Durante il primo periodo, immediatamente dopo la caduta di Roma, si persero le abitudini e le conoscenze agricole precedenti. Elemento principale per l’alimentazione torna ad essere il bosco dove si praticavano la caccia e la raccolta. Inoltre con l’arrivo di nuove popolazioni si perde il patrimonio alimentare and nutrition, even if the old traditions remain substantially by the Romans spread everywhere, adding to the uses and customs of the newcomers.
warrior and noble classes ate it, mainly, of large animals such as deer, wild boar, deer and roe deer, as also provided for the Edict of Rotari.
The best kitchens are the residences of powerful new (for example, Ravenna Theodoric and Cassiodorus), but also in several bishoprics and monasteries Benedictine expand like wildfire across Italy in which fences are cultivated lands and lives , olive trees, fruit trees, wheat, vegetables and raising animals: poultry, ducks, geese, pigeons, sheep, pigs and cattle-the latter to work in the fields and for butter, cheese and cottage cheese.
Great resource was the chestnut, chestnuts consumed in soups and left-to date in the culinary traditions of the Apennines. An important source of food was given by fishing, especially fresh water, in fact, during that period, the coasts were depopulated because of pirate raids.
But around the year one thousand, following the improvement of living conditions, resulting in the advent of the Holy Roman Empire and Charlemagne to the laws enacted to organize production of farms and estates, there was a large return to the cultivation adoption of new innovative tools in-plow with plow iron and harness for the beasts of burden.
the same period in Italy there is an evolution of the kitchen with a sharper, more of the various traditions, recipes and eating habits regional and district managers. In this period
hone their typicality in particular the kitchens of Rome, Venice, Genoa, and then Naples, Milan, Florence and Palermo-perhaps a function of the large volume of documents that certify more than very small, if not absent, were found in non-urban areas and rural, less educated and more interested in the functional food.
In this historical period the kitchen of the wealthy, while different from region to region, is characterized by large skewers, a mixture of sweet and salty, by an excessive presence of herbs and spices and mix in a banquet of meat and fish.
Among the historical events that most influence the evolution of the Crusades -1096/1270- kitchen certainly stand out. They are in fact responsible for the arrival, in the Italian ports of unknown products: new spices, sugar, rice, but perhaps most important of the other anthropological point of view is the most well received by the aristocracy and the rising middle class who get rich , especially in seaside towns and major ports and towns of the north, with the new possibilities offered by trade. Thanks
therefore more disposable income also improves and refines the diet, increases the range of fruit and vegetables on the shelves of markets, there is plenty of apples, figs, grapes, plums, chestnuts, pomegranate, melon, apricots, cherries, peaches and quince.
There is also a significant development in the cultivation of wheat, which allow greater presence in the homes of pasta and bread. The cheese is available to all and, in the twelfth century, the tables are entering the primitive versions of the Parmesan and montasio. They are easily salted harangues, crayfish, eels, trout, etc. ...
Since 1200, free towns in the center-north, located at the intersection of the most important shopping streets and centers of large markets, there is a large food abundance, which will increase as mentioned above at the end of the Crusades, with imports from the east of the great ships of Genoa, Pisa and the Venetians.
The city, although they drew much from the production of the surrounding countryside, were structured to have a minimum of food self-sufficiency: the majority of homes owned a chicken coop with a rabbit, a vegetable garden, while geese and pigs, let loose, acted as scavengers.
The power was based on the flesh of animals raised on bread and buns stuffed with fruit-even-on goat's cheese, wine, fresh and dried fruit. Fat utilizzato per la cucina era prevalentemente quello di maiale, il cui allevamento continuava a costituire la prima fonte alimentare nelle campagne e la cui tradizioni è arrivata fino ai giorni nostri (è rituale l’uccisione del maiale a dicembre). L’olio d’oliva, raro e prezioso, a causa delle difficoltà nella coltivazione della pianta, era riservato a scopi terapeutici e religiosi.
I monaci con le loro attività di disbosco, coltivazione, allevamento, organizzazione di mercati e la manutenzione di strade, ponti e corsi d’acqua, diedero, in questo periodo storico, un forte impulso all’agricoltura, al commercio e all’economia.
Dall’anno 1300, con l’indizione Holy Year by Pope Boniface VIII, we are witnessing a growing movement of pilgrims. The Benedictines, Cistercians Camaldolese and organized the "restoration" of the pilgrims with a capillary system of the host and local hospitals, where already there were monasteries.
formularies have been traced to different places of welcome, in which they record the rules to follow for the rest of pilgrims healthy or sick from this we have pretty clear indications on the popular cuisine of the period in question, which consisted of soups, cereals and vegetables, bread, cheese, fresh and dried fruit and meat, mainly sheep, but basically very rare. Very important
wine, medicinal and considered essential in a time when the springs and rivers were polluted and often infected.
The medicinal value of foods and beverages is a major concern of the time. This is attested for example by the "Book of Home Cerreti" fourteenth-century translation of an earlier "Tacuinum Sanitatis in medicine", taken from the medical practices of the Arab-Greek School of Medicine, the most reliable of the period.
Health is ideologically understood as the result of a precise balance that is maintained with the use and the particular combination of food and beverages.
was very important stata la dominazione araba in Sicilia (dal VII° al X°secolo) con un notevole apporto di conoscenze scientifiche ed alimenti appartenenti alla cultura di questa popolazione: primo tra tutti lo zucchero di canna. Da qui deriva la tradizione di sciroppi e sorbetti –parole di origine araba- e pasta di marzapane. Inoltre gli arabi impiantarono coltivazioni d’agrumi, peperoni, melanzane e gelsi. Rintrodussero poi l’importazione e l’uso delle spezie, specialmente chiodi di garofano.
Il Medioevo è però stato avaro di documentazione in merito all’alimentazione che le diverse popolazioni seguivano. Tuttavia emergono alcune utili notizie oltre che da storici e scrittori (Paolo Diacono, Cronaca Novalesa, Eginardo, Liutprando of Cremona, Parma Salimbene, Bonvesin de la Riva, GB Ramusio, Giovanni Boccaccio, Francesco Sacchetti, Alvise Cà da Mosto, Michele Savonarola, etc. ...) by men of the church (St. Gregory the Great, etc ...) precisely due to lively activities of the monasteries in those dark years pledged to keep alive the arts and culture in many ways.
On the end of the period are still written two major cookbooks, brought to light in '800, attributed to anonymous authors, a Tuscan and Venetian, very interesting. Depict the richness of the cuisine bourgeois and the great variety of dishes, while following a script already seen, the kitchen is still popular in the shadows and almost always has to settle for what nature has to offer. In the Middle Ages
its importance to the pulp, destined to be dried and preserved, and the ravioli. Both preparations were cooked in broth, drained and seasoned with butter, cheese, sugar and cinnamon.
working on it and the process of production of Parmigiano assumes importance in this period.
The most famous documents of the find in the pages of the Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio, a collection of short stories of the famous writer who lived in Tuscany in 1300, which he describes the above-mentioned recipe for pasta and ravioli in a song which speaks the famous land of Cockaigne where bind dogs and sausages.
At the end of the fourteenth century, the kitchen begins to distinguish itself from the aristocratic popular for two reasons: First, the habits in the courts of hunting with a falcon, the hobby's most chic ladies and knights, with the preference as the food birds in the sky-so-living animals deemed at higher grades and therefore suitable for men of high rank, in addition, sugar, food very expensive, it becomes a status symbol.
example, and the episode that occurred in 1468, in the wedding of Lorenzo de 'Medici, the Magnificent and Clarice-Orin, nephew of the Pope was important for the guests a buffet all based sweets, jam, marzipan, candied fruit and imported goods. For the older people were instead prepared grilled meats of all kinds, but increasingly large animals.
bibliography and site links - http://eugeenblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/bibliografia-e-sitografia.html
The steps taken towards the search for food design have led to first results very prestigious and well known as those haute cuisine, they are very few people know, also, that the food design is already in our homes, in everyday life: the Pringles potato chips, for example, have been designed so that they form can be more anatomical language, and palate, increasing the sensory satisfaction. Or the Swiss Toblerone which was a gift from a design aesthetically appealing architecture, which calls, inter alia, that the most important mountain in Switzerland, the Matterhorn, and at the same time calls on a particular functional move to split the portions. 
