Food has always had a magical quality to it, especially in fairy tales. In these stories, food often plays a prominent role in shaping the narrative and influencing the characters. Whether it is a poisoned apple, a magical gingerbread house, or a transformative potion, food is used as a tool to create wonder and awe. One of the most iconic examples of food in fairy tales is the poisoned apple in Snow White. This apple serves as a symbol of temptation and danger, representing the allure of the forbidden. The apple's poison is a central plot device, causing Snow White to fall into a deep sleep until she is awakened by true love's kiss.
In the short, simple fairy tale “Sweet Porridge” an old woman of the forest gives a poor young girl a magic cooking pot. One day when the girl goes out her mother commands, “Little pot, cook.” When she has had her full she realizes she can’t recall the command to make it stop. “So it went on cooking and the porridge rose over the edge, and still it cooked on…just as if it wanted to satisfy the hunger of the whole world.” Eventually, the girl comes home, stops the pot, and “anyone who wished to return to the town had to eat his way back.” The townsfolk can now graze their way through life the same as any cow in the field or horse in the pasture. A wish fulfilled.
Just as fairy-tales are an oral phenomenon, transformed over the years by slow rumination of traditional knowledge, these recipes should be viewed as suggestions, to be used as a source of ideas for creating dishes of your own. Elissa, a high school Latin and Greek teacher, a freelance journalist and sirenologist author of Le sirene esistono , published by Otto Libri , has always been particularly interested in fairy-tales as is Camillo and also became interested in cooking some years ago.
The apple's poison is a central plot device, causing Snow White to fall into a deep sleep until she is awakened by true love's kiss. The apple serves as a reminder that appearances can be deceiving and that consuming certain foods can have profound consequences. Food also has transformative powers in many fairy tales.
Food in fairy-tales: imagination and historic recipes
2017-04-03 Once upon a time there was the witch’s apple in Snow White. And the pea under the princess’s mattress. Vasilisa the Beautiful’s cabbage soup, Rapunzel’s salad and Pinocchio’s tripe.
High school Latin and Greek teacher, freelance journalist and “sirenologist” Elissa Piccinini has just written a book with her friend and colleague Camillo Bacchini, a literature teacher, called “Ricette da fiaba”: fairy-tale recipes. Published by Elliot Edizioni and beautifully illustrated by Francesca Rossetti, the volume is inspired by the best-known Italian and international fairy-tales and is part essay and part recipe book.
When did you first get the idea for the book, Elissa?
“A couple of years ago, at a dinner party I hosted. As Camillo and I share the same interest in fairy-tales, I suggested the idea, and he agreed right away. We started out with Giorgio Cusatelli’s essay “Ucci, ucci. Piccolo manuale di gastronomia fiabesca”, which is all about the symbolic value of food in fairy-tales, and went in an original direction of our own.”
Your book reads like a menu.
“We start with bread in fairy-tales, where there are houses made of bread and focaccia, then go on to magic first courses to see what is boiling in the cauldrons, enchanted meat, ‘Fee-fi-fo-fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman’, marvellous fish that talk and magical snakes, amazing sauces, enchanted vegetables and legumes, in search of the magic bean, enchanted sweets with which to make oneself a lovely companion, and, last but not least, potions. These sections, introduced by a few pages of essays with a vast bibliography on the importance of a dish or ingredient in the world of fairy-tales, each contain seven or eight recipes.”
Each of these recipes is linked with a fairy-tale.
“That’s right. And for each dish, I sought out the closest recipe, geographically and chronologically, to the collection of fairy-tales from which it came. For example, we have capon stuffed with “Three citrons”, a tale written by Giambattista Basile in sixteenth-century Naples, with a recipe inspired by the famous sixteenth-century recipe book by Bartolomeo Scappi, who was cook at the Vatican kitchens in the days of Pope Pius IV.”
What other recipe books did you use?
“For Perrault’s fairy-tales, I used an eighteenth-century French recipe book by François Pierre de La Varrene. While for the stories collected by the Brothers Grimm, I drew on a nineteenth-century recipe book. For Calvino’s folk tales, I drew on traditional Italian cooking manuals such as the one by Pellegrino Artusi and the “Cucchiaio d’Argento”; while for Afanasjev’s Russian fables, I drew on nineteenth century Russian recipe books.”
What magical foods are we likely to find in fairy-tales? Elissa Piccinini, who co-authored “Ricette da fiaba” with Camillo Bacchini (Elliot Edizioni), with illustrations by Francesca Rossetti, tells us all about them
We continue our interview with Elissa Piccinini, co-author with Camillo Bacchini of “Ricette da fiaba”, published by Elliot Edizioni with illustrations by Francesca Rossetti, an artist who uses a delicate hand with a touch of spice here and there.
Elissa, a high school Latin and Greek teacher, a freelance journalist and “sirenologist” (author of “Le sirene esistono”, published by Otto Libri), has always been particularly interested in fairy-tales – as is Camillo – and also became interested in cooking some years ago. She collected the recipes and contributed to the essays contained in the book.
Elissa, I see that every recipe in the book has a section where readers can write their own notes.
“Just as fairy-tales are an oral phenomenon, transformed over the years by slow rumination of traditional knowledge, these recipes should be viewed as suggestions, to be used as a source of ideas for creating dishes of your own. When I cook, I never follow a recipe exactly as it is written, but customise it somehow.”
What is the significance of food in fairy-tales?
“In fairy-tales food is always linked either with the idea of abundance or with need. Fairy-tales mention food when it is lacking, as in Hansel and Gretel or Tom Thumb: a society of need, in which people eat the very last crumb and drink down to the very last drop, because waste is not conceivable and succulent foods are basic foods. After all, Little Red Riding Hood carries bread to her grandmother. Then there is the society of wealth, especially in Basile’s sixteenth-century fairy-tales, which often speak of sumptuous banquets featuring hyperbolic descriptions of the food, a sort of fantasy about food. “The Land of Cockaigne”, a land of plenty made of food, appears in many fairy-tales. This topos and archetype has been in existence since the days of ancient Greece; Lucian of Samosata wrote about it in the second century after Christ in ‘A True Story’.”
What foods are magic?
“Fish does not appear very often in fairy-tales, but when it does, it’s always a magic fish. Fish also has sacred connotations, as it has been linked with Christological symbolism since antiquity, because the Greek word for fish, iχθ?ς, is an acronym for “Jesus Christ, Son of God the Saviour”: this gives the very name of fish magical value. In a number of fairy-tales the idea of the fish that must be eaten in its entirety occurs, because every part of it has value, as in Italo Calvino’s “Seven-headed dragon”. Fish can often talk, like the magic shrimp that predict the future in the Brothers Grimm’s “Rosaspina”. If fish are eaten, they are usually fried, baked or stewed, such as Pinocchio’s stewed mullets.”
Here is the fairy-tale menu proposed in “Ricette da fiaba” (Elliot Edizioni), illustrated by Francesca Rossetti, from first course to dessert, complete with magic potions. Elissa Piccinini, who co-authored the book with Cammillo Bacchini, tells us all about it
What would a fairy-tale lunch or dinner be like? Batwing chips? Pasta with witches’ teeth pesto sauce? Fairy tongue escalope? Frog’s eye fritters?
We find out in our interview with Elissa Piccinini, co-author, with Camillo Bacchini, of “Ricette da fiaba” (Elliot Edizioni), illustrated by Francesca Rossetti.
Besides fish, Elissa, are there any other foods traditionally seen as having magical properties?
“Vegetables come second in terms of magical significance, and this might be because they are connected with the womb of mother earth, the origin of all life. In fairy-tales there are magical beans from which the beanstalk grows that leads to the world of the giants. Legumes frequently appear as evidence: scattered around, for instance, so that they all have to be picked up, down to the last one.”
What are fairy-tale menus like?
“Italian fairy-tales feature a lot of pasta, minestrone, lasagne; in other countries, fairy-tale foods include sweet millet, fava bean broth, barley soup, and grains other than wheat. Meat appears, especially in princely banquets, but cooked in very simple ways: roast, on skewers, boiled. The most complicated desserts, such as zeppola (fried pastry puffs), cassata, and blancmange, appear in Basile’s collection of fairy-tales, but there are lots of sweets in the Afanasjev collection too: fritters, puddings, spicy Christmas cookies.”
What about the drinks?
“Wine, beer and water appear in folktales. In my book I took the liberty of adding recipes for two potions I made up myself: the potion of eternal youth of the evil queen in Snow White, and the digestive potion of the orc in Tom Thumb. They are actually two very healthy juice concoctions!”
Did you take the recipes in your book as they were from historic recipes or revise them to suite modern tastes?
“em>As the original recipes are rather heavy, rather distant from today’s idea of nutrition (containing lard and so on), I include some suggestions at the end of the book for replacing ingredients: white flour can be replaced with whole wheat flour, sugar with natural sweeteners, animal fats with vegetable fats. This is my addition to the book.”
Many folktales address the interesting theme of the automaton made of food.
“It’s the theme of creating a sort of Golem out of food rather than clay. Just think of the gingerbread man, with the little old lady who makes him her son and chases him after he has been baked in the oven, symbolising the mother’s womb. Or Basile’s fairy-tale “Smalto splendente”, in which a woman makes a handsome man out of sweet dough with her own hands, and he magically comes to life. But on the day of their wedding, the creature is stolen by another woman out of jealousy, and is only restored to his loved one after various adventures.”
Illustrations: Francesca Rossetti
We continue our interview with Elissa Piccinini, co-author with Camillo Bacchini of “Ricette da fiaba”, published by Elliot Edizioni with illustrations by Francesca Rossetti, an artist who uses a delicate hand with a touch of spice here and there.
Elissa, a high school Latin and Greek teacher, a freelance journalist and “sirenologist” (author of “Le sirene esistono”, published by Otto Libri), has always been particularly interested in fairy-tales – as is Camillo – and also became interested in cooking some years ago. She collected the recipes and contributed to the essays contained in the book.
Elissa, I see that every recipe in the book has a section where readers can write their own notes.
“Just as fairy-tales are an oral phenomenon, transformed over the years by slow rumination of traditional knowledge, these recipes should be viewed as suggestions, to be used as a source of ideas for creating dishes of your own. When I cook, I never follow a recipe exactly as it is written, but customise it somehow.”
What is the significance of food in fairy-tales?
“In fairy-tales food is always linked either with the idea of abundance or with need. Fairy-tales mention food when it is lacking, as in Hansel and Gretel or Tom Thumb: a society of need, in which people eat the very last crumb and drink down to the very last drop, because waste is not conceivable and succulent foods are basic foods. After all, Little Red Riding Hood carries bread to her grandmother. Then there is the society of wealth, especially in Basile’s sixteenth-century fairy-tales, which often speak of sumptuous banquets featuring hyperbolic descriptions of the food, a sort of fantasy about food. “The Land of Cockaigne”, a land of plenty made of food, appears in many fairy-tales. This topos and archetype has been in existence since the days of ancient Greece; Lucian of Samosata wrote about it in the second century after Christ in ‘A True Story’.”
What foods are magic?
“Fish does not appear very often in fairy-tales, but when it does, it’s always a magic fish. Fish also has sacred connotations, as it has been linked with Christological symbolism since antiquity, because the Greek word for fish, iχθ?ς, is an acronym for “Jesus Christ, Son of God the Saviour”: this gives the very name of fish magical value. In a number of fairy-tales the idea of the fish that must be eaten in its entirety occurs, because every part of it has value, as in Italo Calvino’s “Seven-headed dragon”. Fish can often talk, like the magic shrimp that predict the future in the Brothers Grimm’s “Rosaspina”. If fish are eaten, they are usually fried, baked or stewed, such as Pinocchio’s stewed mullets.”
In Cinderella, a pumpkin is magically transformed into a carriage by her fairy godmother, allowing her to attend the royal ball. This transformation highlights the power of magic and the ability of food to transport characters to different worlds and experiences. Similarly, in Beauty and the Beast, a simple meal shared between Belle and the Beast leads to the Beast's transformation into a prince. Food becomes a catalyst for growth and change in the story, illustrating the transformative power of love. Furthermore, food is often used to convey messages of abundance and generosity in fairy tales. Whether it is a table filled with sumptuous feasts or a cottage made of gingerbread, food is used to create a sense of abundance and comfort. It represents a world of plenty, where all desires are met and everyone is welcomed. This idea of abundance can also be seen in stories like Jack and the Beanstalk, where a magic beanstalk leads to a land of giants and a treasure-filled kingdom in the clouds. Food becomes a symbol of prosperity and the fulfillment of dreams. In conclusion, food plays a significant role in fairy tales as a tool for magic and transformation. It serves as a symbol of temptation and danger, a catalyst for change, and a representation of abundance. These stories remind us of the magical qualities of food and its ability to shape our experiences. Food has the power to enchant and captivate, just like the fairy tales in which it appears..
Reviews for "Cooking Up Deception: The Role of Food in Fairy Tale Trickery"
- Sarah - 2 stars - I was really excited to read "Food Magic and Fairy Tales" because I love both food and fairy tales. However, I found this book to be incredibly disappointing. The recipes were lackluster and not at all magical. And the fairy tales were poorly written and predictable. Overall, I felt like this book had a lot of potential, but it fell flat in delivering an enchanting experience.
- Mark - 1 star - I couldn't even finish reading "Food Magic and Fairy Tales". The recipes were overly complicated and required ingredients that were difficult to find. The storytelling was also incredibly boring and didn't capture my interest at all. I was hoping for a delightful combination of food and fairy tales, but all I got was a book that was a waste of my time.
- Emily - 2 stars - As a fan of both cooking and fantasy, I was really looking forward to "Food Magic and Fairy Tales". However, I found the recipes to be more frustrating than magical. The instructions were unclear, and the measurements were inconsistent. Additionally, the fairy tales incorporated into the book felt forced and didn't contribute to the overall experience. I was left disappointed by this combination that had so much potential but failed to deliver.