In a recent episode ofGreat bossa team of participants presents a dish with lightly smoked trout and a grated hard, salty cheese. The judges' reaction is as predictable as it is – to me at least – completely baffling. “Considering that I really hate any combination of seafood and cheese, I didn't mind this dish,” says judge Padma Lakshmi. Chief Justice Tom Colicchio nods vigorously and says, "I'm with you."
On a show that often rewards experimentation, where the judges enjoy seeing combinations of ingredients that don't seem to work, there's a moment in almost every season when a contestant tries to combine seafood and cheese. This season's grudging non-hate is about as high praise as such a dish has ever received.
The ban on combining seafood and cheese is old and strong, but local. ThatGreat bossjudges pronounce this ban as if it were a universal rule, but of course there are dozens of age-old dishes combining seafood and cheese that are beloved outside the United States—in Greece, Mexico, France, and even in specific parts of the US. yourself. It's bizarre yet common to assume that the combination of seafood and cheese is inherently wrong. So where did it come from?
"It certainly originated in Italy,there is no doubt about it,” says Julia della Croce, cookbook author, lecturer, author and one of America's foremost experts on Italian cuisine. "Italians are very religious when it comes to mixing cheese and fish or shellfish, it's just not done." I've spoken to several food historians and no one seems to disagree on this point: the ban and its aggressiveness come from Italy.
Internationally, there are many examples of dishes combining seafood and cheese, some of which are considerably older than the country of Italy. There isgarides saganaki, a Greek dish of fried shrimp, tomatoes and feta. There isRoquefort mussels, mussels in white wine with a firm blue cheese, from France. Fish tacos and quesadillas in Mexico's beach towns are often served with melted Chihuahua cheese. There's the classic bagel with cream cheese and salmon from New York, or the legendary white mussel pizza with pecorino romano from New Haven, Connecticut.
In factWhythe ban exists in Italy, the reason for this is less clear. A common explanation is that seafood is very delicate and cheese is very strong, and cheese can drown out the taste of seafood. This is, of course, ridiculous: many seafood, such as mussels, mackerel, oysters, and sardines, are very strong in flavor, and many cheeses, such as ricotta, mozzarella, queso fresco, and paneer, are very mild.
Della Croce says the Italian objection to seafood and cheese is more based on preference. “The reason it's not done is, as the Italians will say, if you ask them, they'll just tell you that it really confuses the taste of the seafood,” she says. “Seafood just isn't meant to be served with cheese, the flavors just don't work together.”
The widespread, self-righteous belief that cheese trumps seafood, or that there is something inherently disqualifying about the combination, is completely wrong. The ban comes from a different place; there must be a reason beyond simple taste preference. After all, I don't like the combination of orange and chocolate, but I'm not telling anyone eating one of those cute chocolate balls that break into clementine-patterned slices that you can't combine chocolate and orange.
Before I get into this part, there are a few things that need to be clarified. Italian cuisine is not monolithic, and regional Italian cuisine has clear influences from any other country that lies nearby or has ever conquered it – for example Austria, France, Tunisia. . And della Croce notes that in the past decade, younger chefs in Italy have shown more willingness to experiment with what was previously a fiercely defended cuisine.
Della Croce, like many food writers, used the word "traditional" to describe certain dishes and ways of eating. I think this is a very difficult concept to capture; tomatoes are for examplenot resident in Italy, and many of the best-known Italian dishes (as with all cuisines) are clearly products of cultural exchange. Declaring something “traditional” suggests that it is static and unchanging, when of course it must have changed many times before it became what it is.
To create something that can be called 'traditional', a large group of people must immediately decide to dig in their heels and defend themselves against any changes. It obviously follows that some major event must occur to trigger this; Why else would everyone decide what their grandmother did at the same time?calamariis the only way?
This perception of 'traditional' food is not one that everyone shares; I understand that della Croce thought I was being quite extremist in insisting that the entire kitchen is a liquid chaos, a snow globe in the grasp of a manic six-year-old. But she noted that one of these major events happened recently: World War II. “Italy changed a lot after World War II, so people became very protective of their local traditions because they were eroding,” she says. "The war devastated Italy. Everything was modernized and Americanized."
After an event as earth-shattering as a world war, and as globalization threatens to transform a weakened country with fierce regional and national pride, it is only fair that Italians want or need to hold on to traditions. Suddenly everything was uncertain. Who are we actually? How do we maintain our identity?
Food is Italy's largest cultural export. Simple. Everyone loves Italian food. But with increased globalization comes a struggle. Italian food, like the widespread cuisines of China and Mexico, would change when it landed on other shores. And change was something that terrified Italy at the time, because it seemed inevitable, oppressive and overwhelming. So – and this is of course a generalization, but one that is supported by the data – the Italians stuck with what they grew up with. The way their grandmothers did it, that was the only way to do it. Any other way was wrong, and doing it wrong was potentially disastrous.
The food that is considered 'traditional' Italian food often, but of course not entirely, dates from the late 19th century.Margherita-pizza,bolognese,risotto,stewed veal(in its current form), and many more, can be dated to that era, and not earlier. These were dishes of the grandmothers of those who survived the Second World War. They have become tradition, even though objectively speaking they are not that old; there are many cookbooks and written descriptions of Italian food from the 18th century and earlier, but these dishes are not listed. Instead, they were the green bean casserole of their time, albeit much tastier.
Another element: Italy has always had strong regional pride. The country itself has only been united since 1861 and was previously a region of competing and sometimes hostile individual nations and city-states. “God forbid you ask a taxi driver how to make a Roman dish,” della Croce laughs. “It's only done this way, in Rome we do it this way, and in Naples, forget it, they don't know how to do it.” The regional competitiveness still exists, but there is also a greater competition: Italy versus the world.
It is worth mentioning here that almost everyone can be aware of the right way to prepare and eat their food. But usually the things people become sensitive to are specific dishes, not basic rules like the combination of two widespread categories (at least in the West). My getting irrationally angry over a cinnamon raisin bagel is not the same as an Italian saying that seafood and cheese should never be combined.
The ban on combining seafood and cheese was one of those things that Italian grandmothers said in the 1940s that I think got caught up in Italian panic and pride and competitiveness and all that. It became a fundamental part of Italian cuisine. And because Italian cuisine, along with French, is such a dominant force in American cuisine, some of these traditions came across the Atlantic. An American chef who has trained in Italy or under an Italian instructor may sign some of these rules. The authentic, traditional way to serve seafood in Italy? Never with cheese.
So I guess that's the reasonthe ban is strong in both Italy and the US, but that doesn't really explain where it comes from. One historian I spoke with suggested that Italy's main cheese-producing areas were mostly inland, and that cheese and seafood would not normally have been combined just because of geographic separation. This is somewhat true; Much of Italy's best cheese comes from the mountainous interior. But cheese is made all over Italy, and some of the most famous cheeses:buffelmozzarella,pecorino romano- come from provinces with significant coastlines.
Ken Albala, a food historian and professor at the University of the Pacific, suggested otherwise: This was originally a medical ban. From the time of Hippocrates, in the fourth and third centuries BCE, humorism was the dominant medical theory in modern-day Italy. The theory is based on balancing the four humors (humors in this case meaning body fluids): black bile, yellow bile, phlegm and blood. Good health was thought to be the result of a good balance of body fluids. One thing that could throw the humors out of whack, or be used to bring them back into balance, was food, and types of food were thought to have different effects on the humors.
“Cheese digests very slowly and would hinder the transformation of the fish, which spoils very easily,” Albala wrote in an email. “This means that things will go bad for a long time before it can be completely demolished. And then the tainted fish would be forced into the liver, turned into tainted blood, and destroy the entire digestive process. ) can be: fish can certainly spoil and many people are lactose intolerant. Ancient physicians and philosophers tooAristotleand Galen warned against the combination. “By the late Middle Ages and Renaissance it was common wisdom in nutritional literature,” Albala writes. “It is still deeply ingrained in the minds of most Italians as unthinkable.”
This one makes the most sense to me: a strange ancient tradition whose true meaning was lost centuries ago, caught in a wave of post-war preservation and simultaneously exported via chefs and foodies eager to showcase the tradition's prominence . It's crazy, but so is the claim that shrimp and feta don't taste good together. (They really do.)
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