Eating the landscape: survival, scarcity, and ingenuity in 18th-century Calabria

The most intriguing part of writing this little blog about the cultural history of food, that although I had a preconception what I would like to write about, from time to time I find myself in the middle of discovering more and more interesting subject within the main topic of this website. 

Chesnut is one of the protagonists of this story

Of course, I knew, that I wanted to dive deeper into this part of 18th-century everyday life because of my long-term plans to write stories set in this time period. Also, I always plan to connect at least three of my different online projects, so it was obvious that I would try to make a connection between this blog and road cycling especially Tour de France, as you can see in the category French food).

But I was not sure about the history of Italian cuisine, not just because last autumn, when I started this blog I was not entirely shre about I would do anything with Giro d'Italia in this May, but also for a very private reason. 

To me, Italian cuisin is much more closer to home, not only geographically, but also kind of emotionally. Being interested in autentic Italian food (and yes, actually I shouldn't call it "Italian food", rather refer to certain regions) is much more part of my private life, the one I rather wish to keep for myself, and talking about it would be felt a little bit peeformative. 

And yet, here we are, with my idea to write at least one post related to each region Giro d'Italia visit this year. 

First comes a story of Calabria, the southernmost region of Italia, unfortunatelly often known as the poorest part of Italy (and kne of the poorest region of the EU).

But poverty is not a new thing for the people living in this part of the world, famine and scarcity often stoke them also in the previous centuries. 

In this post I intend to focus some tendencies during the 18th century, how Calabrian people lewen to overcome their struggles with prope nutrition.

Although Calabria surrounded by two seas, and were conquered quite frequently by various groups of people (from Greeks to Normans), it wa considered as an isolated world for centuries, with lack of connection between the settlements, that sometimes caused  even the variation of different dialects of neighbour villages. 

Without proper infrastructure and trade network, the communities of the region were relied mostly only on theirselves. And were conventional agriculture failed on the thin soikd between the rugged mountains, people had to find other sources for nutrition, so they, do to say, ate the landscape.

In other words, pure necessity, 

Calabrians developed a deep, practical knowledge of wild plants.

One of the protagonists of this story was the grain made of chesnut, often called as the "flour if the poor". The chesnut tree in Italy has its own intriguing history (Paolo Squatriti dedicated a whole book with the title  Landscape and change in early medieval Italy to its early medieval history), and it seemed obvious choice that in time of need people turned to its help when cultivated food ran out.

Also, food made of chicory, nettles, and wild fennel became neccesity from time to time, either boiled into thin soups or eaten simply to quiet hunger.

In the time of extreme need acorn, leached of their bitterness and ground into coarse flour, played an important role. Roots were dug from the earth, and in extreme cases, fibrous materials such as bark were mixed into bread to create the illusion of substance. The resulting foods were heavy, often unpalatable, and nutritionally inadequate, yet they fulfilled a crucial role: they filled the stomach and prolonged survival.

Although the life in the 18th centuy was generally harsh in this region, one particular event made it even worse. 

There was an earthquake in 1783 which destroyed villages, disrupted storage, and ruined harvests, forcing survivors into even greater dependence on wild foods. 

As you can see, the title of this post wasn't an exageration at all, Calabrian people, who turned to the wild plans in the hour of greatest need for centuries, actually, really ate the landscape. 


Most popular posts from he recent few days

Seven food stories from the French Pyrenees

Image
Stretching from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean, the French side of the Pyrenees has long been more than a natural border. It has been a corridor for people, goods, and ideas—and nowhere is this more visible than in its food.  Local dishes and products are not simply recipes; they are records of survival, smuggling, migration, and adaptation. Here are seven historical anecdotes that reveal how deeply food and history intertwine in the French Pyrenees.   Royal beginnings with garlic and wine  In 1553, in the city of Pau, the future King Henri IV was baptized in a manner that would become legendary. According to Béarnais tradition, his grandfather dabbed garlic on the infant’s lips and gave him a few drops of Jurançon wine.  The gesture was meant to instill strength and bravery—qualities expected of a mountain prince. While historians debate the literal truth of the story, it anchored Jurançon wine firmly in the region’s identity and tied Pyrenean foodways to...
Read more

The legend of Roquefort: how a forgotten lunch created a king of cheeses

Image
  High on the limestone plateaus of the southern Massif Central, where the wind from the Causses whistles through hidden valleys, lies the small village of Roquefort-sur-Soulzon. It’s a modest place, a cluster of stone houses pressed against the cliffs of the Combalou, yet it has lent its name to one of France’s most celebrated delicacies:  Roquefort cheese, the “King of Cheeses” and the “Cheese of Kings.” Its story, like many culinary legends, begins not with a grand design but with a simple accident, born of hunger, love, and curiosity.   A shepherd’s forgotten meal   The tale has been told for centuries. Once, so the story goes, a young shepherd was tending his flock in the rolling pastures around Roquefort.  On a hot summer day, he sought shelter from the sun in a cool cave at the foot of the Combalou cliffs. There he opened his humble meal: a wedge of bread and a piece of fresh sheep’s milk cheese.   Just as he was about to eat, he saw ...
Read more

Culinary anecdotes from the French Alps

Image
The cuisine of the French Alps is often associated with hearty cheeses, rustic breads, and warming dishes designed to sustain people through long winters. Yet behind many of these foods lie fascinating stories shaped by hardship, ingenuity, and occasionally a bit of clever rule-breaking.  Gâteau de Savoie From tax-avoiding farmers to royal desserts, Alpine culinary traditions reveal much about the region’s history and the communities that lived there.  Reblochon: A cheese Blborn from tax evasion  One of the most famous cheeses of Savoy, Reblochon, owes its existence to a clever medieval trick.  In the mountain valleys around Thônes in the Aravis range, farmers once paid rent to landowners based on how much milk their cows produced. To reduce the tax burden, farmers would only partially milk their cows when the landlord’s representative was present. After the inspection ended, they returned to the cows for a second milking—known in the Savoyard dialect as re-blocher,...
Read more

How pottery changed the way we eat

Currently reading a book about the cultural histoy of cheese, and one thing made me think a bit more about.  A few weeks ago I already posted an article about the way of storaging and stocking food in the time of Ancient Rome , but that was rather ablit trading and my never ceasing interest in early forms of globalization.  But let's just go even further back in time, a few thousand years, back to around 6000-7000 BC and see what significant changes in human histoy brought the developement of pottery.  A cooking revolution  Before pottery,  people usuall roasted meat over open flames or used heated stones. Obviously,  cooking options were quite limited. But with the arrival of clay pots that could withstand fire, entirely new cooking methods emerged.  Boiling  and stewing became possible. Suddenly, tough grains and fibrous plants could be softened, and meats could be cooked slowly to release more nutrient, which made food easier to digest an...
Read more

Ancient bestsellers of the culinary world

The modern appetite for cookbooks and food writing might feel like a distinctly contemporary obsession, but long before glossy photography and celebrity chefs, people in the ancient Mediterranean were already documenting recipes, debating flavors, and celebrating the pleasures of the table.  Although the ancient world lacked printing presses and mass-market publishing, certain works circulated widely enough to become, in effect, the culinary “bestsellers” of their time.   This article explores the most influential food-related texts from Greece and Rome, examining what they contained, who wrote them, and why they mattered.  The Roman masterpiece: Apicius and the birth of the cookbook tradition   The most substantial surviving cookbook from antiquity is De re coquinaria , commonly known simply as Apicius.  Compiled between the 1st and 4th centuries CE,  the work presents around four hundred recipes  covering everything from everyday vegetable...
Read more

How food was stored on a long ship route in the ancient world

Image
The more into history as the ultimate source of fictional storytelling, the more I'm drawn to the tiniest details of the life people lived in the past.  Human feelings are basically the same: love, hate, anger, pride, vanity, disappointment, curiosity, etc., but always shaped by our material sourroudings. (That's one the main drives of hisforical fiction, discovering why and how it's different, therefore makes it possible to create different stories - rewriting the old ones - again and again and again.)  We, here, in the 21st century, are living in a "global village", the world became small and cozy comparing to the imaginations of bygone eras. We are also taking granted that most of our foods, or their ingredients can be shiped and stored most conveniently.  But let's just jump 2000-2500 years back in time, and we'll see how different these everyday taks in, for instance, the Roman Empire were carried out and we easily can so imagine how these different a...
Read more