Mad cats and knights errant: Roberto De Nola and Don Quixote
B.W. Ife

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Among the many bibliographical and cultural treasures preserved in the Eliot-Phelips collection is a fine copy of one of the most influential books about food, cookery and diet from sixteenth-century Spain: Roberto de Nola's Libro de cocina.

Little is known about the author, whom I will refer to by the Castilian form of his name, although there are a number of reasons to believe that he may have been Catalan or Neapolitan by birth: several early editions of the Libro de cocina describe him as cook to King Ferdinand of Naples, and the first known edition was published in Catalan. ¹ Altogether, there were some 14 or 15 Catalan and Spanish editions of the Libro in the sixteenth century, making it one of the most widely read books of its time. The Eliot-Phelips copy is of the first Castilian edition, printed in Toledo by Ramón de Petras in 1525. ² It is handsomely bound in full calf gilt, with inlays and onlays, in green, tan, black and red, with a figure of a chef in a lozenge on the upper cover, and a waiter on the lower cover. The copy appears never to have been used in earnest, for there is not a floury or oily thumb print to be seen on it.

As its long title indicates, ³ the book covers several aspects of household management, including the roles and functions of members of staff, the proper laying of table and conduct of service, and the correct methods of carving meat and pouring wine. In these respects, Nola shares something of Mrs Beeton's perception of the kitchen as microcosm, of food as central to the order of things. Some of Nola's strictures are eloquent for what they tell us about contemporary conditions: the kitchen should be kept tidy, and the utensils clean; when serving wine, the glass should be held head-high in case the waiter should sneeze; and the kitchen staff should be well dressed and look smart at all times.

Nola also sheds considerable light on one of the great social and culinary debates of the sixteenth century: should a meal be served one dish at a time, in the traditional Mediterranean manner, or should they all be put on the table at once, which was the modern, Habsburg practice? ⁴ Nola prefers the traditional ways, and has firm views on the correct sequence of dishes. It is interesting to note that this is still one of the main differences between northern and southern Europe. The English continue to find it odd that the Spaniards can make three courses out of meat and two vegetables; and in Spain the plato combinado is still something which is not to be countenanced in the best restaurants.

As to the recipes themselves, Nola divides them broadly into four groups: soups and meat dishes 'para tiempo de la carnal'; fish dishes for 'cuaresma'; pastries and desserts ('frutas de sartén y marçapanes'); and, interestingly, recipes for invalids, who are well provided for with a wide range of broths, soups and infusions, some of them designated for specific medicinal purposes such as the cure of colds or fevers.

But Nola is best known for one dish above all others, his infamous recipe for barbecued cat. 'Gato asado como se quiere comer', to give it its full title, is quite easy to do. First catch your cat ('el gato que esté gordo tomarás'), slit its throat, cut off the head and throw it away; skin the cat, gut it, wrap it in a clean cloth and bury it under the ground for 24 hours. Nola does not say why it should be buried, but this may have been to assist the tenderising process. Dig up the cat, baste it with oil and garlic, and roast it on an open fire. While it is cooking, beat it from time to time with fresh twigs (again, one imagines that this is part of the tenderising process). When cooked, place it in a large dish and serve with an oil and garlic sauce 'y puedes comer de él porque es muy buena vianda'. ⁵

Delicious or not, why does the method specify that the head should be thrown away? The temptation to explain this as squeamishness would almost certainly be anachronistic; and reference to the traditional injunction against selling 'gato por liebre' would seem to be ruled out by the fact that the recipe is specifically for cat, not rabbit or hare. The explanation which Nola gives is interesting because it has its basis in diet and hygiene: 'se dice que comiendo los sesos podría perder el seso y juicio el que la comiese'.

The idea that human consumption of cats' brains can cause madness is not unique to Roberto de Nola. Gerónimo de Passamonte attributes a delirious episode in his own life to the fact that he had been fed with eggs and bread which had been maliciously poisoned with cats' brains. ⁶ For Guzmán de Alfarache, eating brains is such a taboo that he likens it to eating his own flesh. ⁷ These injunctions, explicit and implied, against eating brains may offer an interesting gloss on the physiological origins of another celebrated case of mental illness, that of Don Quixote. I have argued elsewhere that Don Quixote's frugal, monotonous and unappetising diet, which is described in some detail in the second sentence of the novel, is more than just colourful background. ⁸ As the novel progresses Cervantes creates a strong parallel between Don Quixote's lifestyle on the one hand and the incidence of lucidity and madness on the other. Hunger, malnutrition and sleep deprivation appear to correlate closely with episodes of bizarre behaviour and hallucination.

Even before Don Quixote embarks on his chivalric career, the run-down and neglected character of his estate and household is reflected in the five staple elements of his miserable diet: ⁹ 'olla', the classic slow-cooked stew made with beans and sausages known as 'olla podrida', eaten as the main midday meal; ¹⁰ 'salpicón' or cold meat sliced thinly with onions and vinegar for supper; ¹¹ 'lantejas' or lentils on Fridays; ¹² 'duelos y quebrantos', of which more later, on Saturdays; and the occasional pigeon on Sundays. In real life, Alonso Quijano would have supplemented this diet with bread and wine, and he may possibly, but not necessarily, have also eaten some fruit and vegetables; ¹³ but the conventions of literary analysis do not allow us to take into account what is not in the text.

However, there are reasons other than malnutrition for concern about Don Quixote's diet, and they have to do with the 'duelos y quebrantos' he ate every Saturday. This dish, assuming that it is a dish, since some commentators and translators have taken the phrase to refer either to hunger or to wind, has given rise to much discussion (Rodríguez Marín 1916: 21-8). The earliest authorities define it as an omelette made with brains, brains being one of the parts of an animal permitted to be eaten on days of semi-abstinence. The Diccionario de autoridades (1732) explains that 'llaman en la Mancha a la tortilla de huevos y sesos' and gives Don Quijote as the only source. Nowadays it is more customary to find the dish made with bacon, and this practice is reflected in more modern authorities such as María Moliner (1987) who broaden the range of ingredients, but only to those parts of the animal that could be consumed on days of semi-abstinence: 'Fritada que se hacía con huevos y alguna parte de animal, como torreznos o sesos; antiguamente se solía comer los sábados, por ser comida de semiabstinencia.' ¹⁴

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An obvious question arises from this feature of Don Quixote's diet: could it be that the regular consumption of offal, and more particularly brains, on days of semi-abstinence, provides a further explanation for Don Quixote's unstable mental condition? Tempting though it would be to argue along these lines, there is no direct evidence, even if such an approach did not pose real methodological difficulties. What is interesting, however, is the underlying issue of food safety, which has been given a new significance by recent concerns about public health and the consumption of animal products in Britain.

The outbreak in 1986 of an epidemic of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (known as BSE, or 'mad cow disease'), and its similarity to other neurodegenerative diseases such as scrapie in sheep, and kuru and Creutzfeldt-Jacob Disease (CJD) in human beings, has raised the question of whether and, if so, how these diseases are transmitted within and between species (Lacey 1998: 34-41). What they appear to have in common is an unusual pathogenic agent called a prion, a deviant form of a normally harmless protein found in the brains of mammals and birds. Victims of CJD, kuru and scrapie all exhibit the characteristic spongelike pattern of neuronal destruction that leaves brain tissue pitted with holes. In the case of kuru, which is found only among the Fore people and related groups in Papua New Guinea, the unusual transmission patterns affecting adult females and children of both sexes, but rarely adult males, have been traced to the Fore's cannibalistic rituals of mourning in which the brain of the dead person was eaten by women and children. ¹⁵

The parallel between Roberto de Nola's throwaway remark and Britain's recent outbreak of BSE is intriguing. We know that spongiform encephalopathy can strike a range of mammals, including cats, and we know that the consumption of the brain of an infected person or animal is one way in which the disease is transmitted. We also know that early modern societies, including Spain, had highly developed systems of regulation governing the rearing, slaughter, sale and preparation of meat to protect public health. ¹⁶ Nola may have been relying on an old wives' tale when he told readers of his cookbook to throw away the cat's head, but, equally well, he may have known full well what the dangers of eating the cat's brains might be. And as for Cervantes, it is always unwise to underestimate how much he knew about the world he lived in.

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Works Cited

• Mateo Alemán (1987) Guzmán de Alfarache, ed. José María Micó. 2 vols. (Madrid: Cátedra)
• Miguel de Cervantes (1998) Don Quijote de la Mancha, ed. Francisco Rico. 2 vols. (Barcelona: Crítica).
• B.W. Ife (2000) Don Quixote's Diet (Bristol: University of Bristol).
• Richard Lacey (1998) 'Mad Cows and Englishmen', in Consuming Passions. Food in the Age of Anxiety, ed. Sian Griffiths and Jennifer Wallace (Manchester: Mandolin), 34-41.
• Roberto de Nola (1929) Libro de guisados, ed. Dionisio Pérez. Los Clásicos Olvidados. Nueva Biblioteca de Autores Españoles, IX (Madrid: Compañía Ibero-Americana de Publicaciones).
• --- (1977) Libre de coch, ed. Veronika Leimgruber (Barcelona: Universitat de Barcelona, Departament de Filologia Catalana).
• --- (1982) Libre de coch, ed. Veronika Leimgruber (Barcelona: Curial Edicions Catalanes).
• --- (1985) Libro de guisados (Valencia: Librerías París-Valencia).
• Gerónimo de Passamonte (1922) Vida y travajos de Gerónimo de Passamonte, ed. R. Foulché-Delbosc, Revue Hispanique LV, 311-446.
• Sara Paston-Williams (1993) The Art of Dining: a History of Cooking and Eating (London: The National Trust).
• Richard Rhodes (1998) Deadly Feasts. Tracking the Secrets of a Terrifying New Plague (London: Touchstone Books).
• Francisco Rodríguez Marín (1916) El yantar de Alonso Quijano (Madrid: Real Academia Española).
• Matilde Santamaría Arnaíz (1986) La alimentación de los españoles bajo el reino de los Austrias(Madrid: Universidad Complutense).

Footnotes
1.		Libre de coch (Barcelona: Carlos Amorós), 1520. Palau (192527) mentions an unconfirmed, and improbable, citing of an edition from Toledo 1477. The first edition describes Nola as 'lo diligent mestre Robert, coch del serenissimo senyor don Ferrando Rey de Napols', but no edition makes it clear which king Ferdinand is being referred to. The Catalan text has been edited by Veronika Leimgruber (Nola 1977, reprinted Nola 1982).
2.		Palau 192534. If any early edition can be considered definitive, it is probably that printed by Miguel de Eguía, Logroño 1529 (Palau 192535), described as 'nueuamente reuisto, añadido y emendado por su mismo autor'. This edition has been edited by Dionisio Pérez (Nola 1929) and reprinted in facsimile (Nola 1985).
3.		'Libro de cocina compuesto por maestre Ruberto de Nola cocinero que fue del sereníssimo señor Rey don Hernando de Nápoles, de muchos potajes y salsas y guisados para el tiempo del carnal y de la quaresma, y manjares y salsas y caldos para dolientes de muy gran sustancia. Y frutas de sartén, y marçapanes, y otras cosas muy provechosas. Y del servicio y oficios de las casas de los reyes y grandes señores y cavalleros, cada uno como ha de servir su cargo. Y el trinchante como ha de cortar todas maneras de carnes, y de aves. Y otras muchas cosas en él añadidas muy provechosas.' In this title, and subsequent quotations, spelling has been silently regularised, contractions have been expanded and punctuation and accents added.
4.		Sancho Panza's abortive banquet (Don Quijote, II, ch. 47) shows that the practice of placing many dishes on the table at once was well established in at least some aristocratic households in early seventeenth-century Spain. Elsewhere in his work, Cervantes implies that the trend was well established, at least in his mind: '...que no parece mal estar en la mesa de un banquete, junto a un faisán bien aderezado, un plato de una fresca, verde y sabrosa ensalada' (Persiles y Sigismunda, III, ch. 7).
5.		Fol 103r of the Eliot-Phelips copy. The sauce shows that the dish is clearly a forerunner or variant of the Catalan aioli.
6.		'Los gueuos fueron entosigados y el pan con sesos de gatos y mil uellaquerias' (Passamonte 1922: 387). I am grateful to Professor E.C. Riley for drawing this reference to my attention.
7.		'...comer de la carne y sesos, que casi era comer de mis propias carnes...' (Alemán 1987: I, ch. 7, 203).
8.		'...Cervantes has constructed a credible continuum between Don Quixote's social and economic status, his lifestyle, diet, physical health and mental condition, and [...] all these factors combine to produce patterns of behaviour which are convincing and consistent' (Ife 2000).
9.		'una olla de algo más vaca que carnero, salpicón las más noches, duelos y quebrantos los sábados, lantejas los viernes, algún palomino de añadidura los domingos...' (Cervantes 1998: I, ch. 1, 35). The classic study of Don Quixote's diet is Rodríguez Marín 1916.
10.		As its name implies, this dish is a relative of the pot pourri or cassoulet, and was a staple for the majority of Spaniards of all classes (Rodríguez Marín 1916: 13-18). Cervantes describes Don Quixote's version as 'de algo más vaca que carnero', implying that it was made with the cheaper cuts, mutton being more expensive than beef at that time (18).
11.		Ambrosio de Salazar (1615, cited in Rodríguez Marín 1916: 20): 'salpicón es hecho con carne cozida y fiambre, cortada menuda con cebollas y vinagre, y assí se come fría en lugar de lechugas o otra ensalada.'
12.		Rodríguez Marín (1916: 29) describes them as 'cosa pésima' and wonders if they might not have been the cause of Don Quixote's madness, citing Juan de Aviñón, Sevillana medicina: 'generalmente las lantejas son malas y melancólicas'.
13.		Vegetables were much despised by the middle and upper classes, and fruit was usually eaten stewed, as in England, since fresh fruit was commonly regarded with suspicion: 'Fruites generally are noyfulle to man and do ingender ill humours' (Sir Thomas Elyot, Castel of Helth, 1541) quoted in Paston-Williams (1993: 102).
14.		There is a further group of authorities who take their lead from Juan Antonio Pellicer in the late 18th century, and refer to a dish made by shepherds from the remains of any sheep in their care who might meet with an accident or ill fortune. One such source is the Diccionario enciclopédico de la lengua española (Madrid: Imprenta y Librería de Gaspar y Roig), 1853, which defines 'duelos y quebrantos' as follows: 'La olla que de los huesos quebrantados y de las estremidades de las reses que se desgraciaban y morían entre semana se hacía en algunos lugares de la Mancha y en otras partes, para comerla los sábados, cuando en los reinos de Castilla no se permitía comer en tales días las demás partes ni la grosura, cuya costumbre derogó Benedicto XIV el año de 1748.' What all definitions have in common is the fact that 'duelos y quebrantos' was a Saturday dish, when the substantive flesh of the animal was not permitted to be eaten, but offal and derivatives were. Rodríguez Marín (1916: 28) suggests (without any real authority other than its plausibility) that eggs and bacon were the common standby when the larder was bare and all was 'duelos y quebrantos'. Sancho Panza fears that the innkeeper (Don Quijote II, ch. 59) will resort to 'las sobras que debe de haber de tocino y huevos' in similar circumstances.
15.		The first person to establish the nature of the disease was the American physician Dr D. Carleton Gajdusek in the late 1950s (Rhodes 1998: 27 ff). I am grateful to Professor Phil Whitfield for this reference.
16.		Santamaría Arnaíz 1986. This doctoral thesis studies documentation from the Sala de Alcaldes in Madrid, within whose jurisdiction came the sale and preparation of food. I am grateful to Bob Goodwin for this reference.

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