The Order of Courses

The sequence of the Italian meal is set out in Marcella Hazan's Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking as a structure that belongs to the whole peninsula rather than to one region. She presents it as the frame within which her chapters on antipasti, soups, pasta and rice, fish, meat, vegetables and desserts are meant to be used. The order is a matter of custom held in common, and the regions fill it with their own dishes.

Hazan's account begins from the premise that an Italian meal is built in stages, each with its own work to do, and that the cook plans the whole before cooking any part. The meal opens, where there is an antipasto, with something small that sharpens the appetite without satisfying it. It moves to the first course, the primo, which in her book is a soup, a dish of pasta or a dish of rice, depending on the season and on what is to follow. The primo is the centre of the Italian table, and she treats pasta as a course in its own right, taken in a modest portion and not as an accompaniment to meat. The second course, the secondo, is the dish of meat or fish. Hazan is plain that it should be considered together with the primo, so that the two do not repeat one another in substance or in richness. A primo dressed with a meat ragù is followed by something light, and a substantial secondo is preceded by a lighter first dish. This balance is the governing idea of her menu planning, and it explains why she gives so much attention to what precedes and follows each recipe. Vegetables, in her description, are served as a separate course or beside the secondo, the contorno, and not heaped on the same plate as the meat. A salad of dressed greens comes after the main course. Her reasoning is that each dish is then tasted for what it is, and that the plate is not crowded with unrelated flavours. Cheese and fruit follow, and a dessert of any elaboration is the exception for a particular occasion, with fresh fruit the ordinary close of the meal. The proportions follow from this order. Because the meal is composed of several courses, each is smaller than a single main dish would be in a table with fewer. The cook portions the primo so that the diner arrives at the secondo with appetite, and the secondo so that fruit and cheese are still welcome. Hazan's recipes are written to this scale, and her yields and servings assume the sequence and not a single plate. The order is also a discipline of the kitchen. Dishes that can be prepared ahead, such as the antipasto, the sauce for the pasta, or the dessert, are separated from those that must be finished at the last moment, and the sequence of courses lets the cook arrange the work accordingly. The result is a meal that is unhurried at the table because it has been ordered in advance in the kitchen.