A Short History
The origins of Risotto may be traced through the many hands of many cooks. These were eventually reduced to a common method. Some legends have it that risotto dates back to the 16th century, however, cookbooks from the 14th to the 17th centuries refute the legend. They demonstrate that there was only one technique to cook rice. Boil it. Maybe Maria Nava is an originalist. But she, whom Le Monde called “la grande dame du riz italien” (‘the distinguished lady of Italian rice’) and the state-of-the-art rice enterprise she represents, has feet firmly planted in the modern world.
1779
Antonio Nebbia, renowned chef of Macerata in the Marche region of central Italy, publishes his influential cookbook Il Cuoco Maceratese. One recipe for a soup of cabbage and rice may be the first recorded mention of cooking rice in a soffrito of minced onion and adding liquid to swell it gradually.
1809
The first written recipe identified as risotto appears in a cookbook by an anonymous author called Riso Giallo in Padella (Yellow rice cooked in a pan). Saffron flavored it and tinted it a golden yellow. Cervellato, a type of sausage made of a mixture of pancetta, beef marrow, pig brain, sometimes beef fat, sweet spices (nutmeg, clove, cinnamon), salt, and Parmigiano preserved in a bowel previously tinted with saffron water must have provided exotic flavors. This addition is left out in the recipes of the early 1900s, and “gras de rost,” a dialect word meaning “fat of the roast,” is substituted. The substitution appears in the officially recognized recipe by the municipality of Milan (see Risotto - Part I).
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