I tell the story of food through alternative reference points: history, art, literature and much more... 

Lent is the Christian season of spiritual preparation before Easter. In Western churches, it begins on Ash Wednesday. During Lent, many Christians observe a period of fasting, repentance, moderation, self-denial, and spiritual discipline. The purpose of the Lenten season is to set aside time for reflection on Jesus Christ—to consider his suffering and his sacrifice, his life, death, burial, and resurrection.

The beginning of Lent prompts me to reflect on the relationship between food, time, civil and religious calendar. Surely until a few decades ago, all these variants had an important weight on the life of the individual, regulating eating and consumption habits. But what is really meant by food-time connection? Often the preparation and consumption of one food compared to another were linked to a particular anniversary, mainly of a religious nature. It is clear, however, that cultural aspects and medical precepts also played an important role in this issue.

To be able to better understand we must identify two types of calendar: food and natural. The first was composed of fashions, habits, preferences and social ideologies; the second from the alternation of the seasons and therefore of the cold and heat. Moreover, one certainly did not follow the other. The aspect concerning the profound relationship between man and time was valid, in different forms and ways, for all classes. For the low ones it was conservation that defeated "naturalness", because it allowed to have food available in periods when they, otherwise, could not be; For the upper classes, on the other hand, consuming foods out of season was intended to show the economic possibilities and therefore the willingness to pay for foods with a very high price.

To all this was added the religious aspect; from the fourth century onwards, in fact, Christians were required to observe the strict division of the year into periods of "fat" and others "lean", or in periods of time in which it was licit to consume meat and others in which it was not. This mechanism allowed on the one hand to consume more foodstuffs that until then were little considered, on the other hand the formation and then consolidation of the tradition of producing sweet and savory preparations to celebrate the various liturgical celebrations. The reflection just made, however, is more complex than it may seem because sometimes the food-holiday association was also made for practical needs or in any case related to the seasonal calendar, a clear example of what has been said is the consumption of pork for the feast of St. Anthony in January. Then there are foods and raw materials that are so common that in themselves they did not differ from one preparation to another; Let me explain, the desserts made with flour, eggs and fat (butter or other) were, in these three ingredients, equal to each other. For this macro food category there were other characteristics that sanctioned the differences of the various preparations and their respective destinations: the filling or the shape.

Returning to the division protagonist of this study, it should be remembered that the lean days constituted a long period, about 140-160 days a year. This high number was a strong demonstration of renunciation because meat was an essential food in the diet (obviously for those who could afford it). It was not only the tangible demonstration of the economic possibilities of the upper classes but the manifestation of the values of the nobility and the perfect warrior, a conception of clear Nordic influence that found its full realization in its consumption. The forerunners of the spread of this type of renunciation were the monks and ascetics who first, in different forms and ways, introduced this food system.

The contrast between meat and fish was not only of a religious nature, but as has already been seen also of a cultural nature; this resulted from the thirteenth century (and this also applies to art), in the spread of reworkings depicting the hypothetical battle between Carnival and Lent, the two extremes of the food system of past centuries.

The first book in which "lean" and "fat" foods are spoken of was "La bataille de Caresme et de Charnage", a text French of the thirteenth century. In all this theme it can be safely said that Christianity played a very important role in combining the culture of fish with that of meat. However, it must be specified that fish did not immediately become a common food, with the exception of maritime or lake economies. In fact, only after a few centuries, with the progress and application of conservation systems, it became a food consumed by large sections of the population with different ways and uses.

The alternation between lean and fat helped to amalgamate the diversity and heterogeneity of the various regions and was the driving force in the cohesion between meat and fish within the preparation of menus for receptions of the upper classes.

The division addressed in this article did not concern only the gastronomic field for centuries but had repercussions (as we have briefly seen) on consumption, eating styles and on the way of thinking of an entire culture: the European one. From all this were born extraordinary festive gastronomic elaborations and for specific occasions, the inclusion of little appreciated products, the collective manifestations of penance that still live in many places and much more! I will never tire of remembering that gastronomy is a fundamental part of our society and history.