Sometime in the thirteenth century a book was written which was intended to guide the reader in the proper choice of food and drink for a healthier and more vigorous life. This book was found in Verona in the ruins of a centuries old home once owned by a Cerruti family. The original of this book is now in a museum in Vienna. Mondadori published a reproduction of this manuscript in 1984 translated into Italian from the original Latin. Later, an English translation was published by Judith Spencer and is sometimes available in larger libraries.
There have been several mentions of these books in various reports and publications. A couple of quotations follow from Cariadoc's Miscellany. (c) David Friedman and Elizabeth Cook, 1988, 1990, 1992. Cooking from Primary Sources: Some General Comments:
"Bananas: The Four Seasons of the House of Cerruti, an Italian manuscript of the fourteenth century (based on an Arab work of the eleventh century) mentions bananas as something which "we know of .. only from texts or tales from merchants from Cyprus or pilgrims from the Holy Land. Sicilians ... know them well." It is clear from the accompanying picture that the artist had never seen a banana. The first bunch of bananas is said to have reached England in 1633"
"The Four Seasons of the House of Cerruti shows a "Cucurbite" that looks exactly like a green butternut squash"
A book written by the wife of Ambassador Vittorio Cerruti. In it she describes her escape from Budapest with Vittorio's help, their marriage in Peking, and her many meetings with such notables as the Pope and Adolf Hitler.
Wenceslas Cerruti was a very accomplished guitar player and composer in the early 1800s. Very little is known about his life but apparently he was quite well known during his lifetime. The Torino library has several manuscripts of a series of arias from the most famous operas of the time for which Cerruti wrote the guitar accompaniments, the most celebrated of them being "Di piacer mi balza il cor" from Rossini's La Gazza Ladra.
The following information was found on the world wide web. I have no further information and as soon as any pictures or other information become available they will be posted here.
The following information was found on the world wide web. I have no further information and as soon as any pictures or other information become available they will be posted here.