We’re interrupting our regular series of articles for a brief advertorial-historical moment. GastroArt Publishing presents the first-ever reissue of an 1865 recipe book, namely: “Romanian Cuisine: A Book Comprising Several Recipes for Food and Buffet,” by Christ Iónnin.
This is a new gastroart.ro project, following the organization of the first edition of the Gastronomy and Wine Congress (alongside vinul.ro and Rare Food Services), the debate “History and National Gastronomic Identity” at the National Museum of Romanian History, and several gourmet evenings themed around Romanian gastronomy, held together with chefs Nico Lontraș, Johnny Șușală, and Vasile Nicolae.
For the 2018 edition – the first to appear on the Romanian book market 153 years after the original edition – we used the copy held at the Library of the Romanian Academy, the only one, as far as we know, still in existence.
The current edition, without being a critical one, tries to bring a series of clarifications and corrections to the 1865 original, making it both an enjoyable read for today’s audience and a practical tool for anyone who might need to cook using the recipes it contains. That’s why, alongside the original text, we’ve added: more than 200 footnotes, a glossary of terms, a table of measurements, a preface that sheds light on several aspects of the book, its era, and its author, as well as a chronology of 19th-century Romanian cookbooks, with some remarks on each. Responsible for all these annotations and studies is Simona Lazăr, the tireless researcher of Romanian gastronomy.
The preface brings some previously unpublished information about who Christ Iónnin actually was – a figure about whom nothing has been written in the few articles and studies published so far about this book.
It’s no coincidence that GastroArt Publishing announces its existence and ambitious projects with this first title, which, among other things, has the merit of being the first to use the term «Romanian cuisine», even though the volume actually contains a collection of dishes from the universal recipe repertoire.
This isn’t the place, nor the occasion, to reopen the debate about traditional or authentically national cuisine, about how gastronomies are actually regional and subcontinental in nature, and about why borrowing a dish – and later refining or adapting it to local taste – isn’t something to hold against anyone. You’ll find those arguments in the series of articles I’ve published on selgroscautapasiunea.ro
„(…) we owe it to Christ Iónnin that he was the first to place, on the cover of a book, the phrase «Romanian cuisine». Even though this volume, among its 224 recipes, contains far too few that are actually… Romanian. We shouldn’t hold that against him. National identity concepts were only just being defined at the time. (…) We don’t know exactly how the idea for a cookbook took shape in his mind. He was probably a gourmand. Among his companions were quite a few recognized as such – like N.T. Orășanu, for instance, credited with “christening” mititei with the name they still carry today. He likely attended lunches that stretched into the evening and dinners that ran until dawn in the taverns of Lipscani. He was probably also a guest at the homes of well-off ladies who kept, on their bookshelf as an essential piece of their bridal trousseau, a cookbook from Paris, Vienna, or Berlin. He may even have borrowed one of these culinary collections from them, taking a dish or two from it to include in his book. We don’t know exactly how it happened, but we can imagine it, given the customs of the era.
We owe it to Christ Iónnin that he put the phrase «Romanian cuisine» on the cover of a book, but the idea itself doesn’t belong to him. The first to circulate the idea of a national gastronomy, in the almanacs they published in the late 1830s and early 1840s, were Kogălniceanu and Negruzzi, in Iași. And it was also they who, in 1841, printed our first cookbook in the Romanian language. In 1830, in Berlin, Kogălniceanu pushed for the terms “Romanian” and “Romania,” instead of Wallachian/Moldavian and Wallachia/Moldavia, in a Europe that hadn’t yet been sifted through the revolutions to come. Given his familiarity with the progressive intellectuals of Iași, the Bucharest-based Christ Iónnin would likely have had access to these ideas too. That he was the first to give them printed form is a matter of destiny. But also of circumstance”, writes Simona Lazăr in the preface.
Below we reproduce three recipes from the book, and we should note that the volume includes detailed explanations of all archaic or regional terms.
“Stuffed Peppers
Take peppers, remove the top, clean out the seeds; fill them with minced fried mutton meat mixed with onion, parsley, salt, and crushed pepper; put the tops back on; place them in a pan with a little lard to fry briefly; then pour over a little meat broth with a bit of tomato sauce and let them simmer over moderate heat until reduced.
Hare with Olives.
Fry a good amount of chopped large onion in oil; then add the meat cut into small pieces and let it brown; then pour warm water over it until the meat is covered; for half a hare (usually the front half is used), add 50 drams of green olives, pepper, a bay leaf, and chopped parsley; let it reduce until the fat rises to the top, and serve neither too hot nor completely cold.
Mutton Chops with Whipped Sorrel
Boil the chops in meat broth with a bouquet of parsley, a small onion, a bay leaf, and a sprig of thyme; once fat begins to render out, strain the sauce and let it reduce further on its own; then pour it all over the whipped sorrel”.
