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Culinary Heritage
Enrico Carnevale Schianca (1943-2020)
Stella Valsassina (1943 - 2020)
Enrico Carnevale Schianca was an Italian essayist, culinary historian and painter. Honorary Member of Academia Italiana della Cucina. He graduated in law at the University of Pavia with a thesis on the history of law. In the 1990s he collaborated with the illustrated monthly magazine Nuova Cucina, nominally directed by Ugo Tognazzi, and subsequently with the historical quarterly Appunti di Gastronomia.
Together with his wife Stella they wrote articles and short essays on the cuisine and dietetics of the Middle Ages over a period of twenty years. Inspired by multiple interests, he was a painter by passion; worked as an illustrator for books and magazines and wrote an introductory manual to drawing translated into several languages. In 2023, a classroom in the Benedetto Cairoli high school in Vigevano was named after him, where some of his graphic works are preserved.
La Cucina Medievale
The volume offers a synoptic vision of Italian cuisine of the late Middle Ages, proposed in the form of a glossary. It provides an overview of dietetics, historical precedents and connections with contemporary European cuisines. The recipes constitute a rich and curious reservoir of suggestions that can prove unexpectedly pleasant even to today's palates. The Volume won the Prix de la Littérature Gastronomique in France.
De honesta voluptate et valitudine . Un trattato sui piaceri della tavola e la buona salute
De honesta voluptate et valetudine is considered the first printed recipe book printed. It was enormously successful and popularized in what we now call Italy and Europe. Printed for the first time in Rome, in Latin in 1474, then in Venice in 1487 in Italian and, therefore, throughout Europe, it has been translated into French, German and English. The revised volume includes the tradition of a fifteenth-century cookbook combined with a revolutionary way of seeing and classifying foods and recipes enriched with suggestions on how to enhance the foods themselves.
