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The Fruit, Herbs & Vegetables of Italy (1614)

by Giacomo Castelvetro, edited and translated by Gillian Riley

This is a new edition of a classic of early 17th-century food writing. The book was written by the Italian refugee, educator, and humanist Giacomo Castelvetro, who had been saved from the clutches of the Inquisition in Venice by the English ambassador, Sir Dudley Carleton, in 1611. When he came to England, he was horrified by its preference for large helpings of meat, masses of sugar and very little greenstuff. The Italians were good gardeners, and had a familiarity with many varieties of vegetable and fruit that were as yet little-known in England. He circulated his Italian manuscript among his supporters, dedicating it to Lucy, Countess of Bedford, herself a keen gardener and patron of literature. Gillian Riley's translation of this hitherto unpublished document has been recognised as being fluent, entertaining and accurate from its first appearance in 1989.

Castelvetro takes us through the gardener's year, listing the fruit and vegetables as they come into season, with simple and elegant ways of preparing them. Practical instructions are interspersed with tender vignettes of his life in his native city of Modena, memories of his years in Venice, and reminiscences of his travels in Europe. He writes of children learning to swim in the canals of the Brenta, strapped to huge dried pumpkins to keep them afloat; Venetian ladies ogling passers-by from behind screens of verdant beanstalks; sultry German wenches jealously hoarding their grape harvest; his intimate chats with Scandinavian royalty about the best way to graft pear cuttings and discomfort the Pope.

At the time of Castelvetro's writing, English cooking was on a cusp. It had yet to absorb the new ways of Europe, although some of the best practice of Dutch and French gardening was having its effect on our diet. But there were still many new styles of cooking and recipes to absorb, as well as new plants to enjoy (for instance broccoli), and new ways to set them out on the table. This treatise anticipates many of the changes that were to come about over the next one hundred years. Castelvetro urged the English to eat more salads with the same enthusiasm evinced by John Evelyn in his 1699 book on salad-stuff. 176p (Prospect Books 2012)

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