Mountain Food in the Brescian Pre-Alps: The Evolution of Local Cuisine from the Post-War Period to Today

Over the past 70 years, a small village in the Brescian pre-Alps called Ono Degno went from a traditional, pre-industrial, agricultural society to a modern one, thanks to industrialization, including a new road that made it accessible by car in 1968. It, along with its foodscape, has changed drastically. This paper aims to discover how local cuisine has evolved over this period, and includes how foods were cultivated, harvested, foraged for, cooked, and conserved. It investigates and analyzes traditional ecological knowledge, encompassing food heritage, gastronomic ethnobiology, and traditional forest knowledge and explains why this matters: it can help our modern society face problems like climate change and help our industrial system of agriculture become more sustainable. Methods used include interviews with current and former residents who lived in the post-war period, local historians, chefs, and a forest expert. Books written about old traditions and wild plants were used as well. The local Brescian dialect specific to Ono Degno is used throughout for certain terms. The results are divided into different sections, including the kitchen, places of food provision, animals, nut trees, the forest, grains, the vegetable garden, cultivated fruit trees, wild fruit, wild greens, and condiments and beverages. What emerged are past and present local foods, food preservation techniques, and cooking tools, diet staples of the past, abandoned foods, and environmental changes. The results were analyzed in terms of the cucina povera diet, TEK and TFK discovered, gift giving practices, money and consumerism, the changing roles of men and women and the use of animals in sustainable farming. The conclusion highlights some limitations to the research and future topics of research.

Mountain Food in the Brescian Pre-Alps: The Evolution of Local Cuisine from the Post-War Period to Today