What to Eat While Reading The Marriage Portrait
One dish for a marriage staged as a courtship.
The meal and the marriage, side by side.
The meal that takes longer than it should.
Lucrezia arrives in Ferrara to a husband who is charming, cultured, and difficult to read, and a marriage that feels more like a performance than a partnership. The Marriage Portrait builds its tension gradually, until the danger is no longer something Lucrezia or the reader can ignore.
This is not a review. The Marriage Portrait has already earned one here. This is the meal to make alongside it: a dish with more work behind it than you might expect.
Braised Pork in Red Wine and Warm Spices
The spices that do the slow work.
For a husband who performs kindness.
Deeply spiced and made for a long afternoon at the stove.
This dish takes its inspiration from salama da sugo, a traditional Ferrarese specialty with roots in the Renaissance and ties to the Este court—the same court Lucrezia married into. Sixteenth-century court records document the food culture surrounding the Este family, including the work of Cristoforo di Messisbugo, the court's celebrated master of banquets, whose writings are among the earliest sources to record the dish.
The original salama da sugo takes weeks to cure before it's ready, and is always served over mashed potato, the classic Ferrarese pairing, its neutral creaminess meant to soften the dish's intensity. This version skips the curing but keeps the rich, spiced character and the potato, using pork shoulder, red wine, cinnamon, and cloves to create something you can make at home in an afternoon rather than over a month.
Prep Time: 20 minutes · Cook Time: 3 hours · Serves: 4–6
Ingredients:
3 lbs boneless pork shoulder, cut into large chunks
2 teaspoons kosher salt, plus more to taste
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 large yellow onion, diced
3 garlic cloves, minced
2 cups dry red wine
1 cup low-sodium chicken or beef broth
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1 cinnamon stick
3 whole cloves
2 bay leaves
Freshly ground black pepper
2 lbs Yukon Gold potatoes, for mashing
Butter and cream, for the mash
Instructions:
1. Brown the pork: Season generously with salt and pepper. Heat the olive oil in a heavy Dutch oven over medium-high heat and brown the pork in batches, about 3–4 minutes per side. Transfer to a plate.
2. Build the sauce: Lower the heat, add the onion, and cook until softened, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic and cook for an additional minute. Stir in the tomato paste and cook for another minute.
3. Add the wine: Pour in the red wine, scraping up any browned bits from the bottom of the pot.
4. Braise: Return the pork to the pot. Add the broth, cinnamon stick, cloves, and bay leaves. Bring to a simmer, then cover and transfer to a 300°F oven—or keep it covered on the stovetop over low heat.
5. Cook until tender: Braise for 2½–3 hours, until the pork is fork-tender and beginning to fall apart.
6. Make the mash: About 30 minutes before serving, boil the potatoes until tender. Mash with butter and cream until smooth, then season with salt.
7. Finish: Remove the cinnamon stick and bay leaves. Shred the pork slightly into the sauce, then spoon generously over the mashed potatoes.
The pairing, plated.
Pair it with the chapters where Alfonso is at his most delightful—right before you remember that even his own sisters seem to fear him.
Further Reading: On Food, Memory, and What Gets Carried Forward
→ The Marriage Portrait—September Book Pick and Review: Maggie O'Farrell imagines the interior life of Lucrezia de' Medici, married at fifteen to a duke rumored to have arranged her death.
→ What to Eat While Reading The Women: Three dishes for the men who shape Frances McGrath, and the one worth cooking twice.
→ What to Eat While Reading Minbak: Three dishes for three generations of women sharing one room, and the meals that carry what none of them can bring themselves to say aloud.