In 1932 Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, the founder of the Futurist movement, published his manifesto of cookery La cucina futurista ('Futurist cookery'). In common with the rest of his proposals for the reform of the arts, it is sometimes difficult to decide if his ideas were ever meant to be taken seriously, or if his intention was simply to provoke a reaction. Whatever the truth is, he certainly succeeded in causing controversy among the general public with his outlandish ingredients and bizarre combinations.
The 1909 Futurist manifesto, which had concerned itself mainly with literature and the fine arts, was developed by Marinetti and his fellow Futurists into a complete design for living, embracing many facets of contemporary life, such as fashion, interior design, typography, and entertainment. The Futurists whole-heartedly welcomed the modern: key concepts were speed, change, noise, machinery, and above all vitality and dynamism. Marinetti's views on Italian cookery were clearly an extension of these ideas. He saw the Italian table (and the diners at the table) as being weighed down by heavy food, especially pasta, whose function was to fill up stomachs, but which was, according to Marinetti, deceptive in its nutritional content, and likely to produce slow and placid characteristics and scepticism in those who consumed it habitually. In his words, it induced 'fiacchezza, pessimismo, inattività nostalgica e neutralismo' ('lethargy, pessimism, nostalgic inactivity, and neutralism'). This absurd gastronomic religion, he said, must be abolished immediately.
Predictably, these ideas provoked uproar in the Italian press and among the general public. In every restaurant and in every home there were arguments about the benefits or otherwise of a diet of pasta. The Mayor of Naples declared that vermicelli al pomodoro was the food of the angels; Marinetti's reaction was that, if that were the case, it simply served to confirm the boredom of life in paradise.
If his rejection of pasta was controversial, then his proposals for what to replace it with provoked bafflement. Ingredients were designed to create the most sensual experience possible: they included flowers, exotic fruit, coffee, raw eggs, and cloves. To complement this sensory experience, warmed perfumes were to be sprayed in the dining room, and the diners were given materials of different textures such as velvet and sandpaper to stroke with their left hand. Sweet was combined with savoury to produce startling effects, and bitter and sour tastes were given their place: sardines with pineapple, mortadella with nougat, cooked salami with coffee and cologne. An aphrodisiac cocktail was devised, consisting of pineapple juice, eggs, cocoa, caviar, red peppers, nutmeg, and cloves, no doubt with the intention of stimulating 'dynamism'.
Futurist cookery also had a more sinister side: the Fascists, mindful of the need to reduce expensive imports of wheat needed to produce pasta, took up the idea that pasta was not a suitable food for fighters and heroes, and instead promoted locally-grown rice as a preferred substitute. In the end, of course, neither Marinetti nor the Fascists succeeded in breaking the bonds between Italians and pasta, and Futurist cookery is remembered as a curious but inconsequential dead-end.
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