The Renaissance was a period of masterpieces, extravagance, and lots and lots of sugar. The banquet for the wedding of Ercole d’Este had a significantly larger menu compared to today’s standards. An 8 course dinner for the family and 104 of their noble guests was served over a period of 2 days. Just reading the menu makes me think either all of these people were severely obese or they were about to be…
First, the sheer quantities of food listed in this menu is ridiculous. The first course alone sounds like it would be enough to feed all those people. Also I noticed the excessive use of sugar in roughly half the dishes in each course. I know that sugar was used to counteract the large amounts of salt used as preservatives but in this case I think a lot of these dishes are intended to be sweet. Nearly every other dish is a “pastry” or a “pie” – the amount of carbs and sugar these people are consuming is mind blowing… just reading the ingredients list practically gave me diabetes. In addition, the sweet food items are intermingled with the meats, fish, and vegetable dishes which I find very odd. I dont know how I would feel about eating a “small cream pie dusted with sugar” then right after diving into some tasty salted beef tongue (also dusted with sugar…). I cant begin to imagine how expensive this banquet was for these people. The amount of spices alone would cost a fortune…
I tried counting the number of animals they ate throughout the first half of the banquet but I was overwhelmed by the time I got to course 2. Depending on the number of fish used per pie, I’d guess that there was about 15-20 animals per guest in the first 4 courses. So if my guess is somewhat close to accurate, roughly 4,400 animals were consumed over the course of the entire banquet.
I think even Trimalchio would find this feast to be a bit excessive. The overall experience might be enjoyable for him but I’m not sure he would even eat the food if it was dripping in sugar…
Patrick Solberg's Food and Wine Blog 