A captivating novel of Renaissance Italy detailing the mysterious life of Bartolomeo Scappi, the legendary chef to several popes and author of one of the bestselling cookbooks of all time, and the nephew who sets out to discover his late uncle’s secrets—including the identity of the noblewoman Bartolomeo loved until he died.
When Bartolomeo Scappi dies in 1577, he leaves his vast estate—properties, money, and his position—to his nephew and apprentice Giovanni. He also gives Giovanni the keys to two strongboxes and strict instructions to burn their contents. Despite Scappi’s dire warning that the information concealed in those boxes could put Giovanni’s life and others at risk, Giovanni is compelled to learn his uncle’s secrets. He undertakes the arduous task of decoding Scappi’s journals and uncovers a history of deception, betrayal, and murder—all to protect an illicit love affair.
As Giovanni pieces together the details of Scappi’s past, he must contend with two rivals who have joined forces—his brother Cesare and Scappi’s former protégé, Domenico Romoli, who will do anything to get his hands on the late chef’s recipes.
With luscious prose that captures the full scale of the sumptuous feasts for which Scappi was known, The Chef’s Secret serves up power, intrigue, and passion, bringing Renaissance Italy to life in a delectable fashion.
AMAZON | BARNES AND NOBLE | BOOKS-A-MILLION | INDIEBOUND
The Chef's Secret + Renaissance Cherry Ice Cream = Summer
By Crystal King, author of The Chef’s Secret and Feast of Sorrow
One of the
best things about the summer, in my opinion, is the variety and flavor of the
fruits that appear in the warmest months of the year. Cherries are one of my
favorite fruits of all. I’m not the only one that has grown up with a love of
cherries. Millions of people all over the world, through the centuries, have
loved this tiny fruit. The first record we have of the cherry was that Roman
consul, politician and military conqueror Lucius Licinius Lucullus brought them to Rome from Turkey in roughly 72 B.C. I
wrote my first novel, Feast of Sorrow, about the first century ancient
gourmand, Apicius, whose name is on the oldest known cookbook—a cookbook which
includes instructions on how to preserve cherries.
The famous
Renaissance Italian chef, Bartolomeo Scappi, also shared a number of cherry
recipes in his cookbook. Who was Scappi? We don’t know much about his life. We
know he died in 1577, so we can roughly guess when he might have been born. We
know who he worked for as a chef, which included a number of cardinals and
popes. We know he was born in Dumenza, on the northern border of Italy—almost
in Switzerland—and that he lived in a few other places, in Milan, Venice,
Bologna, and for most of his life, in Rome. He had a nephew named Giovanni, who
became his apprentice in the Vatican kitchen, and a sister named Caterina. And
finally, he published a cookbook, L’Opera
di Bartolomeo Scappi, with over 1,000 recipes in it, with instructions and
images that would inspire chefs for more than 200 years after it was printed.
The rest?
That’s the
fun part. I had the opportunity to make it all up in my novel The Chef’s Secret. But one of my
favorite things about writing about historical chefs is that I get to learn about
and experiment with the flavors of that time.
Renaissance
nobility were considerably richer than the peasantry, with a gap between the
rich and poor nearly on levels that we see today. But back then, one of the
ways we saw the disparity was in what people ate. The wealthy could afford
luxurious spices and most importantly, sugar. Scappi’s cookbook contains 900
recipes with sugar in them and many of the dishes were so laden with sugar that
we might find them cloying today. Spices were also one of the ways that the
nobility showed off their money, and if you could afford exotic spices, you
used them liberally. Around 600 or so dishes in Scappi’s cookbook call for
cinnamon, for example. Cinnamon, nutmeg, coriander and cloves were omnipresent,
even in dishes we would consider savory—like fried chicken!
Not long
after I finished writing The Chef’s
Secret, I came across an article in NPR's The Salt about Hannah Spiegelman, who creates ice
cream based on flavors from various historical period. I knew I had to reach
out to her. She combines two of my loves--history and ice cream. Her website A Sweet History catalogs all her delicious creations.
I like to
think that Scappi would swoon just as much as I did if he saw this recipe.
There are a few steps to making it, but I promise, it’s worth it. The candied
pine nuts make this ice cream truly heavenly.
