Parmigiano Reggiano Museum: the culture and gastronomy of the King of Cheeses

2017-09-25 It’s eight centuries old, and ageing very nicely. Parmigiano Reggiano is a traditional Italian product with a long cultural and gastronomic history behind it abounding in curious, entertaining details. The Parmigiano Reggiano Museum in Soragna, in the province of Parma, is the right place to find out all about it.
The museum’s eighteen sections include areas focusing on the process of producing the famous cheese (the topic of our previous post) and others looking at its significance for culture and gastronomy.
In the area focusing on the image of Parmigiano Reggiano, we learn that the cheese made its first appearance in the figurative arts around 1600, when Annibale Carracci produced an engraving entitled Seller of Parmesan Cheese. An engraving from Parma dated around the same time represents Saint Lucius, patron saint of cheeses and cheese-makers (known at the time as Lardaroli), the topic of our next post. The making of the King of Cheeses was first depicted in an 1890 painting by Reggio artist Cirillo Manicardi.
The first film showing rounds of Parmesan cheese dates from around the time of the first world war, while the first film demonstrating how the cheese is produced was made in 1943. The greatest of all cheeses has also been immortalised in photography: the museum includes a precious series of photographs dated 1944 (taken in a Parma cheese dairy by a German war correspondent), demonstrating the entire sequence of operations involved in making the cheese.
The marketing of Parmesan cheese also offers some food for thought. Historic promotional material for Parmigiano Reggiano cheese is limited to a few rare posters, including an amazing poster designed by Achille Luciano Mauzan for Bertozzi, in which three greedy-looking characters stick their big noses into a round of cheese to enjoy its aroma, and a refined metal plate from Pelagatti illustrating a scene in a luxurious restaurant, where the maître d’ is grating Parmesan cheese directly onto the plate of a satisfied diner, produced in the nineteen-thirties. The museum’s collection also includes a rare poster designed by Gino Boccasile for Tavella around the year 1940, in which a chubby-cheeked cook ecstatically embraces a “sensual” round of cheese, lips pursed for a kiss.
A touchscreen video shows advertisements made by the Consorzio di Tutela or producers’ association since the early ’sixties for cinemas and TV.
Lastly, the museum also includes a section about gastronomy and recipes. In addition to a display case illustrating the evolution of the cheese-grater and other implements used to enjoy Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, such as the special cheese knife, there is an area focusing on dishes featuring this noble cheese appearing in the most important cooking handbooks written in Europe between the sixteenth and the nineteenth century.
A little historical trivia: the first recipe featuring the famous cheese we still enjoy today is a fourteenth-century recipe for a Torta Parmesana, which has an impressive list of ingredients, demonstrating that the cuisine of Parma was already famous in medieval times!
 
Mariagrazia Villa
 
Photos: © Musei del Cibo della provincia di Parma