The recipe for Tortelli of elecampane, also chronicled as "Torteleti de enula," stands as a fascinating and precious testament to the evolution of Italian gastronomy from its medieval cradle to the present day. Born from an anonymous manuscript of likely Venetian origin, penned between the twilight of the fourteenth and the dawn of the fifteenth century—now safely guarded within the Biblioteca Casanatense in Rome—this preparation illustrates with exquisite clarity the tenets of late medieval culinary art. A sovereign feature of that historical epoch was the creation of savory pies and their myriad miniature iterations, such as tortelli and ravioli, which were baked, fried, or gently poached in broth.

The very name of this dish is derived from the elecampane, botanically classified as Inula helenium, a plant belonging to the Asteraceae family that was once a familiar guest upon noble tables, yet is now almost entirely vanished from our contemporary culinary lexicon. Far removed from the rich egg pastas of the modern era, the sheath of these ancient tortelli was in all likelihood composed of a humble dough of soft wheat flour and water alone, to which saffron was introduced to bestow that signature golden hue, described in the original manual by the poetic expression "pasta zalla."

The filling offers a luminous window into the palate of the era, defined by the audacious counterpoint of meat—here, pork loin—with aged cheeses, fresh eggs, and a lavish abundance of spices. The required assortment of aromatics, characterized by the anonymous scribe as "fine and sweet," comprised pepper, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, and saffron, thereby testifying to the economic power and exalted social prestige closely bound to the consumption of these precious treasures of the Orient. The original measures called for spices equaling roughly one-twelfth of the meat's total weight, an opulent quantity that imbued the dish with a flavor both intensely bold and harmonious.

Below is the text of the original recipe, faithfully transcribed from the manuscript (Libro per cuoco – Biblioteca Casanatense of Rome, Codex No. 225):

"If thou wilt make tortelli of elecampane in broth, take capons or take of the beef for XII persons, take III pounds of pork loin and take three fine aged cheeses, and take three ounces of fine spices, sweet and strong mixed and well yellowed, and take two pence worth of elecampane and take XX eggs; and take the pork loin and set it to boil with the well-cleaned elecampane, and when it is well cooked, mince the loin and the elecampane together, but put not in all of the elecampane. Take the cheese that thou hast and grind it with the loin, and cast therein the spices and the eggs as much as sufficeth, and see that it taste not too much of elecampane, and stir all together and make a filling, and then make small tortelli in sheets of yellow pasta. These tortelli must be well golden and potent with spices.

Fine spices for all things.

Take one ounce of pepper and one of cinnamon and one of ginger and half a quarter of cloves and a quarter of saffron."