To a person who remembers what Italian herbs are, cilantro (also known as seed coriander) probably won't be the first that comes to mind. However, if you open the fifth-century Roman cookbook On the Art of Cooking by
Marcus Gabius Apicius, you can find it in 18 percent of all recipes. Roman cooks valued both the citrusy seeds and the pungent leaves of a plant they called coriander, and used them
to make sauces, salads, roasts, flavorful drinks, and other dishes.
If we draw a comparison with Pellegrino Artusi's Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well, published in 1891 and often considered the founding text of modern Italian cuisine, here coriander leaves are absent from nearly 800 recipes in the book, and the seeds are found in only four desserts.
Artusi also warned readers to beware of buying cinnamon powder from unscrupulous traders who "throw in handfuls of coriander seeds to increase the volume at the expense of the cheap ingredient." From this reference, we can infer that there was no shortage of coriander in late 19th century Italy. And at some point in time between Apicius and Artusi, Italians largely stopped cooking with this spice.
"I would be surprised if I ever saw coriander in dishes dating back to the 1700s," says Karima Moyer-Nocchi, a culinary historian at the University of Siena in Italy. Moyer-Nocchi explains that while coriander is not completely absent from Italian cuisine today, its use is much more limited than in past centuries.
"Mainly in central Italy, porchetta is made with lightly ground coriander seeds," says Moyer-Nocchi. "At about the time when people are slaughtering pigs, you can find big packets of coriander in the supermarket. The leaves, on the other hand, are completely unused," she adds. "I have to drive 45 minutes to a grocery store in another town to find it, or grow it myself."
History of coriander
Native to Europe, Asia and North Africa, coriander has a long and widespread history of human cultivation. The Latin coriandrum, the source of many of the plant's modern names, was borrowed from the ancient Greek koriandron or koriadnon. The Romans acquired a taste for this ingredient due to the extensive Greek influence on their cuisine.
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During the Roman era, according to Moyer-Nocchi, "coriander was grown locally in Italy, while other spices arrived here via trade routes." Because of the high demand, coriander was also imported.
Pliny the Elder wrote in the first century that the herb was widely cultivated in Roman Egypt. Archaeologists have found coriander seeds, along with seeds of other herbs such as dill and fennel, in Roman settlements throughout Europe, including Britain. The frequency of finds of these seeds, as well as the fact that they were found in remote settlements far from centers of power, indicates that coriander was consumed by people from all walks of life in Roman society.
Coriander was cultivated for medicinal purposes, such as to alleviate stomach pain, to preserve food due to the antibacterial properties of the seeds, so they are still used in some salted meats in Italy.
Moyer-Nocchi describes a combination of factors that contributed to the decline of coriander after the fall of Rome. One was that the former empire absorbed the influence of Germanic tribes from the north, such as the Visigoths, "who had no such tradition" of cooking with coriander.
Another reason is that the local availability of coriander makes it less elite than other spices. "Culturally, it is not an expression of anyone's wealth," says Moyer-Nockey. Instead, Asian spices such as cinnamon and cardamom, which were imported from far away and cost a lot of money, became medieval status symbols.
Moyer-Nocchi explains that medieval Italians divided spices into two categories, "sweet" and "pungent." Powdered mixtures of sweet spices, including sugar, were used in most dishes, but "coriander was categorized as a hot spice along with pepper," she says, "so it was used less."
Coriander leaves went out of fashion even more than the seeds because their distinct aroma clashed with then-fashionable imported ingredients such as rose water. In 1544, physician and botanist Pietro Andrea Mattioli described the leaves as smelling like bedbugs or stinkbugs, a comparison echoed by later authors.
By the Renaissance, coriander leaves had all but disappeared from Italian cuisine, but the seeds continued to be used as a seasoning. They were also dipped in sugar to make "confetti". They were chewed at banquets as a mouth freshener and digestif (for better digestion) after dinner, similar to mukhwas, a mixture of sweetened whole spices chewed in South Asia today for the same purpose.
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At festive celebrations, coriander florets were tossed up and scattered, giving rise to the English word "confetti" for the paper particles that later replaced them. In modern Italy, paper confetti is still called "coriandoli", meaning "coriander seeds", while sweet confetti usually refers to another kind, candied almonds, which are handed out at weddings and communions.
Italian cuisine
Italy enjoyed a reputation as a center of culinary innovation and sophistication until the late 16th century, Moyer-Nocchi says, when France replaced it as Europe's trendsetter. "That's where spices just take a back seat," she says. French cooks of the 17th and 18th centuries deliberately separated themselves from the earlier Italian tradition, emphasizing fresh herbs instead of dried spices and specific combinations of ingredients instead of sweet and savory spice blends.
As Italian chefs took their cues from the French, "Italy frankly lost its culinary identity to the complete dominance of France over the next two centuries," says Moyer-Nocchi. And when a separate Italian culinary identity emerged with the unification of the modern nation in the 19th century, the long-forgotten coriander was left behind rather than revived.
Modern Italians see coriander as a foreign ingredient that separates them from other groups of people; what Moyer-Nocchi calls a "culinary marker." "It comes down to the basic idea of, 'What flavors will express my identity?"," she says. To date, "coriander just doesn't fit into the culinary grammar of how Italians choose to express themselves."
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Moyer-Nocchi notes that coriander is not the only herb whose popularity in Italy has waxed and waned over the centuries. Marjoram was once widely used, but "nobody associates it with Italy anymore," she says. On the other hand, some of the flavors that modern Italians use to express themselves actually became "Italian" not that long ago. Basil, originally from Asia, has been part of Italian cuisine for only a few hundred years.
Many modern countries, from Thailand with chili to Belgium with chocolate, have adopted once-foreign ingredients, incorporating them into their culinary identity until their absence became inevitable. The curious history of cilantro in Italy shows that the opposite is also true. Sometimes an ingredient becomes so unpopular that people forget that it has always been there.