What are the agreements and disagreements between cooking and music? There pasta calls parmesan (or pecorino) and rejects the polenta; L’roast call the garlic (and rosemary) and repels basil; The cotechino calls the puree (or lentils) and rejects the salad. These are the “food associations” that Fernand Braudel spoke about, underlining the need for those who study the history of nutrition not to focus on the single ingredient or single product, but on their combinations; the “associations”, precisely.

Designing a few years ago for the M9 museum of Venice Mestre the exhibition Taste! Italians at the table 1970-2050together with Laura Lazzaroni and Marco Bolasco we thought of dedicating a special one section on the theme of “agreements”, that is, the ingredients that in the gastronomic field – just like notes in music – are recalled almost automatically, as if they were “natural” associations. Which, however, are not “natural”, because there is always a cultural choice in preferring and choosing a certain agreement rather than another. This applies in cook like in music: parallelism that we have already discussed, which I am happy to return to. In music, a chord is the combination of some notes that are played together and appear “right”, well harmonized with a dominant note: in tonal music, if I start from C, the simultaneous sounds will be E and G. Other cultures, ancient and modern, they love different combinations. Something similar happens in the kitchen, where a certain cultural tradition – for example the Italian one – will get me used to associating it butter and sage with low-fat tortelli, tomato and basil with spaghetti. German culture will not fail to associate frankfurters with mustard, speck with gherkins (in turn combined with vinegar), boiled pork with potatoes and sauerkraut…

The parallel between notes and flavors is recurring in literature. It was suggested, among others, by the Englishman John Evelyn, who at the beginning of the eighteenth century published a treatise on salads largely derived from Italian works. «In the composition of a salad he wrote, «each plant must play its part (…) in the same way as musical notes. In this search for harmony, even dissonances are welcomed, because they “strike and enliven, so as to distinguish and make the rest emerge better”. It was the ancient principle of the contrast of flavors, not only a gustatory theme (a pinch of bitter makes you appreciate the sweet better), but also nutritional: Galenic medicine taught that each flavor expresses a different quality, and putting them together (the qualities) is good for your health. For this reason, Salvatore Massonio from L’Aquila – one of Evelyn’s sources – recommended mixing herbs “adjusting the hot with the cold, the humid with the dry, the sour with the sweet, the bitter with the sweet”. Here then are the dissonances, the “agreements-disagreements”, not only between one herb and another, but between all sorts of products: melon and ham, cheese and pears… tasteful solutions that have remained over the centuries.