Hallo, Hallo dear hearts,
Earlier in the year, I had the joy of being a part of the publisher’s blog tour for The Chef’s Secret wherein I had a few takeaways from reading the story I wanted to re-share with you today, in case you hadn’t had the chance to visit with me when this first went live on Jorie Loves A Story! Also, I am wicked thankful I could also participate on this tour with Historical Fiction Virtual Book Tours as one of the things I had planned to do was to interview the author closer to when I shared my review – thankfully, I apparently was meant to hold off until this tour to do that and I am thankful to have a second chance to discuss The Chef’s Secret.
We enter into Scappi’s life at the time of his death – where we find Giovanni, his nephew is introducing us to how beloved his Uncle had been to everyone who had tasted his foods. It is through food where Scappi had found his destiny – to influence the taste everyone sought from him and to inspire Giovanni to better understand how to cook; to fuse flavour with the ingredients he preferred to use in his creations. It is through this overview of a lived life, we gain perspective – of how one man’s death has a larger net of sorrow – everyone in this community is grieving as if with one heart, one mind. Everywhere people are affected by the absence of this legend of a man, Bartolomeo Scappi. It is here we recognise how one man can impact so many lives through how he chose to interact and engage whilst he was alive. Yet, for Giovanni it is much, much more personal than that – for him, it is an arrow to his heart as Scappi was a surrogate father to his younger self when he needed a guiding hand in his life.
Shortly after this is announced, Giovanni is reunited with one of his dear friends, Valentino but the weight of the hour is alleviated by his Uncle’s trusted friend Francesco who was taking over the particulars in the background. From here, we meet quite a few officials of importance including the sitting Pope; a man Giovanni is not very fond of as he has changed too much of the past for his liking. The days of the lushly eloquent banquet dinners where Scappi could be inventive with his baking skills and his main dishes were cast aside for a more humbled and limited diet. It is this shared fate, Giovanni is learning will become his own as the Pope wishes for him to carry-on in Scappi’s absence as his personal chef.
It was here where you start to feel for Giovanni – he was under his Uncle tutelage yet when he is ready to ascend from his lessons and embrace the responsibilities he is inheriting, he’s cut to the quick straight out of the gate! He must yield and conform to the needs of his employer rather than to see a future cast through the creations his own heart yearns to cook. As a foodie and as a girl who loves to experiment with spice, herb, flavouring, protein, fresh farm veg and fruit and the cultural cooking heritages from the world – I can fully understand his vexations! It would be troublesome to not allow it to afflict your mind with a deeper sorrow than the loss of your Uncle.
In the background of what is happening to Giovanni, King has a natural acquiescence towards inferring what is happening in the Renaissance at the time in which we are meeting her characters. Little nods of whom might have been a friend of Scappi and little tucked in announcements of what life is like during this period of time gave a fuller grounding of the timescape, I felt. I like seeing those gestures as the novel becomes centrally important to the given century it is placed rather than feeling as if it could be a capsule of time somewhere within living history but without an identifiable marker. I felt Historical Fiction benefits from this kind of dedication as you get to tuck closer to how people are living – seeing how their lives are different from our own and knowing exactly why those differences are visible based on what their doing as we read the story.
-quoted from my review of The Chef’s Secret
This is a very interestingly writ novel – it moves not only as a time shift through different stages of the lives of the inspirational chef for Giovanni but it delves deeper into Scappi’s own influences and the life he led himself. If your a reader who loves culinary arts & delights, this novel has a heap of lovely mentions for the foodie soul and spirit, too!
I hope after you’ve had the chance to digest the information Ms King shares within this conversation you’ll know if this is a novel you will be able to read yourself and/or mention it to someone else you know will appreciate knowing about the book being published.
Be sure to brew your favourite cuppa
& settle into a comfy chair whilst you enjoy this interview!
The Chef's Secret (Interview)
by Crystal King
A captivating novel of Renaissance Italy detailing the mysterious life of Bartolomeo Scappi, the legendary chef to several popes and author of one of the bestselling cookbooks of all time, and the nephew who sets out to discover his late uncle’s secrets—including the identity of the noblewoman Bartolomeo loved until he died.
When Bartolomeo Scappi dies in 1577, he leaves his vast estate—properties, money, and his position—to his nephew and apprentice Giovanni. He also gives Giovanni the keys to two strongboxes and strict instructions to burn their contents. Despite Scappi’s dire warning that the information concealed in those boxes could put Giovanni’s life and others at risk, Giovanni is compelled to learn his uncle’s secrets. He undertakes the arduous task of decoding Scappi’s journals and uncovers a history of deception, betrayal, and murder—all to protect an illicit love affair.
As Giovanni pieces together the details of Scappi’s past, he must contend with two rivals who have joined forces—his brother Cesare and Scappi’s former protégé, Domenico Romoli, who will do anything to get his hands on the late chef’s recipes.
With luscious prose that captures the full scale of the sumptuous feasts for which Scappi was known, The Chef’s Secret serves up power, intrigue, and passion, bringing Renaissance Italy to life in a delectable fashion.
Places to find the book:
ISBN: 978-1501196430
ASIN: B07HKM1C83
Also by this author: The Chef's Secret
Published by Atria Books
on 12th February, 2019
Length: 9 hours and 36 minutes (unabridged)
Published By: Published By: Atria Books (@AtriaBooks)
{imprint of} Simon & Schuster (@simonschuster)
Converse via: #TheChefsSecret, #HistNov and #HistFic
+ #Renaissance #Cookery with #BartolomeoScappi
Available Formats: Hardcover, Audiobook & Ebook
I personally love Foodie Fiction narratives and stories which seek to enrich our lives about culinary histories – how did you first stumble across this sub-niche of Historical Fiction and what inspired you to draw out your own stories which befit the celebration of ‘food’ from the historic past?
King responds: I don’t think there really is a specific niche for books like mine so it wasn’t something I stumbled upon and thought, oh, I think I’ll write that. I just found interesting characters in history that had a hand in shaping the world of food. I’ve always loved a lot of food writing, and have been inspired by the likes of M.F.K. Fisher, Joanna Harris and Laura Esquival. For some reason a lot of the culinary food heroes of our past are mostly unknown as characters in books, and it’s a happy accident that I fell into that space.
What did you feel was the most challenging aspect of writing “The Chef’s Secret”? The timeline within known history and/or writing about living persons who once lived or creating your own sub-culture and characters to live within this time period?
King responds: Interestingly enough, I found that researching this novel was harder than my first novel, “Feast of Sorrow,” which is set in Ancient Rome. There are countless books and histories of all the artists that lived during that time-frame but far less about the common people and the way that people conducted their lives.
As an example, I’m working on another novel set in the Renaissance, about a meat carver who worked for Alessandro Farnese. The best history that I can find about Farnese is about him as an art collector and patron and most of the book is about the art that he collected. But what I want to know about is all his properties, his family loyalties, his enemies, his desires, etc. I can glean some of that, but it’s harder because much of that information is in Italian or parsed out in small bits and drabs in more general books.
I faced the same struggle in writing The Secret Chef when I wanted to understand specific characters and how they lived. So in that sense, the world-building was a little slower. I ended up watching a lot more movies and television series to get a sense of the world and going to far more museums and looking at paintings to try and understand the people.
Oh, and the secret code! That was a LOT of research and a lot of work to develop and test. I wanted to get that right.
How difficult was it to insert the Italian phrases into the context of the story-line for “The Chef’s Secret” and why was this inclusion important?
King responds: Non troppo difficile, or not too difficult! I’ve been learning Italian for nearly a decade and I have a fantastic friend and tutor, Graziella Machetta, who proof-read everything for me. I felt it was important from a world building standpoint–this is set in Italy and these characters would have spoken Italian. I tried hard to make sure that there was context with the phrasing along the way. For the secret code, I realized that I had to write it in Italian first, then code it and decode it. It just didn’t make sense if it was in English. I write historical fiction, not fantasy, and if I was going to use the code that Alberti and Bellasso created, I wanted to get it right. Putting it in English then coding it just didn’t make sense.
How did you find a fusion of passion shared between Scappi and Giovanni? How did you want readers to connect the two men and move between their individual paths wherein food placed such a strong interest?
King responds: I tried to imagine what their real relationship might have been like. Scappi dedicated his cookbook to his nephew and it was written with such care and instruction that it was clear Giovanni was very important to him. He wanted him to carry on a legacy, and keeping that in mind helped me forge that connection. And in both cases, we don’t know anything about the women in their lives, so I had the chance to dream them up!
How did you sort out how to tell this story – as its through a sequencing of disclosures on behalf of Scappi which allows Giovanni to not just understand his Uncle better but to understand the purpose within all our lives. Was it difficult then, to work out the pacing and the sequencing of revelations which would move the plot forward? Was there a favourite moment within this process for you?
King responds: Figuring out how to tell the story took some early planning. I always intended for Scappi to die early in the book and to pass on the legacy–but for it to be a mysterious one. In my first drafts, Scappi was alive but feedback from my editor and agent was that it was too jarring to have a main character die within the first chapter, so that shifted a bit.
I also had to figure out how to pace the information the reader knows along the way. If Giovanni inherited the letters and journals and could easily read them, the book wouldn’t have been that exciting. I knew I needed time to tell about things that happen in Giovanni’s life, and to give the reader the right flashbacks into Scappi’s. Thus, the code. It was happenstance when I discovered that code was actually in vogue at the time! Suddenly I had a historically plausible answer to my dilemma.
The details you were able to conceive within the breadth of the story were quite brilliantly illuminated – was this based on research you did at a distance or were you able to visit some of these settings in person? Of the places mentioned in the novel which were your favourite?
King responds: For this novel I was able to visit many of the places beforehand, because I had done research on my first book in Italy. As I started writing this one, though, I realized I had to go to Venice. Google Earth just wasn’t going to cut it. I was initially not thrilled about it, knowing it was expensive and overrun by daytrippers coming in off the cruise ships. But the week I spent there researching The Chef’s Secret was fantastic. It’s a strange, impossible, magical place. But Rome is where my heart is. The location where the final struggle of the book takes place is actually now a small, boutique hotel, the Casa dei Coronari.
Getting to know the proprietors, Patrizia and Benjamino has been one of the big treats of going to that city. We were visiting after I had finished working on Feast of Sorrow, and I told them I was writing a new book. It was Benjamino who said to me, “You have to put this building in your book!” And so I did!
As a lot of your novel involves letters and journals –
what do you love most about Epistolary stories?
King responds: So, the funny thing is, I am somewhat critical of them. I think that they are hard to do without losing your reader for big chunks of time and a lot of modern epistolary novels rely too much on the letters themselves to carry the action, which is tricky.
That’s why I decided to place most of the action in Scappi’s direct point of view. The reader knows it’s a journal entry, but you feel the movement of the story from his eyes, not from what you glean on a static page. But I do love a well done epistolary, like Dangerous Liaisons, The Historian,and I was a big freak for the Nick Bantock Griffin & Sabine The key to a great epistolary, I think, is for the reader to feel like they are getting a stolen/exclusive glimpse into something maybe they shouldn’t have access to.
Part of “The Chef’s Secret” is a bit of a time slip between re-tracing Scappi’s life and moving forward with Giovanni’s own choices in the present day – what came first? The past or the present and how did you keep the continuity without feeling confused?
King responds: I wrote it in chapter order, but I did extensive outlining beforehand, so I knew the entire story before it ever went down on paper. I think with historicals that’s important, to get the facts of the time straight with the actions on the page. I also put together extensive timelines that include what was happening in a given year, with my characters, with the papacy, the Italian noble families, and with science, art, and technology. That makes a big difference for the story when I’m putting it all together.
When you first heard the narrator narrating the audiobook what were your first impressions?
King responds: Feast of Sorrowwas narrated by Simon Vance, who is British (pretty much ALL ancient Rome anything is acted or voiced by a Briton), and so I think I was expecting that for The Chef’s Secret. So hearing Jacques Roy in a very different accent was initially a surprise. But he is a great reader.
It feels like listening to someone else’s book when I listen. I keep thinking, “wow, I wrote that?” I also appreciated very much that Simon & Schuster worked with me on the pronunciation of the words, which is something that didn’t happen with the audio publisher for Feast of Sorrow. In that book, Apicius was pronounced incorrectly and he’s the main character for the entire novel!
As you’ve published a cookbook which inspires us all to re-visit the cookery delights of the Renaissance – what did you find were your favourite recipes and/or ingredients that perhaps were not as well known then as they are now? Or vice versa – are there any ingredients of choice used in the Renaissance that you feel are overlooked today?
King responds: So one odd thing that I learned is that fried chicken is not original to the deep South. Scappi has a recipe in his cookbook, although that one has cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg used for spices!
And while there are a number of things that we just wouldn’t eat today, like duck tongues, guinea pig pie and porcupine, there are far more recipes in the Scappi cookbook that we would find familiar. For example, turkey pot pie, tortellini (although they used rosewater in the pasta dough!), fruit pies and chicken soup. There are very few ingredients we can’t procure today, with the exception of certain fruit and vegetable varietals, some of which may just be more common in Italy than other places.
I don’t know if there are overlooked ingredients, in fact, quite the opposite. Our love for sugar started in the Renaissance, and Scappi’s recipes prove that. Of the 1,000 in his cookbook, 900 of them have sugar in them! There is a simple fried egg recipe, for example, which is topped with sugar and a splash of orange juice. If anyone tries that, let me know how it is!
My husband and I had a really fun time trying our hand at some of the recipes. My favorite is a pumpkin tourte, which is, in truth, a delicious pumpkin cheesecake pie. Recipe here!
What can we expect next from you and where will you take us through your lens of the cookery delights of the past?
King responds: I have a few more culinary heroes to depict, starting with Vincenzo Cervio, the meat carver to Cardinal Alessandro Farnese. I’m having a lot of fun working out that crazy story right now.
When your not researching and writing stories what uplifts your spirit the most?
King responds: Spending time with my husband, preferably sitting on a palazzo in Rome, sipping an Aperol spritz and watching the people go by.
I did want to offer an apology to the author, Ms King – I had originally intended to add-in responses throughout the convo this week, however, when [this happened] I honestly lost time & strength to form my responses & decided to keep the convo the way it was between us as it is seen now.
I was truly thankful to have been given the chance to interview Ms King, to carry forward the joy of having read & reviewed this novel earlier in the year – whilst also finding out some rather lovely “behind-the-book” secrets & trivia!!
I love when writers tuck us close to their personal writerly style & process – giving us insight into how they research their stories but also how the stories speak to them directly to be written. I am hoping others who are on the blog tour and/or those who are visiting with us during it will have found a new author to read through her collective works which entreat into such enticing periods of culinary histories!
About Crystal King
Crystal King is an author, culinary enthusiast, and marketing expert. Her writing is fueled by a love of history and a passion for the food, language, and culture of Italy.
She has taught classes in writing, creativity, and social media at several universities including Harvard Extension School and Boston University, as well as at GrubStreet, one of the leading creative writing centers in the US.
A Pushcart Prize–nominated poet and former co-editor of the online literary arts journal Plum Ruby Review, Crystal received her MA in critical and creative thinking from UMass Boston, where she developed a series of exercises and writing prompts to help fiction writers in medias res. She resides in Boston but considers Italy her next great love after her husband, Joe, and their two cats, Nero and Merlin. She is the author of Feast of Sorrow.
Photo Credit: Wayne Earl Chinnock
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Similar to blog tours where I feature book reviews, as I choose to highlight an author via a Guest Post, Q&A, Interview, etc., I do not receive compensation for featuring supplemental content on my blog. I provide the questions for interviews and topics for the guest posts; wherein I receive the responses back from publicists and authors directly. I am naturally curious about the ‘behind-the-scenes’ of stories and the writers who pen them; I have a heap of joy bringing this content to my readers. This also extends to Book Spotlights & Book Blitzes which I choose to highlight which might have content inclusive to the post materials which I did not directly add a contribution but had the choice whether or not to feature those materials on my blog.
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Happily hosting #interview feat. @crystallyn's "The Chef's Secret" – a culinary delight of a #HistNov wherein we discuss her #amwriting process & how she researches the particulars therein #writingcommmunity
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— Jorie Story 📖🎧 (@joriestory) June 27, 2019
What a fantastic interview, Jorie! Thank you so much for hosting Crystal & her blog tour! I loved this book so much and can’t wait for more from her!
Hallo, Hallo Ms Bruno,
I couldn’t agree more!! :) It was so dearly kind of her to go into the details she had and to give us all a lovely rounding of insight into what goes into one of her novels! I find the background on the research and on her abilities to dig into the deeper layers of her world and characters the most fascinating, especially as there is so little left behind for some of them! Absolutely incredible!! So very happy you were able to read this one – it was one of those surprise offers from a publisher for me earlier in the year and I am so thankful I could also participate on your lovely tour!!
I am equally excited to see what comes along from her next – what did you think about her cookbook? Loved the little antidotes which were included!