Pinocchio was born in post-unification Florence. Actually, more plausibly, he was born in the Florentine countryside, hardly disturbed by the great changes of the late nineteenth century. Poggi had already done his work to make the city worthy of being the capital of the Kingdom. Florence was rich in art, history and hunger. The poor people represented, then perhaps more than today, the majority of the Florentines, people who struggled to put together lunch with dinner every single day. Collodi’s book reflects this reality, which is in many aspects rural and poor. Pinocchio’s hunger is, therefore, an atavistic hunger. He carries this hunger since his “birth”. Collodi makes us aware of this from his first pages.

However, Pinocchio is also the son of another Florence, which emerges from a different literary work of the same period, written by Pellegrino Artusi. The recipes Pinocchio and the other supporting characters dream of or consume are the same recipes codified in a very famous cookbook. The foods described, in one case or another, were an integral part of the culture, which was by now not only Florentine but also – even if not totally – Italian.

Carlo Lorenzini was the son of the Count Ginori’s chef. Pinocchio’s culinary universe moves between the Tyrrhenian coast (with the excellent Green Fisherman’s fried fish), Romagna with its tortellini, and above all the Florentine (and, consequently, Tuscan) cuisine for all social classes. It is the same universe described by Artusi. Both writers, the Florentine and the one from Romagna, are sons of a cuisine art now part of the DNA of a population that, to put it as the Italian singer-songwriter Guccini, is “Romagna with a hint of Tuscany” or, better, Tuscany and a hint of Romagna, on both sides the Apennines. Consequently, there is not just a linguistic and stylistic relationship between Collodi and Artusi.

Collodi tackles the “gastronomic” topic in many ways. Sometimes the hunger of his puppet is simply quieted with expedients. The vetches, the fodder, the hay, the three pears (including skins and cores) are some examples. At other times, these expedients border on perfidy and certainly do not serve to soothe hunger. Accordingly, we have the painted cauldron, the paper chicken, the alabaster apricots and the chick that jumps out of the egg, etc.

In some cases, it is Pinocchio who risks ending up in the pan with hake and sole, becoming nourishment for the Shark, or even used as a log by Mr Stromboli for the roasting of his ram on a spit.

If it is true that most of the food and dishes in Pinocchio’s tale belong to the “food of the poor” daily diet, also other dishes belong not to a daily diet but to an extraordinary one, at least for the puppet and the other protagonists’ social class. These are the “richest” dishes, found on the festive table. Nonetheless, there are expressions taken from the food vocabulary and used in a metaphorical key, or other oneiric expressions that closely remind us of the dishes Calandrino dreamed of in the search for heliotrope.  

Eventually, Geppetto describes to Pinocchio another type of food, when they find themselves shark/whale’s belly: it is the food of the great travellers, used for sustenance during long journeys by sea, or the exotic food transported by ships. Indeed, the latter is not part of everyday nutrition.

The daily dishes of the poorer social classes at the end of the nineteenth century are the ones that most characterize Pinocchio: legumes, polenta, bread, eggs. Even Pinocchio, that is Collodi, gives us such a detailed description of how to cook an egg he makes our mouth water, yet he finds himself with a hopping chick.

The food Pinocchio eats always fall into poor nutrition even when he could have the possibility to eat better.  

At the Osteria del Gambero Rosso, Pinocchio asks for a slice of walnut and a little corner of the bread that he does not even taste. To all appearances, the richest dishes are those of the Cat. Nevertheless, the Leghorn-style mullet or the Parmesan tripe was still part of that “peasant food” cuisine that knew how to make excellent dishes with little or nothing. Artusi would say that they are “always an ordinary dish, no matter how cooked and seasoned”.

Pinocchio does not like cauliflower, and neither does Artusi who considers it “a herbage of the most insipid”.

Certainly better are the bread and salami Pinocchio dreams of in the place straw, but he will never be able to eat them. In this way, such desired simple food has the connotation of “rich” food for those who cannot and will never have it.

Often the puppet is persuaded to eat what he does not like (or to take bitter medicine) with the promise of candy with rosolio or a sugar ball. The candy and sugar are prizes, not foods. In the second half of the nineteenth century, sugar was not yet in daily use.

The dishes the Fox chooses at the Red Prawn Inn deserve special mention. Collodi describes rich, neither ordinary nor poor, dishes. The hare with fattened pullets and first-crow cockerels are complex recipes, which need long preparation (accurately described in the Artusi). It is a dish of luxury, of the elite.

The Fox also orders a small Cibreo, a precious dish that comes directly from the Renaissance. The Fox’s Cibreo is not the Cibreo of the Artusi but is opposed for its brazen richness to the tripe of the Cat and, above all, to Pinocchio’s walnut kernel and bread.

The puppet dreams of a cellar full of rosolio and alchermes, a library of candied fruit, cakes, almond biscuits and wafers with cream. Pinocchio dreams of extraordinary sweets.

Next, there are the Blue Fairy’s cups of coffee and milk and the rolls buttered under and over but, unfortunately, Pinocchio will not taste these things either.

There are other extraordinary dishes recalled by Collodi: the chicken breasts and the capon Galantine, the Milanese risotto and the Neapolitan macaroni, which Artusi illustrates in detail in his recipes.

Collodi uses culinary terms and sequences in many cases. They are expressions of common use in late nineteenth-century Florence, but, like all of his masterpieces, they have now become part of our culture. Pinocchio and Science in the Kitchen by Artusi are two sides of the same coin. Actually, they represent two different ways to describe the same everyday life that goes beyond the banks of the river Arno. Florentine cuisine and its culture are now ready to become Italian.