A dish that has its origins in the 1400s, or even earlier, in Impruneta as a meal for the ‘fornacini’, the artisans and workers who worked in the terracotta and ceramic kilns. At the beginning of the shift, in fact, they would place an earthenware pot near the mouth of the kiln and inside it some
low-quality meat.
It is said that this robust and tasty dish was born from the need to cook tough meat in terracotta pots, sealing them with stale bread soaked in red wine and pepper. The result? A unique dish, with an intense and enveloping flavor. At the end of the 1400s, the artisans from Impruneta who worked on Brunelleschi’s Dome, in Piazza del Duomo in Florence, used this cooking method in the kilns set up on the construction site. Brunelleschi himself had authorized this preparation: to avoid wasting time he decided to
create two “canteens” based on robust peposo directly on the scaffolding of the dome, a way to offer an inexpensive meal and at the same time prevent the workers from loitering in taverns and returning to work a little tipsy!
Around 1520, in the area of the Ospedale del Ceppo, furnaces were created for firing glazed ceramics and bricks. Also in this case the workers, many of whom came from Impruneta or in any case had worked for Brunelleschi, made peposo as a main course.
At the Sabatini Restaurant, we prepare peposo according to the traditional recipe, using top quality beef, Chianti DOCG wine, black peppercorns and homemade bread. The meat is cooked at a low temperature for hours, so that it slowly becomes flavored and very tender. The result is a dish with
a rich and complex flavor, with slightly spicy notes and an inebriating aroma.
So, Enjoy your meal!