Now we've all heard the phrase to eat like a
king but today I've decided to up the stakes and feast like a pope on "Torta d'herbe communi", or
common herb pie. Bartolomeo Scappi, personal chef to the papacy and pioneer of Italian Renaissance
cuisine leaves us this recipe which is so rich that I might have to sell some indulgences
just to pay for it. This time on Tasting History. Today's recipe comes from Bartolomeo Scappi's
seminal work the "Opera dellarte del Cucinare" of 1570. "Per fare torta d'herbe communi" To prepare
common herb pie, and it's the herbs that are common not the pie. Get tender chard greens, spinach
tops, mint and marjoram, cut them up small, wash them and let them drain by themselves. Then
get two pounds of fresh ricotta, a pound and a half of grated Parmesan cheese, six ounces of fat cheese,
six ounces of fresh butter, half an ounce of pepper, three quarters of an ounce of cinnamon,
a quarter ounce of cloves, six fresh eggs beaten and 6 ounces of sugar, with all those
things make up a filling. Have a tort pan ready, lined with a sheet of royal dough and with its
flaky-pastry twist around it. Put the filling into it and cover it with a rippled sheet of pastry.
Bake it in an oven or braise it. Serve it hot it is optional whether you make it deep or shallow."
Ilove that he calls this a common herb tort it, makes it sound so light and healthy and then
you read what's actually in it and put your cardiologist on standby. Despite the cavalcade
of coronary clogging constituents it really is the perfect autumnal dish. I mean why
procrastinate on that winter body. But despite that, it is going to be huge if we use
the amounts that Scappi prescribes so I'm going to halve everything and it's still going to make a
massive pie. So for this recipe you will need chard, spinach, mint and marjoram. Now the amount of those
greens that you use in the pie is really up to you, but i would steer away from using too much mint,
and too much margarine because they will definitely overpower the chard and the spinach. One pound
or 450 grams of ricotta cheese, three quarters of a pound or 340 grams of grated parmesan, 3 ounces
or 85 grams of a high-fat cheese. Now he doesn't specify what fat cheese to use he just says a fat
cheese so I ended up using marscapone because it was becoming popular around that time in Italy and
it's a little sweet and you'll see Bartolomeo Scappi loves sweet things in his food so that's what
I'm using, but go ahead and use whatever you like. Six tablespoons or 85 grams of softened butter, one
tablespoon of pepper, four and a half teaspoons of cinnamon, one half teaspoon of cloves, one half cup
of sugar. Now you're probably thinking that I said the wrong amount of some of those spices.
I mean four and a half teaspoons of cinnamon, and a tablespoon of pepper that's a lot, that's
a lot of both of those things and you are right. We'll get into it but Scappi uses a lot of
spices and a lot of sugar. Three medium eggs, and two portions of flaky pastry dough now when
it comes to the dough you can pretty much use whatever you want he says royal dough, but he's not
terribly specific in the book of exactly what that is. There are multiple versions throughout but it
is going to be like a flaky pastry so just make any kind of flaky pastry. Now he also mentions
a flaky pastry twist that was a really complex leavened pastry that was made with butter,eggs
and rose water and then it was sprinkled with clove, and cinnamon, and sugar, and nutmeg and then
it was rolled with either hard-boiled egg yolks, or bone marrow and then pine nuts and raisins, so
really, really complex. Really, really interesting and something that we're not going to be making
today because it was only added as decoration and then it was actually removed and eaten completely
separately. So it's not really part of the dish, it's just there to kind of bake along with the pie
but I would love to someday do an entire episode just making it because it sounds really weird. So
first we are going to blind bake the bottom crust of our tort and that is because it does tend to
get a soggy bottom if you don't. And if you don't, roll the dough thin enough like I did not it also
tends to get a little bit of a soggy bottom so make sure to roll it nice and thin. So go ahead
and preheat your oven to 450 degrees fahrenheit or 230 celsius. Then line either a deep pie
tin or a cake pan with half of your dough, prick the dough with a fork and then fill it
with pie weights. I can't find my pie weights so I ended up using rice and it works great but you
can use beans or whatever you want. Once the oven is heated set the crust on the lower rack of the
oven and bake for about 12 to 15 minutes, or until it's fairly dried out. Then take it out and let
it cool completely. Also go ahead and lower the oven temperature to 350 fahrenheit or 180 celsius
which is what we will bake our tort at. Then wash and dry your greens, and chop them up nice and fine.
Then in a large bowl mix the ricotta, the parmesan which Scappi calls the greatest of the cheeses,
the mascarpone or whatever fat cheese you're using, and mix them all together until fairly smooth.
Then add in the eggs and beat until incorporated . Then add in the butter and the sugar, and mix
together and your spices and mix those in as well. Finally add in your greens and mix until evenly
distributed. Everything before the greens can be mixed together using an electric mixer, but
once you add the greens mix that part by hand otherwise the greens will get all beat up. Then
pour the filling into the crust and smooth the top.Then place the other half of your dough on
to. Now Scappi says it should be rippled which I thought was really weird because when I put my
dough on and rippled it just kind of looked odd, but then i realized it's because the insides are
going to expand a little bit and this will allow for the dough to expand with it, so then at the
end the dough is pretty much flat kind of magical. Now you can put the tort in the oven right now,
but if you want to give the top a little bit of color while you're in there go ahead and put an
egg wash on top. Then set the tort in the oven on the lowest rack for one hour, or until the top
is nice and golden. Now while our tort bakes I am going to subscribe to a glass of wine and ask that
you subscribe to Tasting History and make sure to hit that notification bell so you never miss your
weekly dose of food history. Also that reminds me let us look at what else signore Scappi's
opera prescribes when feeding a pope. Pope Pius V was consecrated in 1566 and almost
immediately started to reform the vatican from what he saw as overindulgent. Kinda looks
like a sneaky Santa Claus in that image, right? One of his first actions was a papal bull prohibiting
bullfighting an anti-bull bull but that was followed by a number of less endearing decrees
such as the banishment of Jews from most of the papal states in 1569. But in his fervor to reform
the Church he also did away with many of the lavish state dinners that had become so popular
under his predecessors. So that left Bartholomeo Scappi while not out of a job, but with a lot more
time on his hands. So just like I have that YA fantasy novel kicking around in my head, and one
day i'm gonna put it down on paper and ship it off to a publisher, Scappi had one thousand recipes
in his head which he finally had time to put down for us in a book. So in 1570 Scappi published the
Opera dellarte del Cucinare, more often referred to as Scappi's opera and that means "Scappi's work". It
doesn't actually mean like an opera like we talk about it today, there is no singing unfortunately
in this book. The opera is actually broken up into six books: the first being an imagined conversation
with his apprentice Giovanni kind of telling him how best to run a kitchen and what's really
interesting is you get a glimpse into the mindset of a chef of the Italian Renaissance. "He must be
alert, patient and modest in everything he does, and as sober as possible because whoever is without
a good deal of sobriety loses patience as well as a natural taste of things." Though I find a glass
of wine in the kitchen actually aids in patience. "He should place his patron's honor, along with
his own, above all else, and his usefulness to his patron above everything else. First and foremost
he should endeavor to understand the nature and quality of the princes and other lords whom
he will serve so as to accommodate them as much as he can. He should not rely upon nor have complete
faith in his assistants, nor any other subordinate keeping in mind the old saying that he who
places great trust will end up greatly deceived." Good advice I suppose not just a little cynical
for my taste, but Scappi's lack of trust in his subordinates is illustrated by something actually
in the kitchen which he mentions later in book one. "On one side of the room should be a cabinet ten
hands high and six wide, with several compartments that can all be locked holding sugars, spices and
other things used daily in the personal food of the Prince." Now the cabinets needed to be able
to be locked because the spices were incredibly precious at the time so he didn't want you know
people wandering in and stealing his spices. Also Scappi loved his spices basically he
kind of set the tone for renaissance cuisine being just filled with spice and sugar. Sugar
was his favorite. Out of the thousand recipes in the opera fully 900 of them have sugar as an
ingredient. So while we see recipes for dishes that are reminiscent of something that we would eat
today like an early form of pizza or lobster or even chicken soup, the amount of sugar and
spices in them would definitely give your palette a bit of a whirl, and so he deals with those
recipes over the next five books, and in the second book he talks about quadrupeds and foul,
and has one of the first recipes in Europe for turkey. Though while Scappi calls it turkey
he also says that many people are still calling it the Indian peacock which I think is kind of a
cool name. Now just like the turkey there are other birds and meats that he mentions that you would
find on a modern day menu like a roast duck with black grape sauce that sounds really good, but then
there are also some animals that you might have trouble getting down at the market like hedgehog,
piglet, or porcupine, or bear. There are also recipes for every part of a cow imaginable from
parboiled calves eyes with fennel and cinnamon, to a sweet sugared bull testicle so if you're still
wondering what to hand out for Halloween this year... Moving on to book three he discusses the nature
and season of fish. And fish and seafood were a vital component of the vatican diet because much
of the year were considered lean days where you couldn't have any meat and I cover this in depth
during the episode where I touch on lenten foods from the Middle ages so go ahead and watch that if
you're wondering how a beaver is actually a fish. Now book four takes a lot of the recipes from the
previous two books and puts them into menus and he basically goes through the entire year month by
month creating menus for both meat and lean days. He also talks about different implements in the
kitchen and goes into a wonderful description of an actual event a conclave of cardinals which
we will discuss later the fifth book where we get our herb tort recipe from today deals with all
sorts of pastries including many savory pastries that include a lot of sugar of course but
then some things that are definitely like a modern day dessert like a cream pie and even
a precursor to a modern pumpkin pie. Now the last book is really a collection of soup and broth
recipes because it was meant for the convalescing and the sick. And while you'll see things like
cauliflower soup or barley gruel there's also a recipe for ferrous potion. Ferrous meaning iron
and so you're thinking oh well some must have like liver or beans or some other iron rich food,you'd
be wrong. Nay nay, the recipe calls for "Pieces of steel heated in the fire which you will dip into water.
If you do not have any steel, get a worn-down iron horseshoe and heat it up instead. Let the water sit
for three hours, then filter through three layers of a white cloth." I mean i guess that's not really
that different from modern day iron pills, but horseshoe? An old worn horseshoe with
that, O kind of feel like he's Punking us. So those are the six books of Scappi's opera,
but there's also an appendix which was printed separately. Almost as an afterthought, but
is actually the reason that the opera is seen as such an important work today because what
it is is a bunch of pictures and and it's really the first cookbook to have a lot of pictures so
we get to see into what a renaissance kitchen actually looked like. In the first room of the
kitchen we see a massive hearth with a cauldron suspended above it a little man sitting beside
it shielding his face from the flame. In the next room there are sinks with running water and
cooks rolling out pasta dough on a huge table. There's also a hippocratic sleeve in the center
of the room which I talk about in the episode on hippocras though this one is probably used for
making jelly or butter. In the scullery which here is an outside courtyard a man is washing pans and
another behind him sharpens knives on a wheel with water spouting from a barrel above. Then we have a
cold room where they're churning butter and mixing custard. Now sometimes if the pope had to travel
he brought the kitchen with him and Scappi shows what a field kitchen would look like along with a
depiction of how the huge cauldrons made it on and off the fires. Now most of the remaining images are
of various kitchen implements including one page devoted almost entirely to knives, though Scappi
also includes the first printed image of a forcina, or fork which had only recently become popular in
Europe. He includes images of cauldrons and pots for cooking and serving including several which
he deems tortere one of which might have been used to cook the torte that we're making today, but
the most famous image in the book is actually not of the kitchens but of the food being delivered
for a meal and an actual meal it's based off of a real event that I mentioned earlier the papal
conclave where cardinals would gather together to elect a new pope. This one began on November
29 1549 following the death of pope Paul III. Stewards bring in hampers filled with hot and
cold foods which were then given to church officials to be inspected for secret messages
to the cardinals that might sway their vote. Once inspected the dishes would be placed on the ruota
del conclave, or wheel of the conclave which would spin and deliver the food into the sistine chapel
on the other side of the wall. For over two months this is how the cardinals got their food until on
February 8th Julius III was elected pope. Now while we don't know everything that was served every
day at the conclave it's a pretty good bet that our herb tort made its way around that conclave
wheel at least once in those two months so while you may not have your own conclave wheel at home,
mine is being installed next week, you can go ahead and give yourself a little spin as you take that
tort out of the oven. So once you take the tort out of the oven set it on a wire rack to cool just
a bit but it should be served hot so don't let it cool more than 10 minutes or so. And here we
are: our torta d'herbe communi or common herb pie. So it smells really great and it looks
fine though it kind of looks like ground beef which is odd you know I mean it's not a vegan
meal but it is a vegetarian meal so maybe it's like a mock ground beef pie because it really
looks like ground beef, the color and everything which I don't get. I thought it would be more green
but it's almost brown and I think that's probably because of the vast quantity of cinnamon and
pepper in there, but let's give it a try regardless. Hmm....hmmm.. oh that's weird... 0_o Oh it's good, but oh that's
so weird those herbs are are coming through, along with the cheese and everything and
those go together really well, but then then it's kind of sweet and it's and it's
the clove and the cinnamon... That's weird but it's good like I'm gonna eat (not
right now :P ), but I will eat most of this, it's really like none of this is going to waste it's really
delicious but oh it's so WEIRD. You should try this. This is i mean it's a lot of work, there's a lot
of ingredients in this one but it's really worth trying even honestly even if you just made
the inside, and didn't put it in a pastry just make the inside and cook it like in a casserole
dish, i think that would be really really, really good but WEIRD. Definitely something that you're
not going to find at a modern day restaurant, wonderful though. So if you're interested
in eating like a pope, and I mean who isn't, go ahead and make this and enjoy it as much as I
am and I will see you next time on Tasting History. This is really good. :D
HE LIVES!
Looks like you guys had a great NorCal trip!
Ok.....so was it good or was it weird? Hahaha. My bf was like “we arent making this because can’t tell us if he really enjoys it or not” Hahahaha.
Great episode :-)
Okay, I know what we're having Sunday.
Man it’s almost 1am. I’ll see it tomorrow before my shift.
Watching now. "Subscribe" to a glass of wine 😂 🍷. I see what you did there
I could imagine that filling working really well with crepes
What do people thik about using Cream Cheese for the, "Fat cheese?"