On Catherine de’ Medici we already know a lot but thanks to Marina Migliavacca, a writer and journalist who likes to say that there is more history to tell inside a typical dish than inside a castle, now we will know even more. In her pages she deals with past centuries, society and customs. Here is her story of the foodie queen.
Catherine de’ Medici, the gourmet queen
The friendliest ones called it la Queen Mother, for having brought into the world so many crowned heads; the most critical ones there Black Queen, and not only for his mourning after his premature widowhood. All kinds of vices have been attributed to Caterina de’ Medici, great-granddaughter of Lorenzo the Magnificent: superstitious, power-hungry, poisoner… But beyond the great debate about her, the adjective that best suits her he is undoubtedly a much happier “gourmet”. A gourmet noblewoman, who from her native Florence arrived in France at the age of fourteen to marry the future king, effectively “educated” the court of Paris in what today we would call Made in Italy.
His is not a love marriage. She is neither beautiful nor very noble, she is small, round and with eyes a bit like a Medici frog. The “fat shopkeeper”, they call her. In addition, for the first ten years she is unable to have children and her husband has a wonderful lover, Diana of Poitiers. But Caterina has other strings in her bow: she is intelligent, cultured, above all she is what today we would define as a trend setter. He arrives at court with Florentine, Tuscan and Sicilian cooks and pastry chefs who will set the example. She is curious about taste, she knows that sitting at the table doesn’t just mean filling your stomach, but surrounding yourself with beautiful things. She teaches the French to use the fork, perfumes the damask tablecloths with clover and sweet clover, introduces the napkin, makes the plates change between one course and another, divides the sweet service from the savory service… These are not things that she invented , of course, but he made them everyday life.
Then there is something deeply sentimental in the fact that the young “Italian abroad” tries to find the flavors of home on her plate and really likes vegetables, from the beloved artichoke to those that he considered healthy (and even aphrodisiac), such as shallots, peas, beans, perhaps seasoned with oil from the Tuscan hills. What she cannot know for sure, by making the increasingly conquered courtiers taste particular delights such as sorbets or crepes, is that the recipes that she will import into France will have a funny fate reserved for them. They will like them so much that French chefs will make them their own, to the point that today we all think that they originate from France!
From the duck to the orange tree it will become canard à l’orange to the very Tuscan onion soup they will call soupe à l’oignonup to the glue sauce, renamed bechamela cultural short circuit is created in which Caterina will also be the protagonist in many aspects of daily life, such as when, to ride comfortably without causing scandal, she introduced the use of long shorts to wear under the skirt, or to overcome her short stature he will have high shoes made by Florentine artisans, or he will commission his perfumer Renato Bianchi, who will become Master René for the French, delicate essences of iris (iris for the French), which is none other than the beautiful lily of Florence!
Article appeared in La Cucina Italiana, March 2022
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