HISTORY OF TORTE AND TORTELLI

Stuffed noodles have a special place among the gastronomic innovations of the Middle Ages. They have an interesting history, which would be difficult to comprehend outside the cultural context that saw the emergence of this type of food that was as simple as it was ingenious. Perhaps inspired by an ancient custom but presented in a substantially new guise, the food of which we speak is the torta or pasticcio, also known as the pastello or coppo, terms that are used interchangeably in various documents to indicate a container made of dough, with the dual purpose of containing and cooking a filling, that is placed in a heated oven or left to cook among red-hot bricks of terracotta or stone. Preparations of this type were not unknown in the cuisine of ancient Rome, where they were accorded little importance. We find a few references in Apicius,and the moretum in the famous pseudo-Virgilian text simply involves bringing together a piece of flatbread and a mixture of herbs.European cookbooks of the late Middle Ages, however, include a virtual feast of torte or pies, which had apparently originated in Italy. The Liber de coquina, written at the beginning of the fourteenth century (or perhaps at the end of the thirteenth), already reveals a clear knowledge of this culinary preparation, while beyond the Alps the “torta” would emerge somewhat later, in recipe collections that were probably of Italian influence.In addition, literary and other kinds of textual references allow us to backdate the product by at least two hundred years. For example, we find torte in the weekly menu of the hermits of Camaldoli in the twelfth century.

Little is known about the origin of these dishes. It has recently been suggested that the Parmesan torta derives from the ancient cooking tradition of Mesopotamia, in which we find a preparation quite similar to one described in Italian and other European recipe collections in the Middle Ages.The recipe for this extremely complex creation, which appears in the Liber de Coquina and was later imitated and adapted, calls for at least six different layers of filling to be placed in the dough container—pieces of fried chicken with onion and spices, white and green ravioli with cheese, sausages of meat and ham, slices of pork with cheese and eggs, sausages made from organ meats, ravioli flavored with almonds and sugar, and so on—with more layers “if there are sufficient ingredients available.”
Dates and spices are added to each layer. The entire creation is covered with a final layer of dough decorated with plums and is left to cook between two red-hot earthen bricks. The cook must open the top from time to time during the cooking in order to add lard. Finally, the finished product “is served to the gentle lord with great pomp and ceremony.” The spectacular manner in which this dish is presented has led to the reasonable supposition that the term “Parmesan” is not derived from Parma but from the word “parma,” meaning “shield” or “a tower-shaped torta.” The timing and pattern of the arrival of this concept in Italy—perhaps directly from Egypt, skipping both Greece and Rome—may lead us to hypothesize the mediation of the Arabs in the High Middle Ages. In any case, apart from pointing out the strong possibility of its Middle Eastern origin, we are mainly interested in emphasizing the place (Italy) and the time (the Middle Ages) in which this archetypal idea—if we can call it this—gave rise to an original culinary culture that was shared at the social level, a point of departure for subsequent important developments. As happens in the case of every invention, gastronomic or not, it is not so much the origin of the product that captures the interest of the historian but rather the timing and manner of its diffusion.
The torta is a food that could have been created expressly to meet the needs of all social classes. Extremely practical and easily prepared and preserved, it was apparently within everyone’s reach and could thus be said to connote, in a general way, the existence of a gastronomic culture. From the outset, there was great diversity in its preparation (the filling could be simple or complex, humble or sophisticated) and in the ways used to cook it (not everyone possessed an oven, an attribute of wealthy homes and urban cookhouses). In this sense, it could be described as a typically urban invention.Could it be an accident that the torta in its various forms is most conspicuous in recipe collections of bourgeois origin?
Yet it was also a dish that was adopted by the poor, and we have already mentioned how the citizens of Parma had to make do with pies prepared without filling during the famine of 1246.Furthermore, how does one account for the agrarian contracts requiring a tribute from peasants to their landlord in the form of a “turta munda,” or “round pie”? Could this mean that the peasants were supposed to provide empty receptacles made of dough? At the very least, it certainly testifies to the sharing of culinary knowledge between the city and the countryside. The torta may also have been used as a practical container in the transportation of food. In the thirteenth century Salimbene’s chronicle describes pilgrims accompanied by “donkeys laden with bread, wine, and torte.”

Generally speaking, medieval culture associated the torta with vegetables. According to Platina, “the dish that we generally call torta probably takes its name from the fact that the vegetables generally used in its preparation are cut up and crushed [tòrte, cioè strizzate].” He notes, however, that the greedy appetite characteristic of his own century no longer limits itself to vegetable fillings but demands that “pies be made from the meat of fowl and other farmyard animals.” For this reason, he claims, people no longer recognize the (presumed) etymology of torta, and the term now designates both the “Pythagorean” variety (made of greens) and the “Gallic” type (made of meats).In the recipes that follow, Platina proposes additional ingredients: fish, grains, fruit, and everything that could be placed in a pie, with eggs and cheese used as binding agents.
Cheese, however, was the main ingredient in fladones, a type of pie already described in documents dating from the eleventh century. From what we observe in the medieval recipe collections, the dough container destined to hold the filling does not seem to be made for eating. These recipes emphasize above all that the container must be hard and consistent enough to withstand the cooking process: “Use very hard white dough (valde durum) and mold it into the shape of a coppo.” It can be made with flour and water only, or some egg may be added, as is done in preparing dough for lasagne: “Using the same mixture [as for lasagne] but adding more flour so that the dough becomes firmer and stronger (durior et forcior), you shape the  crust.”Making this crust edible was an important innovation of Renaissance cooking.
“Infinite varieties of torta” are evoked by Tommaso Garzoni in 1585 in his Piazza universale di tutte le professioni del mondo (Universal marketplace of all the professions in the world), describing the skill and creativity of the cooks: “the common pie, made in the garden, the tartera, the tartaretta, the sage pie, the gattafura, the migliaccia, the Lombard pie, the Romagna pie, or the German pie, the ‘mad’ pie, the Marchesana pie, the containerless pie, the white or black or green pie, and pies made with any other filling". But if we wish to enter the kitchen and see how such dishes are prepared, we must, as usual, consult Scappi. The fifth volume of his Opera, entirely dedicated to pastas, reveals that this skill was already fully codified in all its possible alternatives and variations. There are three basic typologies of pie dishes: the pasticcio, the crostata, and the torta. By pasticcio, Scappi means a container made of hard dough, not necessarily intended to be eaten, according to strict medieval tradition. An example of this type is the fiadone (thus named “by the common people”), in which “various grains” are cooked, including flour, barley, rice, spelt, millet, and foxtail.
The rules for preparing the dough are very precise: it must be made from flour and cold water, without salt, “because when made with warm water and with salt, it rises and then easily collapses and is not very good” (but one should be careful in wintertime that the water does not get too cold, which would affect the result at least as much as using water that is too hot). “It should be allowed to rest on the table for half an hour” to make it firm and dense, and it is then worked into “a round sheet of dough, half an inch thick.” Next, the filling is placed on the dough, and it is then topped up and placed in an oven that is “hot enough for baking bread (chap. 335r–v). If no oven is available, the pasticcio can be cooked between two terracotta bricks. When making a crostata or a torta, however—and here lies the novelty—one must use layers of dough, flavored with clarified fat and butter, that are friable and suitable for eating. Scappi’s recipe requires a multilayered base (usually consisting of three layers) sealed around a “tortiglione,” also made of flaky dough, and topped with two more layers of dough (except in the case of crostate, or open pies, which are “without a top layer” [c. 359v]). The difference between the crostata and the torta lies in the preparation of the filling: large pieces of meat, fish, vegetables, or fruit are placed in the open pie and a blended mixture in the torta. “If you want to make a torta, mix the ingredients in it,” he writes, following his description of a crostata made with plums and sour cherries (chap.386v). And again, at the conclusion of a recipe for a crostata of crabmeat and shrimp, he notes: “If you want to make a torta, crush the crabmeat or the shrimp” (chap. 384v). This is a frequently suggested variation.
Several different terms can designate the same kinds of preparation, depending on local custom. We learn that open pies (crostate) “are called coppi by Neapolitans and sfogliate by the people of Lombardy” (chap. 350r), whereas the torta is called a pizza in Naples—and here the writer explains that what is meant by “pizza” is a basic layer of dough “no more than an inch thick, without a top crust” (chaps. 355v, 365r). This item, along with its name, was to achieve the fame and fortune that we all acknowledge.
Scappi does not fail to explain the difference between a vegetable torta prepared in the Lombard style (chap. 360r) and the Bolognese variety (chap. 360v), the version most often mentioned in the menus. Both are closed pies, but the Lombard version is deep, and the Bolognese is shallower—“no more than half an inch in height—”and perforated with holes that allow the crust to “deflate.”
In addition, the dough used for the Lombard torta contains eggs, whereas the other dough does not. Otherwise the ingredients are more or less the same (Swiss chard is the basic vegetable, combined with cheese and spices), with a few variations. A third model is the gattafura, the Genoese torta (chap. 361), whose principal characteristics are the absence of all spices except for pepper, the addition of mint, and most notably the use of “sweet oil” instead of butter. It is difficult to name a product that Scappi does not manage to translate into an ingredient for a torta. He goes as far as to propose an “acorn torta” as a variation on the chestnut pie, noting that the flavor of “acorns from the Turkey oak is better than any other kind in producing the desired effect” (chap. 365).
The acorns should be cleaned carefully, left to steep, and then boiled in a good broth. When ready, they are pounded through a sieve, and the pulp is added to a mixture of butter; milk; dry, fresh cheese; ricotta or fresh provatura cheese; sugar; cinnamon; pepper; and egg yolks. The mixture is finally placed in a sheet of dough and baked in an oven or between red-hot terracotta bricks. What we have here is an example of how the culture of hunger can be transformed into culinary pleasure.

Along with the torta and obviously derived from it both etymologically and as a culinary concept, we find the tortello, which was created in medieval times. Margutte, the sly, greedy “half giant” who features as the protagonist of Luigi Pulci’s Il morgante, has no doubt about the relationship between the two: “I believe in the torta and in the tortello: one is the mother and the other is her son.” More accurately and equally enlightening is Scappi’s instruction: “One can make tortelletti of the same composition as all kinds of pies and like the torte described above” (chap. 389v).
One could easily imagine that this custom originated in the mists of time. Yet it was invented in the Middle Ages, when the art of pasta making and the art of torta making developed side by side. The tortello involves a kind of synthesis between the two skills. The cook prepares a thin layer of dough, similar to that used for lasagna, which is then cut into little pieces on which some filling is placed. The pieces are then folded over, and the filling is sealed inside, to form little pies (piccole torte). They may be cooked in two different ways: boiled in water or broth (and served, like pasta, with cheese and spices) or, alternatively, fried and sweetened with sugar and honey.
The author of the 'Liber de Coquina' calls for eggs and flour in his recipe for very thin tortelli (“tortella que alio nomine dicuntur crispella vel lagana”). His Tuscan emulator specifies that the tortelli may be sealed in different ways, creating all kinds of shapes: “About tortelli: You can shape the dough into any instrument you want. You can cut it into the form of a horseshoe, or brooches, rings, letters of the alphabet, or any kind of animal you can imagine. And you can fill these if you wish and cook them in a pan with lard and with oil.” The statement “you can fill these if you wish” enables us to understand that the tortello is designed as the wrapper or container of a possible filling.
But the opposite is also true: the “filling” is not necessarily wrapped or contained in dough. Gastronomically, it also has an independent existence as a kind of blended mixture or rissole that is boiled in broth or fried in fat. This is what the texts call a “raviolo,” though the term is used with some degree of inconsistency and ambiguity. “Raviolo” can also be used as a synonym of “tortello,” and each of these terms may indicate the finished product, that is, the container along with its filling. Generally speaking, however, raviolo designates the filling, and tortello, the wrapping or container.
The distinction is absolutely clear in the Liber de Coquina, which proposes the preparation of egg-sized “raviolos” using pork belly that is thoroughly minced and pounded, to which egg, cheese, milk, and spices are added. The cook wraps each meatball in tortello dough before cooking them in a pan with plenty of fat. As an alternative to dough, the writer suggests that the filmy substance surrounding the stomach of a kid goat, or something of the same texture, may be used as wrapping.
There is a similar recipe, with a different order of preparation, for another ravioli dish, also made of pork belly but additionally enriched with pork liver or lamb’s giblets, or with the organs of any other animal desired. The meat is first finely chopped on the cutting board, and aromatic herbs and spices (including saffron) are added. The cook pounds this mixture in the mortar and adds some beaten eggs, blending all the ingredients to create a thick filling. Egg-sized meatballs are carved out of this mixture and then wrapped either in the membrane that surrounds the pig’s heart or in a thin layer of pasta (“loco illius pellis fac alios de pasta”). These are fried in a pan with oil or other fat, and they may be dipped in honey before serving, if desired. Clearly, the ravioli of various colors that are placed in a Parmesan torta are also meatballs.

In short, although a raviolo may be wrapped in pasta, this is not mandatory. Even Maestro Martino is explicit on this issue. When discussing “white ravioli,” he states that these “can be made without dough.” But a gloss in the margins adds, “but if you want to make them with dough, you may do so.” This was already a time-worn alternative, as we discover in the chronicle written of Salimbene da Parma in 1284. Here the writer notes that on the Feast of Saint Clare he “ate ravioli without a covering of dough for the first time.” Similarly, Scappi’s recipe collection calls for both “wrapped” and “unwrapped” ravioli.
Del Turco’s Epulario (written at the beginning of the seventeenth century) makes a sharper distinction between tortelli and ravioli. For the latter “you must use the same filling as for the tortelli mentioned above and omit the shell,” molding the ravioli into shapes that look rather like long, thick strips of pork liver and then sprinkling them with a little flour “so that they do not stick to each other.” Although there was some confusion and variation in the terminology used from one location to another, the same concept prevailed right up to the time of Pellegrino Artusi, whose “Romagna-style ravioli” are simply small flour dumplings made with ricotta, cheese, and eggs and then boiled and flavored with cheese and meat sauce or “served as a side dish with a stew or a fricandò” (in much the same way as suggested by Scappi).Artusi then introduces “Genoese-style ravioli,” noting that “these really should not be called ravioli, as true ravioli are not made with meat and are not wrapped in pastry shells.”
Although they are the outcome of a refined culinary preparation, tortelli and ravioli also bring to mind the popular art of recycling leftover food, which is implicit by nature in all meat loaves or meatballs. The existing culinary texts reveal almost nothing about this, but it is interesting to note that Ortensio Lando’s imaginative work 'Catalogo de gli inventori delle cose che si mangiano' (Catalog of inventors of things that may be eaten) attributes the invention of such dishes to a peasant woman from Lombardy rather than announcing a more predictable yet more improbable attribution to an illustrious personage of classical antiquity, of the type frequently invoked in discussing all kinds of food practices, from the simplest to the most abstruse.
According to Lando, “Libista, a peasant woman from Cernuschio, was the inventor of ravioli wrapped in dough.” In the Baldus, Teofilo Folengo also makes an agreeable connection between the common people and torte or tortelli by including these dishes— along with gnocchi and a polenta of broad beans—in the list of treats the late wife of the peasant Tognazzo was apt to prepare for her husband. It is also significant that preparations of this kind are more common in recipe collections of domestic cooking, such as the “notebook” complied by Sister Maria Vittoria della Verde between 1583 and 1606 in the Convent of Saint Thomas in Perugia, than in treatises written by professional cooks.

By Alberto Capatti & Massimo Montanari, translated by Aine O’Healy in the book 'Italian Cuisine a Cultural History', Columbia University Press, New York,2003, p.72-78. Edited and adapted by Leopoldo Costa.