Tortellini.
The myths and culinary history
behind these little twisted works of art is fascinating.
I mean, what other food on earth could somehow be connected
to the famous Birth of Venus by Botticelli?
All right.
So, Karima, I am super excited to hear more
about the really the history of tortellini I started reading up on.
I don't know if it's if it's true or if it's a myth
involving the birth of Venus, the famous painting and tortellini.
And it seemed. Crazy.
There is a mythology that is attached to the tortellinio
Most foods in Italy that arrive at that sort of fame,
they have their culinary history, and then they also have their mythology.
So this story goes a little bit like this,
that in 1630
there was a poem written about the war
between Bologna and Modena.
Bologna and Modena are great rivals.
They were also great rivals for the tortellini.
Then in 1908, a person wrote a little bit of a spinoff on that poem,
and in it he has Bacchus,
God of Wine, and then Mars, God of War.
And Venus came as well.
They all came down from Mount Olympus.
They got a room.
in an inn just in case
they needed to intervene in that war between Modena and Bologna.
So Venus wakes up.
And where are her companions?
They're not there.
She calls the innkeeper and wants to know what's going on.
He arrives in the in the room
and he sees, of course, she's a goddess and she's just beautiful.
Right.
She languidly throws off the bed sheets
and as she's jumping out of bed, her nightdress flutters up
and he gets a look at her bellybutton.
So he sees that bellybutton and is just overwhelmed by this
by this vision.
Runs downstairs to the kitchen where the old maid
is rolling out a sheet of dough.
He strips off a little piece and then he's thinking about that
belly button, these wrapping and twisting it around his finger.
And finally he comes up with a shape that just replicates it perfectly.
The belly button of Venus,
and that becomes the tortellino.
I can see that the shape, but. Wow.
So kind of this Marilyn Monroe moment, right?
That's right.
Bed sheet comes up, but it's the belly button that we focused on.
So where does it come from?
Because I'm assuming
the idea of what I know is tortellini now is exactly what ancient Romans were eating.
What's wonderful is that the
the actual history of of these foods is also very interesting.
You don't have gods coming down from Mount Olympus.
The word tortellini
is the diminutive of tortello, and tortello
let's say is synonymous with with ravioli and it kind of means a pie.
And so then you have your pie
and your little pie, and your really little pie, which is what
tortellini are.
So the tortello was something that was in existence already
in Italy, documented in the Middle Ages.
But the first tortello that makes a reference to
Bologna is in 1501.
That is made
with chicken and capon and a lot of spices because they like their spices then.
But it's fried. Oh, it's fried?
Fried torellino.
And then it's sprinkled with sugar on top.
Oh, so it's savory and sweet.
So savoring sweet at the same time.
Wow. Nothing like what I'm used to today.
Okay. Wow.
So then we move on a little bit through history.
And Bartolomeo Scappi, who is a Roman
the Roman chef to the Pope,
and he is considered the greatest
chef, Italian chef of the Renaissance.
He has two of these.
One of them is with chicken and bone marrow
and the other one is with pork belly and counter.
Now, cow udders were a delicacy
since ancient Roman times, and they continue to be this.
So there are soft and unctuous.
So you're going to make some really tender ravioli. Wow.
Okay. Never knew.
We've moved from lots of spices. Right.
All of the spices of the Renaissance are now reduced to cinnamon and nutmeg.
So in 1845, something important happens is that we see pork and prosciutto
in the pasta parcel called a tortellino.
And that's going to move us a little bit further in our evolution.
We move into 1891, and here
I have Cucina e l’Arte di mangiar bene.
This cookbook is the culinary treasure of Italy.
But what he does is that he finally separates
tortellino, capelletto, anellino.
They were all used kind of interchangeably,
mostly with this cape on and beef marrow kind of thing.
And then you've got the prosciutto
coming in with a pork and it all becomes rather mysterious.
He draws a picture in his in his cookbook.
Okay.
Of the tortured Nino and makes a clear distinction
between what the filler is there and what the filler is here.
Now, for him, the filler tortellini bolognese.
He has prosciutto, mortadella,
beef, bone marrow, parmigiano, egg.
And then we've reduced all of those spices now to nutmeg and pepper.
So that's pretty close.
I mean, yeah, sort of the morrow, but yeah, right.
Pretty close to it. But yeah, that's what's so funny.
I thought we're talking ancient history.
We're talking like what you read, like, maybe 18....
So this is 1891.
Yeah.
So, man, we're more way more recent than ancient ath this point.
Getting even closer.
Yeah. 1934. Oh, wow. 1934.
And in August, we have a recipe here
which finally puts in the lean pork.
So you have the pork, the mortadella,
the prosciutto, but you still have that bone marrow,
and egg ,and then nutmeg.
In 1974, you finally have the Bolognese
Academy of Cuisine. Okay.
Who decides that they want to deposit an official recipe
for tortellini.
Instead of just making it up themselves
they put out a request for everyone to send in their recipes.
The recipes are assessed.
The person that they chose was Maria Grimaldi.
The speculation about why she won
is also that it would be much more commercially viable.
The the beef bone marrow would have made it
less have less of a shelf life.
Wow. So 73.
So we're talking, what, like the recipe itself ,an official, this is it
no more bone marrow,
it's like 48 years old, if that.
So, yeah. Okay.
That's why I love history.
So you assume we know and then you get the real thing, like
wait a minute. Wow!
And not only that, but the fact that they the recipe evolves to a point
where it's more based on like, how can we commercially make this more accessible?
Right, right, right.
Wow. That's cool to know.
Like so many different evolutions of it to now what we know today, which is not old
but classic now.
All right. Fascinating.
Well, and we know it's a myth, which is what we're going to think.
It's part of the myth, the belly button,
Birth of venus, but hey, that's a cool myth to understand
a little bit more about.
Thanks for giving us all the information.