Stefani-Style Soup

History

Zuppa alla Stefani is not Pellegrino Artusi's invention but his adaptation of a recipe he drew from L'arte di ben cucinare, the 1662 manual of Bartolomeo Stefani, a cook of Bolognese origin who served as head cook to the Gonzaga dukes of Mantua. Artusi credits the find to Olindo Guerrini, the poet and librarian of the University of Bologna and his correspondent, who turned up the recipe in Stefani's little printed book. Stefani published his treatise in Mantua, dedicating it to Ottavio Gonzaga, and it survives as one of the fullest records of Italian Baroque cookery, the same court milieu that staged Duke Carlo's Christmas Eve banquet for Queen Christina of Sweden in 1655. What Artusi keeps is the frame: a soup bound with veal or lamb brain, chicken livers, and egg, poured over fried bread. What he changes is the seasoning. By his own account the mid-1600s kitchen used and abused aromatics, putting sugar and cinnamon into broth, boiled meat, and roast alike; Artusi departs from Stefani's precepts on purpose, holding the flavoring to a little parsley and basil. The record does not preserve Stefani's exact proportions in this dish, so it reaches us doubly filtered, a seventeenth-century recipe as a nineteenth-century palate chose to keep it.

Ingredients

• g veal, lamb or similar brain
• chicken livers
• eggs
• parsley
• basil
• lemon lemon juice
• meat sauce
• salt
• pepper
• cold broth
• bread
• grated parmesan

Instructions

1. Blanch and peel the brain; sweat brain and chicken livers in butter and bring to done with meat sauce, seasoned with salt and pepper.
2. Beat the eggs with chopped parsley and basil, lemon juice, salt and pepper.
3. Dilute the egg mixture little by little with the cold broth that will moisten the soup.
4. Add the brain and livers cut small; thicken over gentle heat, stirring constantly, without boiling.
5. Pour over diced bread fried in butter or oil and scattered with grated parmesan. Serves six.