Carpaccio/Nietzsche: a crosshatch

In a conversation offline, kittyclive inquired about the history and definition of carpaccio. Carpaccio is "traditionally" a paper-thin slice of raw fine beef served with a vinaigrette, a mayonnaise-based sauce, or simply olive oil. I always assume that raw meat dishes have ancient origins-- that they date back to the period before cooked meat equaled civilization. The root of that notion (a superficial brush with Lévi-Strauss ?) is no matter because this case debunks the assumption: carpaccio was created in the mid-twentieth century, probably by Harry's Bar-founder Giuseppe Cipriani in response to Countess Anna Nani Mocenigo's doctor urging her to consume only raw meat. The dish was named after the 15-th & 16-th century Italian painter Vittore Carpaccio, whose works feature vivid reds reminiscent of raw beef. The name may refer to Carpaccio's use of both reds and bright whites, as Cipriani's version of the dish tops the meat with a crosshatch of mayonnaise-based sauce. Some accounts suggest that Carpaccio's works were being exhibited in Venice at the time that Cipriani originated the dish; however, these reports may result from confusion over carpaccio's origins and those of the bellini. The cocktail comprised of Prosecco and peach juice was also developed by Cipriani and named after a contemporary of V. Carpaccio, Giovanni Bellini whose works were definitely on display in Venice when then drink was divined. That last term may be apposite insofar as Bellini's Pieta is awash in peachy tones... though this is merely blasphemous speculation as I'm alone in linking the painter's palette with the bubbly delight of the cocktail.

The relatively recent emergence of the dish leads me (perhaps unnecessarily) to snap quotation marks onto traditionally in the second sentence of the above paragraph. It also provokes in me extra contempt for those who assert that the term carpaccio should refer only to a raw beef dish. I'll spare you the lengthy lecture (based, in my version, on Nietzsche's fragment, "On Truth and Lies in an Extra-moral Sense") on words as generalizations, baggy entities that lend themselves to stretching and bending such that zucchini carpaccio refers to the thin-slicedness and rawness of Giuseppe's recipe, though it fails to capture the redness central to Giuseppe's naming of his dish. I'm afraid that the title of my original post on zucchini carpaccio-- Red Herring-- was a cheeky reference to this, both in the redness of Red Herring and in red herring as a term for ignoratio elenchi-- my thinking being that any assertion that my zucchini carpaccio wasn't carpaccio was in fact an instance of ignoratio elenchi. Such nonsensical assertions have led people to insist that pesto should only refer to a basil-based sauce or paste because pesto means basil. This is, I suppose, not ignoratio elenchi so much as simply ignoratio: pesto originates from a verb meaning to pound. All of this leads me to wonder how one might combine strips (or rounds) of zucchini carpaccio with a lovely arugula pesto...