Across Italy, ceremonial brotherhoods are sworn to protect historic dishes – from salted cod stew to prized cured meats – using medieval rituals, velvet robes and fierce culinary devotion.
I met the vice-president of the confraternity of salted cod stew over dinner at a risotto festival in Verona. I couldn’t help imagining him at secret candle-lit tastings and initiation ceremonies involving unusual uses of fish. Instead, he spent the first course intoning the perils facing the dish's ancient recipe: climate change, globalisation, modernity.
His tirade left me feeling rather glum – until he draped himself in a golden velvet robe, donned a society medallion and took to the stage. With pomp and passion, he enthralled the room with the wonders and secrets of Vicenza's humble dish.
Mario Calgaro, who is a lawyer when not extolling the virtues of salted fish, joined La Venerabile Confraternita del Bacalà alla Vicentina (The Venerable Confraternity of Baccalà from Vicenza) in 2012. The culinary association was formed in 1987 to safeguard and promote dish's original recipe, whose origins stretch back to the 15th Century.
Dozens of these esoteric gastronomic organisations exist across Italy, solemnly sworn to the protection of historic foods, preparations and dishes. There's the Archbrotherhood of the Supreme Culatello (a cured meat from Emilia-Romagna), the Order of the Knights of Polenta from Bergamo and the Academy of Spit-Roasted Meat.
Their sacred mission can seem anachronistic in an age of globalised tastes, fast food and high-paced life – salted cod stew alone takes four days to prepare. But for these groups, gastronomy is an intangible cultural heritage worth defending from oblivion, a view reinforced by Unesco's recent recognition of Italian cuisine.
There are more than 100 culinary confraternities in Italy, promoting hyperlocal foods, from the Alpine cjarsons – raviolo-like parcels filled with ingredients ranging from raisins, dark chocolate and cinnamon to spinach and grappa – to the dried red peppers known as zafarani cruschi from Basilicata and Calabria in the south.
They take their quest seriously. Brotherhoods are led by Grand Masters and Doges (in the case of the Archbrotherhood of the Supreme Culatello, the president is an actual prince), members swear allegiance and uphold ancient rites. Piedmont's Order of the Knights of the Raviolo and Gavi wine, for instance, knight their members in a ritual that could be straight out of a medieval storybook.
The raviolo itself (this particular version is filled with beef, sausage and borrage or endive, and eaten in a meat sauce or a culo nudo – plain) is said to have been invented between 1070 and 1202 in an inn along the much-trafficked road between Genoa and the Po Valley; then ruled by the Marquises of Gavi.
The knighting ceremony follows surviving records of Gavi traditions, explains Master Roberto Dellacasa. During the Chapter, the Chancellor calls forward the neophyte and presents him to the Knights. The candidate pledges to respect the Statute and to pursue the Order's purposes. He then kneels, and the Grand Master proceeds with the investiture. The medieval broad sword descends first on the shoulders, symbols of strength and sentiment, and then on the head, as if to augur wisdom.
(Dellacasa confirms that the sword doesn't actually date from the Gavi reign, but notes it is a hefty instrument all the same, and he is responsible for hauling it from event to event.)
While the rituals can verge on theatrical, they are fitting given how many of the foods these confraternities protect have centuries-long histories. Vicenza's baccalà traces its origins to a maritime disaster in 1431.
That year, the Venetian merchant Piero Querin set sail from Crete with a cargo of sweet wine, spices and cotton, bound for Flanders. But his dreams of wealth were dashed by a tragic shipwreck. Most of the crew perished, but Querin's lifeboat washed up on the island of Røst in Norway's Lofoten archipelago, where locals came to the rescue with their staple food: cod air-dried for months until it became rock-har
