Who could ask for more? This dish is a marriage (orgy?) of sweet, sour, salt, umami, and spice (though not ‘spicy’), with herbal and citrus aromatics. It takes us into the woods to the hunt; it lures us with the sensuality of an Arabian banquet, and yet it hails from the stalwart Roman table. As a refined English woman said to me after tasting this dish - “This is one of the best things I have ever had in my mouth.”

Introducing the author of our recipe - Adolfo Giaquinto

Adolfo Giaquinto (1847-1937) moved to Rome with his Neapolitan parents as an infant and firmly claimed Rome as his identity. After finishing middle school, his father pushed him to pursue piano studies, but his true calling was cooking. He managed to convince his parents to let him follow his dream and he was accepted as an apprentice at Françoise Spillman’s high-brow restaurant, one of the most renowned (and expensive) in Rome, situated on the very fashionable Via Condotti.

Giaquinto went on to achieve national fame as a chef, journalist, and poet, hobnobbing with Roman literary wits of the day and cooking for the great patrician families of Rome.

Not least among his achievements was the first Italian cooking magazine called Il Messaggero della Cucina, which he started in 1903 and continued to direct until his death.

Our recipe, however, comes from his very first culinary publication La Cucina di Famiglia (1899). By the time Family Cookery came out, sweet and sour wild boar was already a well established Roman tradition. Antecedents can be traced to medieval cookbooks, but for a Roman forerunner we might look to Bartolomeo Scappi’s Opera (1570) Book II, recipe 91.

Chef Scappi seasons the boar meat with crushed pepper, whole cloves, whole cinnamon and crushed nutmeg, quite standard for the aristocratic Renaissance table. As boar is a very lean meat, he adds well-marbled cubes of prosciutto. He underlines the importance of a sweet and sour balance: “rose vinegar and must syrup, or else sugar, so that the mixture has both a tang and a sweetness to it.” The finishing touch is pitted dates, prunes, and dried cherries, similar to the recipe we’ll be making.

Creating a historical composite

What I am proposing here is a composite rendering of Roman-style sweet and sour boar consisting of Giaquinto’s recipe for cinghiale in agrodolce alla romana, and two others based on his - the first from La cucina romana (1929), by his niece, the famous Roman cookbook author Ada Boni (1881-1973), and the second from Roma in cucina (1968) by Luigi Carnacina (1888-1981), a Roman native. When Carnacina was still a teenager, he went to work for Escoffier at the Hotel Savoy in London and quickly worked his way to the top. Although he is all but forgotten now, for twenty-five years, he was the name in Italian cookery.

These books were published more or less forty years apart. Through them, it is interesting to observe the evolution of recipe writing as a literary genre. Giaquinto’s recipe is virtually void of measurements, but it is more than a mere aide-memoire, notes to jog one’s memory about the basics of the dish. As he guides us through three pages of serpentine details, we feel here, more than in many of his other recipes, that he is sage passing a Roman tradition, a record of his heritage that will be carried on through time.

Boni’s recipe is nearly identical to her uncle’s, but clears up the more nebulous parts and edits out some of his extraneous meanderings. She wrangles it down to two pages but, with only one paragraph break, she retains that ‘stream of consciousness’ feel.

Carnacina starts with a block paragraph of precisely described ingredients and metric measurements, although the two pages of instructions are delivered in a single paragraph. His professional training is evident, but he respectfully maintains the integrity of the Roman tradition as passed on from Giaquinto. In his introduction Carnacina recalls this dish as one of the splendors of the past, mourning the loss those lively flavors that were slipping away, even at his writing in 1968. While this dish is no longer common in Rome, those of you who are familiar with Roman cuisine will recognize the similarity to the emblematic coda alla vaccinara (oxtail stew): the dried fruit, pine nuts, prosciutto, chocolate and spices, although the coda emphasizes celery and includes tomato.

If I may be so bold, what follows is my effort to expand upon these three at a remove of fifty years from the most recent recipe. My version also maintains the integrity of Giaquinto’s, but brings the recipe into a contemporary format.

For those who might be interested in comparing the 1899 original to my composite recipe (which follows), I have translated Giaquinto’s cinghiale in agro-dolce alla romana below the noble beast.

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Recipe translation from Family Cookery 1899:

ROMAN-STYLE SWEET AND SOUR BOAR

Wild boar can be marinated, but if there isn’t time to have it undergo this operation you can do without, but really, it is going to be less flavorful and less aromatic.

I let it soak a couple days in a cooked marinade, that is: I put a couple glasses of vinegar and one glass of water in a pan, I add chopped vegetables like onion, carrot, and celery stalks, a laurel leaf, two or three thyme branches, a couple cloves and a dozen grains of good pepper. I raise all that to a boil and then when it has cooled, I throw it on the boar that I have already placed in a bowl or a concave plate.

Some leave the rind on to cook it, but I prefer to remove it and throw it away because even if you’re dealing with a young boar, the rind is always bristly, dirty and indigestible.

For the cooking, you’ll do like this. Wash the piece of boar, because its flesh is almost always dirty with sand, dry it, tie it with string to hold its shape, then place it in a pot that it isn’t too cramped, and in which you have put a bit of lard, and brown the meat quite dark, on all sides. Add a bit of lardo and prosciutto and then a couple of onions, a carrot, a celery stalk (all of that chopped fine), and a bit of thyme and laurel, plus two cloves. Season with salt and pepper and when the vegetables are dark and the meat is threatening to stick to the bottom of the pot, wash it down with a glass of wine and cover it.

Once the wine has evaporated, cover the meat halfway up with water (if you have broth that’s even better) and leave it to simmer until it is done cooking. The time of the cooking cannot be determined, because it depends not only on the age, but also how fit the boar is. When you insert a skewer or a quadrello, you can tell by the resistance of the fibers if it is cooked.

At this point, remove the piece of boar from the pot, place it on a plate and put the sauce in a pan. Then, remove the fat from the surface and put two or three tablespoons of sauce on the boar to keep it warm in the same pot it was cooked in, and the rest of the sauce you will put in a saucepan.

Be careful that the sauce is neither too reduced nor too liquid. In the first case you won’t have enough sauce for the gravy that I will now describe, and in the second there will be too much an it will be insipid and not suited to its purpose.

For a platter of boar for 7 or 8 people you need at least 750ml of sauce because the main characteristic of this dish is an abundance of gravy. It’s the best part as everyone knows.

Now to make the gravy proceed like so:

Put the saucepan on the fire with two tablespoons of sugar, one clove of garlic and a small laurel leaf. Stir it now and again with a spoon, and as soon as the sugar liquifies and is a light blond color (not dark because then it will be bitter) throw in a couple tablespoons of grated chocolate and a couple tablespoons of dried Neapolitan mostaccioli crumbs.

(The latter addition can be omitted, in which case add another tablespoon of chocolate). When the chocolate has melted, add the boar sauce and boil it again. Then, if the sauce is not dense enough add (stirring continuously) half a tablespoon of potato starch diluted in a spoonful of water. Taste the sauce and add a pinch of white pepper and taste to see if it is strong enough. If not, add another bit of vinegar and put it through a strainer into another bigger pot to keep it hot and add the dried and candied fruit that you have prepared previously:

a handful of zibibbo raisins that have had the stems removed, a handful of sultanina raisins that have also had the stems removed, one of pinocchi (called pine nuts) cracked and peeled, a few prunes soaked in cold water to invigorate them and then cut into big chunks, a handful of sour cherries, these too soaked in water and pitted.

All of this has to be washed well and dried on a cloth. Then add a piece of candied citron peel and a couple candied orange peels finely diced.

When the time comes to eat, slice the piece of boar, arrange them in a serving dish or a salad bowl, and pour the boiling sauce over with all of the ingredients described above.

If you want to do the boar in chunks from the very beginning, it will be easy following the same procedure.

SWEET AND SOUR WILD BOAR STEW - THE NEXT GENERATION

I am going to start my recipe off making note of Giaquinto’s closing remark (which he should have pointed out at the beginning!): cut your boar into stewing chunks.

Ingredients:

[marinade]

2 kilos wild boar meat, cut into chunks

500ml white wine

250ml white wine vinegar

2 small onions quartered

2 cloves garlic, smashed

1 large carrot, cut into chunks

3 whole cloves

2 fresh bay leaves scrunched in your hand

1 bunch thyme, rubbed between your hands

[the braise]

salt and pepper

1tbsp lard (or 2tbsp olive oil)

150g fatty prosciutto or guanciale cut into cubes

2 small onions, finely chopped

1 carrot, finely chopped

1 stalk celery, finely chopped

2 cloves garlic, finely chopped

3 whole cloves

2 fresh bay leaves crunched in your hand

1 bunch thyme, rubbed between your hands

100ml dry red wine

500ml meat broth (preferably homemade beef broth)

[the finish]

1tbsp sugar

2 cloves garlic, finely chopped

35g bitter chocolate (90% or higher)

1/2tbsp corn starch

100ml white wine vinegar

30g raisins

25g candied orange peel, chopped

45g candied citron peel, chopped

45g pitted prunes , quartered

30g pine nuts, toasted

35g dried sour cherries, cut in half

Instructions: (N.B. - the recipe is also demonstrated on the video below).

PART ONE - THE MARINADE

Prepare the ingredients for the marinade. Bring them to a moderate boil, remove from heat, and let cool.

Put the meat in a non-reactive container and pour the contents of the marinade over the top. If the meat is not covered by the liquid, either try another container or add more wine and vinegar in a 2:1 ratio. Refrigerate for two nights. After the first night shift them around a bit and let them rest another night. The precise number of hours is not that important.
Remove the meat from the marinade and pat it dry. Set aside.

PART TWO - BRAISE THE MEAT

Melt the lard in a pan and brown the prosciutto cubes over medium heat.
Salt and pepper the boar chunks well and brown in three batches on high in a heavy bottomed pot or dutch oven. With the first two bathes, add half the chopped vegetables after the meat has started browning. The meat should become quite dark. With each batch take advantage of the moment that the meat releases its moisture to deglaze the pan. In the last batch, add the thyme, bay leaves, cloves, and garlic.
When the last of the meat has browned, pour the red wine over the top to deglaze the pan. Let it boil down until the wine has nearly evaporated.
reunite all the meat in the pot.
Add the broth (or the equivalent of water) to cover the meat by about 2/3. Bring it to a boil, lower to a bare simmer and braise covered until it is fork tender but not about to disintegrate. The cooking time depends on the age of the animal and other factors. Commercially raised boar will cook faster and be less flavorful.

PART THREE - MAKE THE GRAVY

Grind the chocolate in a small-cup food processor or grate it in some other way.
If you have a grease skimmer cup (see below) go ahead and remove the meat from the broth, set it aside in a bowl, and pour the broth into the cup and leave it to settle. Otherwise, skim off as much grease as you can (which will be floating on the top as shown below) and then remove the meat. Things are going to get a bit tricky here for which I have made a few changes to the method of the original recipe.

Get out another big pot. Put the sugar, garlic, and 1 tbsp of water in the pot. Cook it until it is light brown, but not too dark or it will be bitter.
Melt the chocolate with the sugar stirring constantly. Pour the degreased broth on top.
The broth should be somewhat dense. You will need you use your kitchen know-how at this point. Bring the sauce to a light boil and add the vinegar/corn starch solution. It should be the consistency of a thin gravy because it will thicken further with the fruit.

PART FOUR - PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

Add the pine nuts, citrus peel, and raisins and cook at a low boil for 2 minutes. You will want to hold off on the prunes and cherries if they are particularly soft (as they tend to be these days) because they will disintegrate quickly. If not, add them in at the same time with the rest of the fruit. Bring everything to a light boil. The gravy will have thickened further at this point.
Off heat, add the meat back to the pot. Stir carefully to protect the integrity of the fruit. If necessary, put it back on the stove to heat it through. Serve hot with a hearty Roman side dish and good crusty bread.

And here’s the video… The play button looks a bit like a pine nut. It’s there in the center.

The Eternal Table - Historical Italian Cooking

Roman-style sweet and sour wild boar - start to finish