If we were to rattle off a list of food fads you're probably sick of hearing about, it would go something like this: Gluten-free everything, molecular gastronomy, multisensory dining (a.k.a. restaurants that bombard you with lights, sounds, smells) and, of course, Soylent.
In many ways, these trends couldn't be more dissimilar. Yet more than 80 years ago, all were predicted by a single work: The Futurist Cookbook. Written in 1932 by Futurist-movement founder Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, the book was part fiction, part political manifesto, part recipe collection. Controversial at the time, its suggestions––nix pasta from the Italian, throw dinner parties in airplane cockpits, incorporate raw camel meat and hair braised in wine––have foreshadowed modern-day cooking.
Which makes it all the more fascinating that the host of the Guggenheim's upcoming Futurist Dinner, part of the museum's EXHIBIT on the avant-garde movement, is Mimmetta Lo Monte, a cookbook author who, in her own words, "hates fads." But, Lo Monte is also a food historian: For Classic Sicilian Cooking and La Bella Cucina: Traditional Recipes from a Sicilian Kitchen, she collected handwritten recipes from generations of cooks. And for the past month, she's devoted herself to Marinetti's book, perfecting recipes and testing them out on friends at her home in Washington, DC. (At Tuesday's dinner, another person close to Lo Monte will get to try the dishes: her daughter Vivien Greene, the exhibition's curator.)
According to Lo Monte, many of Marinetti's most bizarre suggestions weren't necessarily intended to be taken seriously. In one dinner chronicled in The Futurist Cookbook, guests stroke patches of silk, velvet, and sandpaper as they eat, while waiters spray them with cologne. "Marinetti is making fun of himself in many ways," says Lo Monte. "He jokes, 'I wouldn't advise this to anybody who is hungry,' and suggests that the waiter be careful not to spray perfume on the bald heads of the guests."
In line with the political goals of Futurism, other aspects of the cookbook are less lighthearted, though equally provocative. Pasta,"makes people heavy, brutish ... skeptical, slow, pessimistic," Marinetti insisted (scooping Robert Atkins by decades), and was therefore "no food for fighters." A nationalist and supporter of Mussolini, Marinetti hoped technology would one day replace food with affordable, nutrient-rich pills that would make men of the future happier and more efficient.
The Guggenheim's dinner is, understandably, bypassing the Fascist for the flavorful. There will be a dessert called the "Libyan Airplane"––a purée of bananas, dates, and chestnuts arranged in the shape of a fallen aircraft (check it out in the photos to the left). An antipasto of smoked salmon, orange, and beets is pulled from what Marinetti called an "astronomical" dinner, and a green rice will be served with a purée of peas and pistachios. According to Lo Monte, some of these dishes are actually very similar to the food she ate as a girl in Palarmo, Italy. Tradition and Futurism aren't always at odds, perhaps: "There are many forgotten recipes that, were you to pull them, you wouldn't think they are traditional."
ANTI-PASTA: A Dinner Inspired by Italian Futurism will be held Tuesday, July 15 at 8 PM. | Italian Futurism, 1909-1944: Reconstructing the Univers
In many ways, these trends couldn't be more dissimilar. Yet more than 80 years ago, all were predicted by a single work: The Futurist Cookbook. Written in 1932 by Futurist-movement founder Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, the book was part fiction, part political manifesto, part recipe collection. Controversial at the time, its suggestions––nix pasta from the Italian, throw dinner parties in airplane cockpits, incorporate raw camel meat and hair braised in wine––have foreshadowed modern-day cooking.
Which makes it all the more fascinating that the host of the Guggenheim's upcoming Futurist Dinner, part of the museum's EXHIBIT on the avant-garde movement, is Mimmetta Lo Monte, a cookbook author who, in her own words, "hates fads." But, Lo Monte is also a food historian: For Classic Sicilian Cooking and La Bella Cucina: Traditional Recipes from a Sicilian Kitchen, she collected handwritten recipes from generations of cooks. And for the past month, she's devoted herself to Marinetti's book, perfecting recipes and testing them out on friends at her home in Washington, DC. (At Tuesday's dinner, another person close to Lo Monte will get to try the dishes: her daughter Vivien Greene, the exhibition's curator.)
According to Lo Monte, many of Marinetti's most bizarre suggestions weren't necessarily intended to be taken seriously. In one dinner chronicled in The Futurist Cookbook, guests stroke patches of silk, velvet, and sandpaper as they eat, while waiters spray them with cologne. "Marinetti is making fun of himself in many ways," says Lo Monte. "He jokes, 'I wouldn't advise this to anybody who is hungry,' and suggests that the waiter be careful not to spray perfume on the bald heads of the guests."
In line with the political goals of Futurism, other aspects of the cookbook are less lighthearted, though equally provocative. Pasta,"makes people heavy, brutish ... skeptical, slow, pessimistic," Marinetti insisted (scooping Robert Atkins by decades), and was therefore "no food for fighters." A nationalist and supporter of Mussolini, Marinetti hoped technology would one day replace food with affordable, nutrient-rich pills that would make men of the future happier and more efficient.
The Guggenheim's dinner is, understandably, bypassing the Fascist for the flavorful. There will be a dessert called the "Libyan Airplane"––a purée of bananas, dates, and chestnuts arranged in the shape of a fallen aircraft (check it out in the photos to the left). An antipasto of smoked salmon, orange, and beets is pulled from what Marinetti called an "astronomical" dinner, and a green rice will be served with a purée of peas and pistachios. According to Lo Monte, some of these dishes are actually very similar to the food she ate as a girl in Palarmo, Italy. Tradition and Futurism aren't always at odds, perhaps: "There are many forgotten recipes that, were you to pull them, you wouldn't think they are traditional."
ANTI-PASTA: A Dinner Inspired by Italian Futurism will be held Tuesday, July 15 at 8 PM. | Italian Futurism, 1909-1944: Reconstructing the Univers