A Feast of Footnotes
I am reading a delightful book by Nichola Fletcher, called Charlemagne's Tablecloth: A Piquant History of Feasting (New York : St. Martin's Press, 2004). Fortunately for my taste, since I always enjoy a good footnote, she has a number of amusing examples that have attracted my attention. Herewith a few choice morsels.
First, the one I first noticed. There was another note nearby, so while my eyes were at the bottom of the page, I went ahead and read this note. Without its context I found it a very curious statement:
5Eels don't have ears, so they must have resembled people who sport eyebrow and navel rings.* [p. 49]
Now, who among us has not wondered by "Spring Rolls" are called that? This note addressed the question.
6These were originally a [Chinese] New Year specialty: New Year is also called Spring Festival since it marks the end of the winter.** [p. 63]
Elsewhere, a typographic gloss:
4It looks as though either the writer or the typesetter became overwhelmed with this lengthy and exotic menu since the spelling is rather erratic.#
Finally, in text from the body of the book, an interesting description of a profession — napkin folder — that was once a social necessity, but whose necessity has since disappeared so completely that it sounds utterly ridiculous:
Two seventeenth-century books (Antonio Latini's Lo Scalco Moderna and Mattia Geigher's Tratto) show the art [of napkin folding] at its pinnacle: an array of napery folded into ships, castles, whales, peacocks, crabs, griffins, dogs, and startling abstract patterns. Such complicated constructions usually needed a stitch or two to secure them; simpler versions perfumed with rose-water were used by the guests. In 1570 Bartolomeo Scappi, chef to Pope Pius V, describes concealing song-birds in the napkins for his dessert course so that a burst of twittering and a flutter of little wings charmed the guests as the birds made their escape. These creations were so popular that some artisans earned a living by going from house to house folding napkins. By the seventeenth century, the fashion had filtered through to middle-class England where Samuel Pepys notes, with his customary attention to cost, that the man who created his napkins for the following day's dinner, 'in figures of all sorts, which is mighty pretty … gets much money by it'." [pp. 134–135]
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*She is telling stories about the variety of eel called Muraenae, and writes: "Muraenae were also kept as pets: one Roman lady decorated hers with golden earrings,5 others gave them pearl necklaces and the plutocrat Crassus wept, went into mourning and built a monument when his beloved eel died."
**Speaking of Chinese New Year feasts: "There must also be some deep-fried food — probably crisp spring rolls6 with a soft moist filling — …"
#In a chapter about the first annual dinner of the British "Acclimatisation Society" on 12 July 1862, the author reproduces the menu for the event, which occupies two pages of text with its many dozen exotic dishes. The purpose of the society was to introduce to diners odd, unusual, and rare foods with the hope of expanding tastes and relieving boredom.
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on Tuesday, 5 December 2006 at 22.36
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"In 1570 Bartolomeo Scappi, chef to Pope Pius V, describes concealing song-birds in the napkins for his dessert course so that a burst of twittering and a flutter of little wings charmed the guests as the birds made their escape."
The chickenhearted animal lover in me finds this disturbing. I wonder how songbirds are concealed in napkins without at least terrifying them and more likely doing permanent harm to at least some of them.
Having learned more than a passing amount about public health, I find the distinct possibility of bird droppings at the dessert table distasteful and downright dangerous.
Yeah, I know; I'm being party pooper.
on Thursday, 7 December 2006 at 21.29
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Tsk, tsk, SW, you simply do not have the proper Renaissance spirit about the fecundity of delight to be found in Nature! How will you ever enjoy the spectacle of four-and-twenty blackbirds baked in a pie (actually, the pie was baked first and the blackbirds introduced through a hole in the bottom of the crust) if all you can think of is the guano!
Besides, this was long enough ago that hygiene hadn't been discovered yet.
Far more terrifying was the story of the men (including the host, a Duke) who dressed for the entertainments in "Nature Men" suits of pitch and straw but were accidentally ignited by torches. Oops! Happily, not all were burned to death.