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Reading through John Dickie’s highly readable Delizia! - The epic history of the Italians and their food, an episode jumped out involving a conflict of interest that would make modern day politicians - left and right - proud.

Platina, the author of one of the most popular cookbooks of the age (the mid-to-late 1400s), De Honesta voluptate et valetudine (Respectable Pleasure and Good Health), was a leading humanist in Rome, who has left us a good idea of some, perhaps, surprising approaches to cooking in Italy at the time. For example, the use of sugar was widespread, as a seasoning like salt - often being added to what we now consider savoury dishes like Lasagne. The distinction between sweet and savourty is a later invention - in the 1400s celebrity chefs were more concerned with the Galenic theory of the humours. Platina also gives us an idea of the average cooking time for pasta in the 1400s - an hour for vermicelli, and two hours for maccheroni…