Jump to content
  • Welcome to the eG Forums, a service of the eGullet Society for Culinary Arts & Letters. The Society is a 501(c)3 not-for-profit organization dedicated to the advancement of the culinary arts. These advertising-free forums are provided free of charge through donations from Society members. Anyone may read the forums, but to post you must create a free account.

Vines or plants as utensils (Anthimus: novella)


chezjim

Recommended Posts

Does anyone know of a practice in Gaul or Germany, or in Europe in general, of using lengths of vine or other plants as utensils? Specifically, in place of a spoon?

In his 6th century dietetic letter, the Greek physician Anthimus describes a complex dish made of cooked meringue (egg white in foam) and chicken, scallops optional. Liquids were poured over this as well, so the most logical way to eat seems to have been with a spoon. But that is only one of two options Anthimus offers:

cum cocleari vel novella tenera manducatur

"eat with spoons or a [new tender]"

The word "novella" generally would be the adjective "new", but one of its meanings turns out to be a young vine or plant. "Tenera" would imply that it was soft or flexible, giving "a supple young vine". (Presumably a piece of one).

At first glance this seems like a dubious replacement for a spoon, but if one was cooking in the woods for instance - as the Franks once would have - spoons might have been in short supply and a length of vine or plant might have been a reasonable option. But I've never seen such technique used anywhere (except perhaps by a chimp). Does anyone know of any such usage, in Europe or anywhere (not chop sticks of course, which, for one thing, aren't supple.)

Jim Chevallier

http://www.chezjim.com

Austrian, yes; queen, no:

August Zang and the French Croissant: How Viennoiserie came to France

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Weird reference. Novella can mean any kind of diminutive new thing, but the writer will always indicate what the thing is unless it can be naturally inferred. In this context, to infer that we're talking about vines here seems a bit strange to me. What would you do, dip the vines in the sauce and slurp it off? How would you eat the chicken pieces? And especially if they're young and tender, unless you're eating the vines, I'd think their new tenderness would be a liability.

And a dish like this would be a status symbol in a major way, available only to the superrich (chicken was not a food many people could afford until recent times): eating it with some vines when the diners would surely have access to spoons seems kind of ridiculous. I'm sure there's a translation of this text. What does the translator say?

Also, it may be he's not even talking about utensils. My guess is he's talking about some kind of accompaniment: cochlea is any spiral shaped thing, so maybe he's talking about eating this dish with a tender young snail! If not that, I'm pretty sure he's not suggesting people eat this dish with a vine.

nunc est bibendum...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

In fact one nineteenth century French dictionary specifically says that "novella" can mean "a young vine, a young plant". And a German gloss suggested something similar in regard to Anthimus' text.

I wouldn't count on people having had spoons readily available at this time. The Gauls, only a few centuries earlier, didn't. And the Franks, until they became Romanized, would have led lives much like the early Gauls. The only spoons I know from the time were Roman and would have been luxury items in Gaul.

I'm pretty sure this would have been a luxury dish, yes. But he seems to offering an alternative way to eat it, for whatever reason.

Chicken by the way was a very common food all through the Middle Ages. Ironically, the French peasants didn't start to be meat-deprived until after feudalism took its firmest hold, so that they in fact ate worse in the eighteenth century than in the sixth (when they could still hunt freely).

The most popular translation of this work says to use a spoon or a ladle. I see no meaning of "novella" which supports the latter, but of course I'm not a Latinist either.

Jim Chevallier

http://www.chezjim.com

Austrian, yes; queen, no:

August Zang and the French Croissant: How Viennoiserie came to France

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'll say upfront that I know little of European food history. However, this recipe makes sense to me if those "tender plants" are tender leaves of lettuce (or any other tender, big leaves). Young grape leaves? People could scoop up the mixture with lettuce, roll up the leaf (cochlea?), and chow down. Or perhaps the mixture was more soupy, and the leaves were dipped into it and eaten. The recipe comes from a physician. Was he advocating eating more veggies for good health?

I've encountered this kind of dish in Asian cooking, specifically Thai cooking. Savory bits and dips are placed on a platter with various kinds of raw leaves and young vegetables. People are supposed to use the leaves and vegetables to pick up or dip into the other foods, and eat the whole thing. No utensils.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hmmm.... Interesting.

Honestly I'm inclined to doubt it was leaves, since it would be simple enough to use that word. As for vegetables, there's a whole separate section on them. Though I'm not sure they were considered especially healthy. They certainly weren't going in to the eighteenth century; some were even considered harmful.

Jim Chevallier

http://www.chezjim.com

Austrian, yes; queen, no:

August Zang and the French Croissant: How Viennoiserie came to France

Link to comment
Share on other sites

In fact one nineteenth century French dictionary specifically says that "novella" can mean "a young vine, a young plant". And a German gloss suggested something similar in regard to Anthimus' text.

I wouldn't count on people having had spoons readily available at this time. The Gauls, only a few centuries earlier, didn't. And the Franks, until they became Romanized, would have led lives much like the early Gauls. The only spoons I know from the time were Roman and would have been luxury items in Gaul.

I'm pretty sure this would have been a luxury dish, yes. But he seems to offering an alternative way to eat it, for whatever reason.

Chicken by the way was a very common food all through the Middle Ages. Ironically, the French peasants didn't start to be meat-deprived until after feudalism took its firmest hold, so that they in fact ate worse in the eighteenth century than in the sixth (when they could still hunt freely).

The most popular translation of this work says to use a spoon or a ladle. I see no meaning of "novella" which supports the latter, but of course I'm not a Latinist either.

Well we are after all talking about food for a king. A quick wikipedia search turns up the fact that Anthimus was working at the court of Theodoric the Great, and I'd be very surprised if there was no access to spoons. Spoons were certainly available at this time and served all sorts of purposes. For an example from my neck of the historical woods, the Sutton Hoo ship burial turned up silver bowls and spoons that seem to have been imported from the east. Kings, queens, and nobles wore Byzantine fashions, used combs (sometimes made out of elephant ivory), and were decked out in beautiful raw gold and gems. If they wanted a spoon, they would have one. I doubt they'd be reduced to eating with vines, especially if it was something peasants did.

A dish this labor intensive, using chicken and seafood, would not be a peasant dish. I'm not a historian, and I don't have systematic knowledge of medieval food history, but I know enough about early medieval culture to know that this is not a peasant dish. And it is even possible, maybe even likely, that this dish was not an ostragothic specialty because Anthimus was a Byzantine. Medieval texts were more a part of a tradition than they were documentary in the way we might think of a writer observing what he sees and writing it down. Anthimus would likely have made no bones about putting a recipe he read in a book into his book with no attribution and no regard for its regionality. So the idea that someone from a king's court was observing people eating with vines and then writing it down is just not very likely.

Nevertheless, the phrase "novella tenera" is obscure. In fact the whole line is, since "manduco" could mean chew, "cochleari" could mean any spiral shaped thing since it looks like its just a substantive adjective, and "novella tenera" could mean any kind of new tender thing, since those are just two adjectives (even if novella is used as a substantive that could imply "vitis" (vine), it's still an adjective and there's got to be an indication that it means vine from context, or else you could mistake it for meaning anything feminine and young, like a young animal or something). It looks to me (though I admit not to have studied this text in depth) that this line is just cryptic: you would have to have known what he meant to make sense of it in the first place (many many medieval texts are like this). So maybe we'll never know what Anthimus thought it meant. But to my mind, the evidence works against the idea that he's talking about eating with vines here. And unless there's other evidence of using vines as utensils, it would be a major leap to say so out of this one obscure text.

Sorry for the nerdgasm here, but this is pretty close to my area of study and its very rare that it seems of any use. From one student of the middle ages to another, good luck figuring out what the hell is going on in this text!

nunc est bibendum...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Are you quoting from the Mark Grant translation? He gives a fairly comprehensive explanation of the possible variations of some of the obscure terms and has the Latin on the left hand pages and the English on the right-hand pages to make it easier to follow the text.

If you don't have the book, it is available via Amazon at a reasonable price (compared to the earlier publication).

"There are, it has been said, two types of people in the world. There are those who say: this glass is half full. And then there are those who say: this glass is half empty. The world belongs, however, to those who can look at the glass and say: What's up with this glass? Excuse me? Excuse me? This is my glass? I don't think so. My glass was full! And it was a bigger glass!" Terry Pratchett

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Alcuin, I'm sure Theuderic I had access to spoons. The richer Franks adopted Gallo-Roman ways and the Romans certainly had spoons. My point is lots of other people might not have and for whatever reason Anthimus offers an alternative for them. I'm also reasonably sure this IS a Byzantine recipe (unlike others he includes), so if vines were used at all, it might well have been in Byzantium.

Yes, the "ladle" reference is from Mark Grant's edition, which I've only seen in bits and pieces on the Web. I don't have it or a previous translation available to me. But I tend to distrust translations in general, especially in regard to food history. I can't get around this with Arabic, but Latin at least I can puzzle through. :)

Jim Chevallier

http://www.chezjim.com

Austrian, yes; queen, no:

August Zang and the French Croissant: How Viennoiserie came to France

Link to comment
Share on other sites

×
×
  • Create New...