CMS Digital Talk: Carolyn Nadeau (Byron S. Tucci Professor of Spanish, Illinois Wesleyan University)

“European Perspectives on the Olla podrida and other Medieval and Early Modern Spanish Fare”
Image of scholar, Carolyn Nadeau
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Across Europe one of the clear distinctions between the early modern period and the Middle Ages is the development of national cuisines. Cookbooks, particularly court cooking manuals, proliferate, palace cooks are no longer anonymous figures but well known by their reputations, and in their writings, these cuilinary artists begin to emphasize both regional and national dishes. In this talk I examine how established cooks working in Italy, France, Holland, and England describe Spanish fare and its presentation and compare their work to the writing of Nola (head cook for Fernando I at the court of Aragón) and Martínez Montiño (head cook for Felipe III and IV). My goal is to reveal a more comprehensive understanding of how Spanish cuisine as perceived as it was exported throughout Europe.

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