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demonstrating their usual boldness when it comes to metaphors, have stretched their name for this dish into
Brandade de morue? Brandade
, they say derives from
brandir
, to move, strike, wave a sword, halberd, lance and similar weapons. In fact, what is being brandished except a paltry wooden mixing spoon?” 55
    At time his insistence verges on the ludicrous. With a verse of dubious literary merit (”What the French call soufflé / And use as an
entremet
/ By your leave I name ‘sgonfiotto’ / And serve as a‘tramesso’”), 56 he tries to teach his fellow citizens (who, I am afraid, turned a deaf ear) to discontinue the use of the terms
soufflé
and
entremets
. Internationally successful as they had been for so long, these terms were not about to make way for homespun equivalents. Ironically, here too the proof is in the pudding: to this day, in Sicily, a chef is referred to as a
Monsu
, from the French
Monsieur
. 57
    While Artusi’s were certainly not easy times for the
questione della lingua
, graver problems besieged the incipient nation, chief among them poverty and hunger. For an idea of how serious these problems were, we can look at one of the many food-related episodes to be found in Carlo Collodi’s
Pinocchio
, 58 first published in book form in 1883, and thus a mere eight years older than
Scienza in cucina
. In the following episode, the wooden puppet is taught a lesson in, let us say, frugality. Extracting from the jumble of words with which Pinocchio greets him upon returning from jail the very simple truth that Pinocchio is dying of hunger, Geppetto, Pinocchio’s “father,” takes three pears, which he had intended for himself, and offers them to his starving son: “’If you want me to eat them, kindly peel them for me.’ ‘Peel them for you?’ cried Geppetto, astonished. ‘I would never have thought, my lad, that you were so refined and fastidious. That’s too bad! We should get used, from childhood, to eating everything, and liking it; for one never knows what might happen in this curious world.’” Not only will Pinocchio end up eating the parings for which he had shown such disdain, but, being still vexed with a problem that the pulp (and the peels) of three little pears can hardly solve, he will proceed to eat the cores as well. Having gobbled down everything, Pinocchio can finally tap on his stomach and announce cheerfully, “Now I feel better.” 59
    In another famous episode, that of the meal taken by Cat and Fox at the Inn of the Red Lobster, the idea of poverty filters through the voracious appetites of the eaters: “The poor cat had bad indigestion, and could eat no more than thirty-five mullets with tomato sauce and four helpings of tripe with parmesan cheese; and because she thought the tripe was not well seasoned, she asked three times for extra butter and grated cheese. The fox too would gladly have nibbled at something,but since the doctor had put him on a strict diet, he had to be content with a hare in sweet and sour sauce, garnished with fat spring chickens and young pullets. After the hare, he ordered a special dish of partridges, rabbits, frogs, lizards and other tidbits, but he would not touch anything more.” 60
    This comic intermezzo hearkens back to a centuries-old literary topos, referred to as poor man’s paradise, the land of plenty, or the land of Cockaigne, according to a thirteenth-century
fabliau
whose anonymous author swore to have visited it on strict orders from the pope for the highly credible purpose of doing penance. In this land “qui plus i dort, plus i gaigne” and “Cil qui dort jusqu’a miedi, / gaigne cinq sols et demi.” 61 In the
Decameron
, Bocaccio turned the narrative into a comic masterpiece: Calandrino, whose gullibility knows no bounds, is told of a country called Bengodi where “vines are tied up with sausages and a goose can be had for a farthing, with a gosling thrown into the bargain.” Around these parts there is a mountain