"bogus address" > wrote

> One of those annoying bits of information that sticks in
your mind
> forever asking for an explanation once you've seen it.
Some time
> ago I saw an abstract of an article (in a journal I don't
have access
> to, maybe _Petit Propos Culinaires_) about the promotion
of one-pot
> cookery under the Third Reich.
> Somebody put me out of my misery and explain why on earth
one-pot
> cookery was a consequence of fascist ideology?

Something along the lines of "efficiency at the expense of
culture" perhaps? By curious coincidence I picked up my copy
of Elizabeth Davis's "Italian Food" today as I was unpacking
my library recently arrived from Istanbul today and it fell
open to the introduction of her chapter on "pasta asciutta".
Here is the beginning of it. The important paragraph is the
fourth one:

<quote>
Pasta Asciutta

On the 15th of November 1930, at a banquet at the restaurant
Penna d'Oca in Milan, the famous Italian futurist poet
Marinetti launched his much publicized campaign against all
established forms of cooking and, in particular, against
pastasciutta. "Futurist cooking," said Marinetti, "will be
liberated from the ancient obsession of weight and volume,
and one of its principal aims will be the abolition of
pastasciutta. Pastasciutta, however grateful to the palate,
is an obsolete food; it is heavy, brutalizing, and gross;
its nutritive qualities are deceptive; it induces
scepticism, sloth, and pessimism."

The day after this diatribe was delivered the Italian press
broke into an uproar; all classes participated in the
dispute which ensued. Every time pastasciutta was served
either in a restaurant or a private house interminable
arguments arose. One of Marinetti's supporters declared that
"our pastasciutta, like our rhetoric, suffices merely to
fill the mouth." Doctors, asked their opinions, were
characteristically cautions: "Habitual and exaggerated
consumption of pastasciutta is definitely fattening." "Heavy
consumers of pastasciutta have slow and placid characters;
meat eaters are quick and aggressive." "A question of taste
and the cost of living. In any case, diet should be varied,
and should never consist exclusively of one single element."
The Duke of Bovino, Mayor of Naples, plunged into the fight
with happy abandon. "The angels in Paradise" he affirmed to
a reporter, "Eat nothing but vermicelli al pomodoro." To
which Marinetti replied that this confirmed his suspicions
with regard to the monotony of Paradise and of the life led
by the angels.

Marinetti and his friends proceeded to divert themselves and
outrage the public with the invention and publication of
preposterous new dishes. Most of these were founded on the
shock principle of combining unsuitable and exotic
ingredients: mortadella with nougat; pineapple with
sardines; cooked salame immersed in a bath of hot black
coffee flavoured with eau-de-Cologne; an aphrodisiac drink
composed of pineapple juice, eggs, cocoa, caviar, almond
paste, red pepper, nutmeg, cloves, and Strega. Meals were to
be eaten to the accompaniment of perfumes (warmed, so that
the bald-headed should not suffer from the cold), to be
spread over the diner, who, fork in the right hand, would
stroke meanwhile with the left some suitable
substance-velvet, silk, or emery paper.

Marinetti's bombshell contained a good deal of common sense;
diet and methods of cookery must necessarily evolve at the
same time as other habits and customs. But behind this
amiable fooling lurked a sinister note: the fascist
obsession with nationalism and patriotism, the war to come.
"Spaghetti is no food for fighters." In the "conflict to
come the victory will be to the swift." "Pastasciutta is
anti-virile. A weight and encumbered stomach cannot be
favourable to physical enthusiasm towards women." The costly
import of foreign flour for pastasciutta should be stopped,
to boost the national cultivation of rice. The snobbery of
the Italian aristocracy and haute bourgeoisie, who had lost
their heads over American customs, cocktail parties, foreign
films, German music, and French food, was damned by
Marinetti as esterofil (pro-foreign) and anti-Italian. In
future a bar should be known as a quisibeve
(here-one-drinks), a sandwich as a traidue (between-two), a
cocktail as a polibibita (multi-drink), the maître-d'hôtel
would be addressed as guidopalato (palate-guide) an
aphrodisiac drink was to be called a guerra in letto
(war-in-the-bed), a sleeping draught a pace in letto
(peace-in-the-bed). Marinetti's tongue was by no means
wholly in his cheek. A message from Mussolini, to be
published in La Cucina Futurista (F. Marinetti, 1932), was
dedicated "to my dear old friend of the first fascist
battles, to the intrepid soldier whose indomitable passion
for his country has been consecrated in blood."

(Elizabeth David, Italian Food, 1976.)

</quote>