Lecture 19: Papal Rome and the Spanish Golden Age
grain-like bits of pasta, dried and then steamed over a pot of rich
broth. The ingredients are not rare or costly; what impresses here is
the technical mastery of the chef. Although Scappi’s work is in many ways the culmination of
culinary practices originating in the Middle Ages, the precision and
thoroughness with which he treats ingredients and procedures mark
this perhaps as the fi rst modern cookbook. There is nothing produced
anywhere in Europe that matches Scappi’s encyclopedic and detailed
cooking directions—and there won’t be for another century.Granado’s Cookbook
The nation of Spain fi rst emerged with the marriage of Ferdinand of
Aragon and Isabella of Castile. They were still very much separate
countries, but with their grandson Charles V on the throne, they
were fi nally politically united as well as religiously unifi ed. The
Jews were expelled, and the Moors were conquered. However, the Spanish were still particularly paranoid about
outsiders—especially all of the Jews who had converted to
Christianity to save their necks but may have been secretly
practicing Judaism at home. This was an extremely urgent problem
for the church because although they had no authority over someone
who was an openly professing Jew, they do over converts, and any
backsliding would be considered heresy. The church took it as their responsibility to hunt down and
punish new Christians secretly practicing Judaism as part of the
Inquisition. Even if they couldn’t catch you by offering you some
sausage or ham and seeing whether you would eat it, the Inquisition
hired secret informants to report if someone was lighting Sabbath
candles or if a person was cooking meals on Friday before sundown
to be eaten the next day. Religion for the Spanish provided perhaps the strongest defi ning
elements of national identity, as did their national cuisine and
especially the ways that it was different from the Jews and Moors,