Antipasti - Types And Origin

2024 Author: Jasmine Walkman | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 08:29

All peoples of the world have their own name for the appetizer: the French call it hors d'oeuvres, the Russians - breakfast, and the Spaniards have their tapas. Appetizers are considered a modern invention by restaurants, but the truth is that the history of these dishes stretches back centuries, even millennia.

Before it became the word antipasto, it entered the English language simply as antepast. Leaving aside the fact that the two words have very little difference in spelling, it should be noted that both words are derived directly from Latin and are translated as before / ante, anti / dish / patus /.

Apart from the ancient name, the concept of the dish is even older - at the end of republican Rome / I-century BC / the diet was already beginning to be divided into certain dishes, served sequentially. The ingredients of this dish outside of Italy may include things like fried squid and spinach and artichoke sauce, but in Italy itself, in expensive restaurants, the original ingredients remain unchanged. They usually include fish, dried meats, olives, peppers, cheeses and vegetables in olive oil or vinegar.

Like all other dishes in Italian cuisine, so antipasti may differ in different areas - depending on the available products and local characteristics. For example, residents of northern Italy put in their antipasti local dried meats such as mortadella and prosciutto, mushrooms and river fish.

In southern Italy, on the other hand, they prefer meat and sausages such as the Italian sausage sopres and sea fish. Many of you may think that this word has entered the English language in the last half century along with the interest in authentic Italian cuisine, but this is not the case. This word was used as early as 1590 in a collection in which it was written that the first dish is made with delicious meat, which whets the appetite.

For the first time the term antipasta in Italian cuisine is mentioned in the XVI century in the book by Domenico Romoli La singolare dottrina, which appeared in the world in 1560. The book tells about the menu of people every day of the year, as well as the way of posture and the order of the table, on which it is obligatory to first serve breakfast / antipasti /.

The English philologist FF Abbott wrote that the breakfast of the ancient Romans in the time of Cicero consisted of eggs, sausages, olives, salads, artichokes and asparagus. Pope Pius V's personal chef Bartolomeo Scalpi very often uses the term antipasti. In the preface to the fourth part of the book Opera, Scalpi writes that he made a list of dishes that are commonly eaten in Italy and especially in Rome and which are not snacks or desserts.

The word antipasta often compared to the French term hfrs d`oeuvre and Spanish tapas, but the origins of these terms are different. In modern Italian cuisine, antipasti are divided into seven main groups: vegetables or mushrooms in butter, pickled vegetables, salted vegetables, meat dishes, fish dishes, yellow cheese, baked bread with spices.