Did This Meal Kill Mozart?

When the brilliant composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart died in December of 1791 at the age of 35, Vienna was awash in rumor. What killed Mozart? Was it a pox? Poison? A jealous rival perhaps? Well to this day nobody actually knows but it was likely an illness and one theory is that it was trichinosis brought on by eating undercooked pork. A dish like this 18th century Austrian recipe for So thank you to Squarespace for sponsoring this video as we ask the question what or who killed Mozart? This time on Tasting History. Today is Mozart's 270th birthday so since he is one of my favorite composers of all time I thought it would be fun to do a video dedicated to him. Now at first I was going to actually make the nipples of Venus which are featured in the movie Amadeus but as they didn't actually exist in Mozart's time and I already made them over on Binging with Babish a couple years ago, I figured I would do something a little more historically appropriate. I figured I would find something that he actually wrote about in his letters which we still have to this day and that led me to a theory about his death. See in late 1791 Mozart was in the midst of perhaps his most productive year ever. He had recently premiered He'd also composed numerous smaller works including the clarinet concerto in A, and was in the midst of working on the now legendary Requiem. All of this while finally earning enough money to get out of debt. He had lived most of his life in debt at least his adult life because he lived lavishly. He went out a lot, he drank a lot, and entertained and he loved gambling mostly on billiards and cards and clearly he wasn't very good at it, but things were finally starting to turn around when in November of 1791 he fell ill. He developed a high fever, severe muscle pain, vomiting, and a swelling of the limbs. As his wife Constanza and her younger sister nursed him at home Mozart endeavored to complete the Requiem but on December 5th 1791 he died, his last work unfinished. Of course we see this scene in one of the greatest films of all time, a movie that I have seen no less than 30 times, probably more, Amadeus, but while that film is based on Mozart's life or rather based on a play which is based on his life it also takes a lot of dramatic liberties especially in the relationship between Mozart and Antonio Salieri who was another composer. The composers were actually on very good terms with each other it seems and Salieri was one of the few people who actually attended Mozart's burial. Now the film makes no real mention of exactly what killed Mozart other than showing the man exhausted to the point of delirium but his official cause of death according to his family doctor was Hitziges Frieselfieber or severe miliary fever, and that term wasn't really a specific disease rather it was a catch-all for any illness that caused fever and a rash mainly because the rash would look like millet, the grain on your skin, hence the name miliary fever. Now in the past 270 years at least 136 post-mortem diagnoses have been put forward including tuberculosis, rheumatic fever, scarlet fever, kidney failure, syphilis, mercury poisoning, a streptococcal infection, and for our purposes trichinosis from eating undercooked pork. See on October 7th, 1791 Mozart wrote a letter to his telling her about a successful performance of Die Zauberflöte, the magic flute, his opera, and at the end of it he writes what do I see? What do I smell? It is Don Primus with the pork. Que gusto! I eat to your health. It is just striking 11. Perhaps you are already asleep. I will not wake you. Husband who loves you. W. A. Mozart. 44 days later he began to show the signs of an illness which could be caused by trichinella, the parasite that causes trichinosis. Now is it definitive? No but is it possible? Yes and so my question is well what kind of pork dish would he be eating? Now it might be something like a simple pork chop or a breaded cutlet of pork schnitzel which was very popular in Vienna but I've already made that here on the channel so I figured that I would look to an 18th century cookbook to find a different pork recipe and that would be the Viennese cookbook by Johann Holzmeier, Nützliches Kochbuch or the useful cookbook. The cookbook has numerous recipes for how to prepare meat and recipe 231 specifies mutton loin but it also says that it can be used for either venison or pork. It says take from a mutton the loin as large as it can be and dress it as one does a venison loin. Boil it in water wine and vinegar with bay leaves, onion, rosemary, and strips of lemon peel until it is quite tender. When it is cooked arrange it on a casserole dish and pour melted butter over it. Take grated dark bread, mix it with cinnamon and sugar, sprinkle this over the loin, pour more butter over it and put it into the oven so that it becomes nicely brown turning it once or twice. Make a good broth, pour it underneath and serve it warm at the table. So for the first part of this recipe what you'll need is three to four pounds or one and a half kilograms of pork loin rubbed with two or three tablespoons of salt, then two tablespoons of butter or olive oil, two quarts or two liters of water, two cups or a half liter of dry white wine, two tablespoons of red or white wine vinegar, four bay leaves, one onion sliced up, four sprigs of rosemary, and the zest of one lemon. So first heat the butter or olive oil in a large pot over high heat and then set the pork in searing it for about a minute to get some nice browning. Turn it over and sear it all around including the ends and then remove it from the pot and pour in the water. Add the white wine and the vinegar along with the bay leaves, onion slices, and the lemon zest and then let this start to warm and once it's steaming you can add the pork back in and let it come to a gentle boil. Then set the lid on the pot and cook for about 30 minutes or until it has an internal temperature of about 130 Fahrenheit, 55 degrees Celsius, and it will continue to cook even after we take it out of the water and once we put it into the oven of course. Now the ideal temperature at least for safe eating of pork is 145 degrees Fahrenheit so if Mozart did die of trichinosis then that means that his valet Don Primus did not fully cook whatever he was serving to Mozart and so you want to make sure to cook it all the way through. You don't want to pull a Don Primus. Now as the loin boils, one of the preferred methods of cooking pork in the 18th century, we can go ahead and start our crust. So for that what you'll need is a half cup or 110 grams of butter, one third cup or 65 grams of sugar, two teaspoons of cinnamon, and one and a half cups or 150 grams of dark rye or wheat breadcrumbs. I used pumpernickel slices, toasted them until they were completely dry, and then grated them to make the crumbs. So after a few slices I switched to a blender because it was easier and it worked pretty much just as well. So melt the butter in a saucepan and then in a large bowl add the breadcrumbs, the sugar, and cinnamon and whisk it all together. That way everything is ready once the pork has boiled. Once it has boiled remove it from the pot and pat it dry, and then pour a little of the melted butter in a baking dish and set the pork in. Pour the remaining melted butter over the top and the sides and then start sprinkling the breadcrumbs, cinnamon, sugar mixture on making sure that you coat the entire thing. If some breadcrumbs fall to the side that's fine. Better to have too many than not enough. Once coated set the dish in the oven at 400 degrees Fahrenheit, 205 Celsius, and bake for 15 to 20 minutes or until it has a nice dry crust on top. Now the recipe says that you should flip it during the cooking. I tried that it did not work out very well so I would just leave it be and that'll give you more time to listen as I tell you a bit more about the death of Mozart. When I was a little boy I was obsessed with Mozart. I loved everything about him. He was my favorite composer and still is one of my favorite composers to this day. Of course I loved his music. I loved listening to it. I loved singing it. I got to be one of the three boy sopranos in a production of the Magic Flute when I was like 11 or 12 years old, but I also loved Mozart himself. I just loved reading about all these little snippets about how unbelievably incredible he was especially as a kid basically the same age that I was at the time. Like one of my favorite stories of his childhood was his overwhelming fear of the trumpet. The story actually comes from Johann Schachtner who was a friend of Mozart's father and who was the trumpeter in Vienna or rather in Salzburg at the time and he wrote until he was almost nine Mozart was terribly afraid of the trumpet when it was blown alone without other music. Merely to hold a trumpet in front of him was like a pistol at his heart. Papa wanted me to cure him of this childish fear and once told me to blow the trumpet at him despite his reluctance, but my god I should not have been persuaded to do it. Wolfgang scarcely heard the blaring sound when he grew pale and began to collapse and if I had continued he would surely have suffered a convulsion. And it's interesting because in his entire life Mozart is only known to have written one concerto for the trumpet and he did so at 12 which makes me wonder if his father Leopold made him write it to just help him try to get over his fear of the trumpet. Sadly we don't actually have that trumpet concerto and the only reason we know it exists is because Leopold mentioned it in his letters. The other story that I really love about Mozart as a kid was when he supposedly defied a papal decree when he was only 14. In 1770 he traveled with his father to the Vatican and on Ash Wednesday they went to the Sistine Chapel to hear the Miserere by Gregorio Allegri. Now this is one of the most ethereal and haunting pieces of music that I know of. I absolutely love it and it also has this mystique around it or rather it had a mystique around it at the time because supposedly ever since it had been composed in the 1630s it was forbidden to take the music, the written music out of the Vatican and it shouldn't be performed anywhere but the Sistine Chapel and Leopold Mozart wrote about this in a letter to his wife. You have often heard of the famous Miserere in Rome which is so greatly prized that the performers in the chapel are forbidden on pain of excommunication to take away a single part of it, to copy it, or to give it to anyone but we have it already. Wolfgang has written it down. We shall bring it home with us. Moreover as it is one of the secrets of Rome we do not wish to let it fall into other hands." Supposedly Mozart's genius was such that upon just one or maybe two listenings of the Miserere he was able to commit it to memory and go home and write it down. It's 12 minutes long. It is rather repetitive but still pretty amazing feat. Now perhaps he did this yes but there's also the idea that this was the only way that it ever got out of the Sistine Chapel and it's the only way that we are able to listen to it today but there are also conflicting stories about how it was being performed in London by the 1760s so not entirely sure. Either way I love the story. Now another story about Mozart which is less likely to be true is that his true cause of death was poison but even though there doesn't seem to be a lot of evidence behind it that doesn't mean that the story didn't spread within weeks of his death. By the end of December a Berlin newspaper recorded that Mozart is dead. He returned from Prague feeling sickly. It was thought he had contracted dropsy but he died in Vienna. Because his body swelled up after death people thought he had been poisoned. Some seem to have believed that it was a rival composer Antonio Salieri. Now when those rumors about Salieri began to appear as unclear but they had been swirling around for quite some time by the time Salieri was an old man because in 1823 when he fell ill he told one of his pupils that although this is my last illness I can assure you on my word of that there is no truth in that absurd rumor. You know that I am supposed to have poisoned Mozart but no it's malice, pure malice. Tell the world dear Moscheles old Salieri who will soon die has told you but as Salieri's illness grew worse and his mind started to go it does seem that he forgive the pun changed his tune because Ludwig van Beethoven's nephew wrote to Beethoven that Salieri was telling people that he had indeed poisoned Mozart, and Beethoven's secretary Anton Schindler wrote that Salieri is again in a very bad way. He has fantasies that he was responsible for Mozart's death and gave poison. This is true for he wants to confess it, and even newspapers began running stories about Salieri confessing to the murder of Mozart but it doesn't seem that they actually believed him. They said it was a bit of lunacy which surely no one but the poor delirious old man believes. Another theory that didn't arise until 1861 claims that it was not Salieri but rather the Freemasons who poisoned Mozart. The Freemasons are the world's oldest fraternal organization and especially in the 18th century were rather secretive about aspects of their order and Mozart was a Freemason. Now the theory is without any real evidence but it was postulated that the Freemasons murdered him because he was divulging their secrets inside of the opera The Magic Flute which is supposedly coded with many Masonic symbols. The poisoning theory was further bolstered because of Mozart's own words, kind of. They were related by Constanza to a friend who was the first biographer of Mozart. She says that before he died he said, I feel definitely that I don't have much time left. I am sure I have been poisoned. I cannot rid myself of this thought. Now all of these theories are unlikely to be true but especially the Salieri poisoning theory gave wonderful fodder to the fiction writers of the time. The Russian poet Alexander Pushkin used the theory in his play Mozart and Salieri which was then turned into an opera by Rimsky-Korsakov and of course the idea that Salieri had something to do with the death was further explored in Amadeus. Now in Amadeus it is not poison but rather Salieri commissions secretly, commissions Mozart to write the Requiem and then his plan is once Mozart dies then he will take credit for writing the Requiem but that's pure fiction except kind of not because that actually did happen. It just wasn't Salieri. It turns out that someone did commission Mozart to write the Requiem and he did so in secret. His name was Count Franz von Walseck. He was an Austrian nobleman and a wannabe composer and I say wannabe because after trying his hand at it he kind of realized it was hard to do and so he would hire other composers to write things and pay them handsomely with the caveat that they couldn't ever take credit for it and then he would take credit for it. Well in 1791 following Walseck's wife's death he commissioned Mozart to write a Requiem but he did so through a messenger so Mozart never knew who was actually commissioning it and the messenger said don't you dare try to find out who my employer is. Well Mozart was very much in need of the money at the time so he accepted but he kept falling behind because he ended up working on other things like the opera La Clemenza di Tito which was written for the coronation of the new Emperor Leopold. Well the messenger returns and is questioning Mozart saying where is my Requiem and he says that I'll actually pay you more if you get this done quickly and so Mozart agrees but then he falls ill and he ends up telling his wife that he feels like he is writing this Requiem for himself. Well shortly after his death the messenger comes to collect the unfinished Requiem but the cat was already kind of out of the bag because before he died Mozart had given it to his assistant von Susamaya who was actually the one to finish the Requiem. Once he did he did give that to the count and Valsek ended up still trying to take credit for it for about a year, and it was only because Mozart's widow Constanze was saying things and knew that Mozart had written this that finally he relented and acknowledged that Mozart had actually written the Requiem. Alas while that mystery was revealed we will probably never know the mystery of what actually killed Mozart. Was it a fever of some kind, rheumatic fever, or syphilis, or scarlet fever, or something else? Maybe trichinosis, who knows. What we do know is that on October 7, 1791 Mozart did eat a meal of pork very much like the one that I am about to enjoy right now. So once the bread crumbs on the pork have dried into a crust let it rest for five to ten minutes then serve it with a bit of the broth that the pork boiled in, and here we are a cinnamon and bread crumb encrusted pork loin from Mozart's Vienna. By the way I got this fork, it is not an actual antique it's a replica but I just think it's so cool, so pretty. Anyway here is got a good amount of the crusting on top, some of the pork, here we go. That is so good. That's really, really good. I would almost think that it's actually better to cook this like with the crusting all around each piece because the crust is really good. It's a little sweet but not super sweet. I'm gonna cut another piece. A little cinnamon but not super cinnamon but it's also got a nice crunch to it. What is evident is that boiling pork is just not the best way to cook pork. It's just not the best way to really cook most meat. It just kind of makes it a little tough. It's not that it's overcooked. It is overcooked I think but it's just not the best way to cook meat. Also I don't know that the boiling liquid added all that much flavor. Maybe it did. You know all those other things that we put in there. I think really you could just kind of cook it however you want and then have that crusting on the outside because it is the crusting that's really the star of the show here. Now something else that's interesting about this meal is that we not only know that Mozart ate it but we know that when he did so he had a clean tablecloth because on October 8th the day after he ate this he wrote another letter to his wife Constanza saying you should have seen me at supper yesterday. I couldn't find the old tablecloth so I fished one out as white as a snow drop and put in front of me the double candlestick with wax candles. Very fancy. Also I wanted to let you know that I'm going to put some of my favorite Mozart pieces as well as the Allegri Miserere in the next Tasting History newsletter that comes out probably next week so you can sign up for that over at tastinghistory.com, a website that I built with help from today's sponsor Squarespace. Squarespace is the easiest all-in-one platform for building a website and you don't need to be a web designer to use it. Their professionally designed templates give you a great place to start and their intuitive tools like their drag and drop editing allow you to customize your site to make it really yours, and they have a wonderful suite of business tools so whether you're selling services or products or both or your time then they can help you set all the scheduling up and help you with payments and fulfillment and invoicing and inventory and all of that stuff. So if you want to try Squarespace then head to squarespace.com and you will get a free trial and when you're ready to launch go to squarespace.com slash tasting history and you will get 10% off of your first purchase of a new website or domain, and I will see you next time on Tasting History. Wait! Actually I have a wonderful, actually a terrible little dad joke for you about Mozart. What did Mozart do after he died? He decomposed. Now I'll see you next time on Tasting History.