If you’re a fan of history and food (guilty), you might be curious about what sort of foods were traditionally served at papal conclaves throughout history.
When my husband sent me a video about this very topic, I wasn’t surprised. He’s such a culinary history buff that he once planned an entire 1700s dinner party with a period-appropriate menu. Every year for Thanksgiving, he makes a 450-year-old recipe for pumpkin cheesecake from a 16th-century cookbook.
So we were both curious to check out “Feeding the Papal Conclave”:
The video includes a lot of wild facts.
In 1248, the cardinals took so long to elect a pope that their initially ample menu was reduced to just one meal a day, and finally to just bread and water. Despite this privation, it took fully 40 months for the new pope to be crowned, Pope Gregory X. (Read here about how that year's troubles brought about the current tradition of a con-clave, literally, with a key -- the cardinals were locked up until they could get the job done!)
One of the first celebrity chefs, Bartolomeo Scappi, concocted the meals for the papal conclave in 1549. He writes about the menu and methods in his cookbook, including that the foods had to be tested for poison every day! This affected his menu, as he wrote, “It was not possible to send in closed pies or whole chickens, since those were cut open in the presence of the bishops.”
Baby-back ribs in 1549?
One of the recipes served at the 1549 conclave was, believe it or not, baby-back ribs. In his cookbook, Scappi wrote of serving ribs to the cardinals, and included several cooking methods:
Different ways to cook the back ribs of a domestic pig. If the pig is young, the ribs can be roasted on the spit with the rind, or without, and with onions split in the pan, which are cooked with the fat that drips from the meat as it cooks ... and before it is put on the spit, it is sprinkled with salt and ground coriander seed.
He even mentions serving it with a sauce that sounds like a distant precursor to barbecue sauce:
You could also let the ribs stand in a marinade of vinegar, grape must syrup, garlic cloves and coriander, and then cook it on the spit in the above way, serving it hot with a sauce on top made of the same seasoning…
In the spirit of historical food appreciation, may we suggest barbecue ribs for dinner tonight in honor of the conclave? And since my husband’s favorite Thanksgiving recipe comes from Scappi’s cookbook, perhaps pumpkin cheesecake for dessert?
Just let me know what time to arrive for dinner at your house. We hope the cardinals in Rome are enjoying something equally delicious!
