their own proprietary blend so you can use as much or as little of each spice as you want and
really you can choose the spices, but common spices for it were sugar, long pepper, nutmeg, cinnamon, and ginger so that's what I'm going to mix together for my spices. Now first make sure your turnips
are washed and peeled. I did not have the heart to peel this one that I found because it kind of makes me giggle. [Giggity] Then you have to either roast or boil the turnips. I'm going to boil them and since they are rather large i'm going to cut them in half. Then I'm boiling them for about 15 minutes.
What's important is that whether you're roasting or boiling you don't want to overcook them. They're
gonna get cooked more in a little bit, and if they get overdone then they're going to be hard to to
slice they'll just kind of mush. Then you're going to take them out of the water and let them cool
and then you're going to slice them. Now Platina is not specific on how thin or thick he wants
these sliced but the person who he actually took the recipe from Maestro Martino is. He says that they should be cut "as thin as the spine of a knife" and the cheese should be cut even thinner. Now not all knives are the same width but you get the idea. Once everything is sliced pour a bit of the
melted butter into a small casserole dish and coat the bottom and the sides. Then place a layer of cheese on the bottom and cover that with a layer of sliced turnip. Then sprinkle a good large pinch of the spice mixture over the top, and pour on more melted butter over that. Continue with another layer of cheese, another of turnips, spice, then butter until the dish is full and finish it off with the cheese on top. Then set it in the oven at 400 degrees Fahrenheit or 205 Celsius and let
it bake for 12 to 15 minutes, or until the cheese is fully melted and starting to bubble around the sides. Now like I said making this recipe is really easy. What was not really easy to make was this episode and I'm about to tell you why. So when I'm researching an episode
one question that I'm always asking is what is the source because with the internet
there are a lot of questionable sources out there but what happens when reputable trusted
scholarly sources get it wrong? And everyone gets it wrong sometimes. But when I started researching for this episode I came across this treasure trove of wonderful
stories about Leonardo and food, like when he was in Florence when he was young he worked in
a restaurant with none other than the artist Sandro Botticelli. He even became a head chef at his own restaurant where he made wild dishes like frog stuffed pork bladder and once
designed a whisk the size of a giraffe. It's just amazing and later on he wrote a book
of etiquette and one of the instructions was that if there was to be an assassination at a meal
the assassin should sit beside the victim because then they won't disrupt the meal of
the other people while he kills em. And the host should have another guest standing by ready
to take his place so the table never looks empty... That can't be right... maybe it was a joke but some
of the things that I was finding just couldn't really be chalked up to joking. It was just-
they were just too absurd like the fact that how he became head chef at a restaurant was that
one night everyone else working in the kitchen was poisoned and died, hmm. It all seemed just a bit too salacious. Too good to be true. And sometimes truth is stranger than fiction. I've seen it many times
before and i was getting all of this information from reputable sources but what was odd was that
each source told the stories exactly the same way... and that just doesn't really happen. There's
always little minute changes in detail or the switching of events in a timeline. It's
just how it always happens. Having it exactly the same is very weird. So I decided to do what I always do and frankly my favorite part of the research process, and find the primary sources where all of this stuff is coming from. And it seems to all come from a set
of kitchen notes that Da Vinci wrote that have been compiled into what was called
the Romanov Codex or the Codex Romanoff but I couldn't find it, and supposedly it's
kept at the Hermitage museum but it's not. At least according to the Hermitage. Maybe
they're hiding it in St. Petersburg somewhere but it doesn't seem likely. But as luck would have it in the 1980s a historian was able to gain access to this codex and took a lot of stories
from it and put it into a book. 'Leonardo's Kitchen Notebooks' published in 1987... on April 1st 1987 by Jonathan Routh author of such scholarly works as 'Dr. Crocker's Exercise Book. Curious Cures for Swinging Invalids' and he had an acclaimed series of Michelin style guides that led you to the best toilets in all the capitals of Europe, and when not writing books he worked in television where he
produced the British version of Candid Camera. Yeah it was an April Fool's prank. And I'm sure that Mr. Routh didn't intend for it to to end up the way that it has when he wrote the book. I mean he actually put in lots of clues if you read closely that make it clearly
not real like the fact that in his kitchen Leonardo would cook with tomatoes and potatoes, things that didn't exist in Italy at the time. But after 30 years of kind of a game of telephone
and the internet's ability to spread everything it's now taken seriously in a lot of circles. So yeah that's that's why I actually almost didn't even make this episode, but then I decided that it's even more important that i tell you what's not true sometimes, because then
the next time somebody comes up to you and is like hey did you know Leonardo da Vinci created
a 200 foot long edible altar for the wedding of the Duke of Milan that got eaten by rats the night before the ceremony, you can say no that's that's not true. And I guess what makes
me kind of kind of angry about the whole situation is 1) it makes it really hard to pick out what's true and what's not in in other works because these things have embedded their way into other other works and it kind of diminishes the true and very interesting history of Leonardo da Vinci. And he already had a pretty spectacular reputation, he didn't need any help from these stories. For as the 16th century painter and historian Giorgio Vasari wrote when composing Da Vinci's biography "Truly marvelous and celestial was Leonardo,." And it's true we didn't need the myths because Leonardo da Vinci is one of the most accomplished Renaissance man of the Renaissance. A painter, a sculptor, engineer, an architect, and an all-around scientist, and while he didn't write the Codex Romanoff he did produce
over 20,000 pages of notes on every subject, and that of course includes food and cooking and near
the end of his life he actually kind of wrote down his list of rules for maintaining a good and
healthy lifestyle and much of it is given over to food. "If you want to be healthy observe this regime. Do not eat when you have no appetite and dine lightly, chew well and whatever you take into you should be well cooked and of simple ingredients... Stay standing a while when you get up from a meal... Let your wine be mixed with water, take little at a time. Not between meals, nor on an empty stomach. Neither delay nor prolong your visit to the toilet." So clearly that was a problem even before magazines and cell phones. Now as an architect Da Vinci had some very strong opinions
on how the layout of a kitchen and the cupboards, and dining rooms should be and in 1482 after
joining the court of Ludovico Sforza he was given the chance to put his ideas into practice
when he oversaw the remodel of Sforza's castle. "The large room for the retainers should be away
from the kitchen, so the master of the house may not hear their clatter. And let the kitchen be convenient for washing the pewter so it may not be seen carried through the house... The larder, woodstore, kitchen, chicken coop, and servants' hall should be adjoining for convenience. Food from the kitchen may be served through wide low windows, or on tables that turn on swivels..." Now in addition to architect Da Vinci is a well known inventor even if some of the most famous things like his flying machines never actually made it off the paper, and while much of his focus was on machines of war he did dabble in kitchen gadgets. Now today you'll see Leonardo
credited with the invention of the napkin, spaghetti itself, and a nutcracker powered by three horses. None of that is true, nor did he ever invent a kitchen gadget that was so dangerous to humans
that he suggested it be run by bees. BEES?! Bees. I mean I'd say you can't make this stuff up
but that's exactly what it was. It was all made up. But he did invent several kitchen appliances which I think were rather ingenious including a spit for roasting meat that
didn't require somebody to actually be turning it the entire time. There were actually two versions one you would wind it up and then it would go like a wind-up car and it would go on
its own but the other which is truly amazing was powered by the heat that was coming up from the fireplace, and it would turn the meat on its own with nobody doing anything. Now when it comes to actual food his writings are a little bit more enigmatic. He did keep details of what foods were in his storehouses but you don't really learn anything out of the ordinary because all the ingredients are things everyone would have like grains, nuts, legumes, honey, fruits, vegetables, and
meat as well as large stores of wine, something he enjoyed immensely. "The discovery of a good wine is increasingly better for mankind the discovery of a new star." Hi! Max here from about a week after I filmed this video, filming another one right now, um so this is irony at its best. It turns out that
that quote by Da Vinci might not actually be by Da Vinci. Quotes often get misattributed and I think
that this might be one of them. I saw it in a lot of different places and just assumed it was right, and so I put it in but I didn't go and try to find where it was actually from. Turns out I can't
find where it's actually from that doesn't mean it's not out there but while I was researching
the NEXT video I came across a quote by the French gourmond Brillat-Savarin that said
"The discovery of a new dish does more for the happiness of the human race than the discovery of a star." That's pretty darn close and I actually do know where he wrote that maybe he was you know paraphrasing Da Vinci but I kind of think that it was it was kind of just misattributed and I
was going to cut it out usually I would have, but I thought that in this video specifically I think it
would be important to leave it in to show you that everyone makes mistakes. The important thing is
that once you realize the mistake that you just don't make it again. Okay back to the video. Now his love of wine which he usually drank watered and sometimes with a bit of honey likely inspired a gift from his patron in 1497. It was a plot of land outside of the walls of Milan that
featured a vineyard and for the rest of his life Da Vinci referred to it as his garden. Now perhaps
most famously when it comes to Leonardo's food preferences is the idea that he was a vegetarian
at least for a portion of his life, but even that- it's in question. So much so that very few of
his biographers ever even mentioned the fact and you'd think that a 15th century Italian vegetarian
would be worth mentioning. Thought one of Da Vinci's contemporaries does mention his unconventional eating habits when discussing the Gujarati people of Indiai. He says that they "are so gentle that they
do not feed on anything that has blood, nor will they allow anyone to hurt any living thing, like
our Leonardo da Vinci; they live on rice and other inanimate foods." And Da Vinci did have strong feelings on the treatment of of animals. He was definitely an animal lover but some of his
writings that are often used as evidence are hard to really use because in one it's a list of you
know we shouldn't treat animals like this because you know we do this to the calf and all of these
different things he even goes on about taking honey from bees, but in the same list he says
that "Many offspring shall be snatched by cruel thrashing thrashing from the very arms of their mothers,
and flung on the ground, and crushed". But he's not talking about any animal he's talking about olives
so kind of muddies the waters Leonardo. As does the fact that he had plenty of meat in his in his pantries but that could have been to feed other people in the household, we don't know so it's really hard to come to any conclusion. Personally I do think that Leonardo leaned toward vegetarianism at least for a portion of his life, and in one of his writings he's kind of chastising people around
him when he says "Now does not nature produce enough simple food for you to satisfy yourself? And if you are not content with such, can you not by the mixture of them make infinite compounds, as Platina describes and other writers on food?" Well what he means by simple foods is up for debate,
the fact that he mentions Platina would make sense because Platina spends quite a bit of his book
talking about the virtues of different fruits and vegetables and actually has a number of vegetarian
recipes like today's for armored turnips. So once the cheese is melted and bubbling around
the sides take the dish out of the oven, and serve it right away, and here we are armored turnips
from 15th century Italy. Smells wonderfully cheesy, and you can kind of smell those those spices, and just- it's an interesting combination. I don't think turnips smell. I don't know. It's the cheese that I smell. Let's give it a go. [CHOMP[ Sorry. So maybe give it like five minutes
before you serve it because it's really, really hot. Also the cheese is very stringy but the flavor is wonderful. Really, really different because
those spices- you just don't like you wouldn't mix cinnamon and nutmeg today
with cheese and turnips so it's an odd odd pairing but actually a really nice pairing
because it's not super sweet or anything. I also like that the turnips they aren't
mush. They have a little bite to them and I think that that's going to be best
also sometimes when turnips are cooked too long they can actually become bitter and I think you- so you want to steer away from that but I think that the most important thing is going
to be your choice of of cheese because that is the dominant flavor. You want something that melts you want something that's present but really don't want anything that is going to super overpower everything else on the dish. So I definitely suggest making it it's super easy and you know
especially if you like potatoes au gratin this is just a little bit different and that's kind of
fun to experiment. Definitely worth making. So make sure to check me out on Instagram @tastinghistorywithmaxmiller, I'll put a link to my cookbook for pre-sale down in the description and just reminder that if something that you read seems to be too good to be true... it probably is and
i'll see you next time on Tasting History.
Oh cool! Recipe sounds good and I genuinely appreciate that you're honest about the research process (and how even reputable sources get it wrong sometimes). Great video!
Excellent! This was really fun to watch and listen to. I’ve seen bits and pieces of your videos and they are always well done!
Just ordered the book, I’m so excited to try new (or very old) recipes!