cucina futurista: old news, new news
In 1930 the magazine Gazzetta del Popolo published
Manifesto della Cucina futurista (The Manifesto of
Futurist Cooking). Filippo Tommaso Marinetti was
the manifesto’s creator, along with Fillia (Luiggi
Colombo). If you read the manifesto and the recipes published in it, what they nowadays tell us is a revolution in cooking was in fact invented when the world was in black and white.
The Manifesto states that it is based on the idea
that “People think, act and dream depending on
what they eat”. So cooking and eating are important activities, both aesthetically and ethically, in the new world to be built for the future.
These are the main points of futurist cooking:
No pasta. Pasta causes negativity, laziness and lack of passion.
To prepare an appropriate meal, originality and harmony are essential when you lay the table, in the cutlery and crockery, when choosing the food and flavours.
Food must be shaped like a sculpture. That includes meat.
Knives and forks are to be abolished.
Scents are to be used to enhance taste and bouquet; not all the food put on the table is to be eaten, there will also be food to be smelt and to be seen.
Many different types of food will be served, but in small rations, and the right size for the
mouth.
As far as possible, meals will be eaten in machines -devices with engines- and on metal furniture. Scientific instruments will be used for preparing food. For example, ozone measuring machines, ultraviolet lamps, autoclaves, chemical
components, vacuum cleaners, puverisers ...
Conversations and speeches about politics are forbidden while eating. Music and poetry are also
forbidden, with a few exceptions.
Futurist cooking was not very well received. Even so, there were passionate opinions in favour and against it. It was debated whether whenever reasturants serving pasta led to Italians becoming stupider. Not even doctors could come to an agreement about whether eating pasta every day was healthy or not. The mayor of Naples, Bovino Dukea, was quoted in a newspaper as follows: “The angels in heaven eat no more than vermicelli al
pomodoro (thin pasta with tomato sauce)”. Marinetti quickly answered “We all believe
that heaven must be a boring place”. Being a patriotic, nationalist movement, futurist cooking wanted to stregthen the Italian character. Marinetti translated the names of imported food into Italian: pub became quisibeve (“you drink here”), sandwich, traidue (“between two”), maître would now be guidopalato (“plate-guide”) and so on ... Futurist cooking’s preclamations and the debates about it seem silly and naive from
our current point of view. Now we’re “Nouveu riche”, most of us who read newspapers take ourselves to be gastronomes and expert sommeliers. Our new dream is to go on gastronomic holidays and produce a wine named after us. We’ve turned eating into something transcendental. Gastronomy is now culture. The most sophisticated
of the activities with differentiate human beings from all other beings. Even the most forward-thinking and open of us esteem the terms “local produce”, “label”, “source” and “original” above all others in gastronomy. But, as explained above, the star products of ours that we want to show the world and sell to it are not as new as all that, not as revolutionary, nor as personal as the ideas and skills behind Marinetti’s leg-pulling and provocative Cucina futurista.
Manifesto della Cucina futurista (The Manifesto of
Futurist Cooking). Filippo Tommaso Marinetti was
the manifesto’s creator, along with Fillia (Luiggi
Colombo). If you read the manifesto and the recipes published in it, what they nowadays tell us is a revolution in cooking was in fact invented when the world was in black and white.
The Manifesto states that it is based on the idea
that “People think, act and dream depending on
what they eat”. So cooking and eating are important activities, both aesthetically and ethically, in the new world to be built for the future.
These are the main points of futurist cooking:
No pasta. Pasta causes negativity, laziness and lack of passion.
To prepare an appropriate meal, originality and harmony are essential when you lay the table, in the cutlery and crockery, when choosing the food and flavours.
Food must be shaped like a sculpture. That includes meat.
Knives and forks are to be abolished.
Scents are to be used to enhance taste and bouquet; not all the food put on the table is to be eaten, there will also be food to be smelt and to be seen.
Many different types of food will be served, but in small rations, and the right size for the
mouth.
As far as possible, meals will be eaten in machines -devices with engines- and on metal furniture. Scientific instruments will be used for preparing food. For example, ozone measuring machines, ultraviolet lamps, autoclaves, chemical
components, vacuum cleaners, puverisers ...
Conversations and speeches about politics are forbidden while eating. Music and poetry are also
forbidden, with a few exceptions.
Futurist cooking was not very well received. Even so, there were passionate opinions in favour and against it. It was debated whether whenever reasturants serving pasta led to Italians becoming stupider. Not even doctors could come to an agreement about whether eating pasta every day was healthy or not. The mayor of Naples, Bovino Dukea, was quoted in a newspaper as follows: “The angels in heaven eat no more than vermicelli al
pomodoro (thin pasta with tomato sauce)”. Marinetti quickly answered “We all believe
that heaven must be a boring place”. Being a patriotic, nationalist movement, futurist cooking wanted to stregthen the Italian character. Marinetti translated the names of imported food into Italian: pub became quisibeve (“you drink here”), sandwich, traidue (“between two”), maître would now be guidopalato (“plate-guide”) and so on ... Futurist cooking’s preclamations and the debates about it seem silly and naive from
our current point of view. Now we’re “Nouveu riche”, most of us who read newspapers take ourselves to be gastronomes and expert sommeliers. Our new dream is to go on gastronomic holidays and produce a wine named after us. We’ve turned eating into something transcendental. Gastronomy is now culture. The most sophisticated
of the activities with differentiate human beings from all other beings. Even the most forward-thinking and open of us esteem the terms “local produce”, “label”, “source” and “original” above all others in gastronomy. But, as explained above, the star products of ours that we want to show the world and sell to it are not as new as all that, not as revolutionary, nor as personal as the ideas and skills behind Marinetti’s leg-pulling and provocative Cucina futurista.
