The Italian meal and its order

The order of the Italian meal is set down for the household cook in Ada Boni's Il Talismano della Felicità, first published in Rome in the twentieth century and long kept in the Italian kitchen as a general reference. The book gathers the dishes of the whole peninsula under a single sequence of courses, and in doing so it records a common framework within which the regional cooking of Italy is arranged. Its chapters follow the order in which food is brought to the table, and that arrangement is the anchor of this entry.

The meal that Boni's book presupposes proceeds by courses, each with its own office. It begins with the antipasto, which is meant to wake the appetite and not to satisfy it, and it moves to the primo, where pasta, rice or soup is served, then to the secondo of meat or fish, with the contorno of vegetables set beside it or following it. Cheese and fruit close the savoury part of the table, and the dessert and coffee follow. The sequence is one of progression and proportion, in which no course is allowed to overwhelm the next. The primo holds a particular place in this order. Pasta, risotto and soup are not treated as an accompaniment to meat but as a course in their own right, served on their own plate and judged on their own terms. In Boni's arrangement the sauce is sized to the pasta and the portion to the courses that will follow it. A cook who understands this will make the first course lighter when the second is rich, and the reverse. The secondo and its contorno show the same reasoning. The meat or fish is cooked and presented plainly enough that the vegetable can be taken as a separate dish with its own seasoning, and the two are not combined on one plate as a single composition. Salad, where it appears, comes after the main course and not before it. The separation of the elements allows each to be tasted for what it is. The order is a framework and not a rule imposed equally on every table. Boni writes for a household in which a meal might be reduced to a single course and fruit on an ordinary day, or extended through every stage for a feast, and the menus in her book show both. Regional cooking enters at each stage: the antipasto, the pasta shape, the meat and the sweet differ from province to province, while the sequence that holds them remains recognisable. This is why the order of the meal is the first thing a cook must learn before turning to the dishes of any single region.

At table the order of courses governs how flavour is built and rested. The salt and acidity of the antipasto prepare the palate, the primo carries the strongest seasoning of the meal in a moderate portion, and the secondo and contorno are tasted separately so that each keeps its own character. Fruit and a light sweet close the meal, so that the palate is left clean and not weighed down.