He added a very small pinch more. I sniffed to let him know I hadn’t missed a thing, but let him continue. I needed all my attention to roll out the tourte dough; I’d done some tweaking to my father’s original recipe, and it resulted in a thinner, flakier texture, but the dough tore very easily. My father was a very great cook in Venice, but I’d begun modifying his recipes lately, something I would have once considered as unthinkable as making a few improving tweaks to the stone tablets of Moses. “You ran away from a convent, girl,” I could hear my father roar at me, “and now you’re changing my recipes?” My father had already cast my name out of the family for good when I ran away from the convent where he’d placed me. He probably cast me out all over again when he realized I’d taken his recipe book with me, and then one more time for good measure when we’d encountered each other by plain chance on the road, and I’d left him unconscious and trussed up in a cellar rather than let him drag me by the hair back to Venice . . . I wasn’t proud of any of it, believe me, but if you’ve already been cast out of a family once, what difference does it make?

Sweet Santa Marta, but I wasn’t a good daughter. I was, however, a better cook than my father.

“Bartolomeo,” I snapped over my shoulder, “why have you got the saffron out? Frittelle do not need saffron.”

“Just a pinch. It will complement the flavor of the raspberries.”

“It will fight the flavor of the raspberries,” I said firmly. “Put it away at once.”

Bartolomeo muttered something under his breath, and I wished I were a man. If I were a man, no apprentice would dream of arguing with me, and if they did I could simply beat them until they realized their opinions were not required, as my father used to beat his apprentices, and me as well. Not that I blamed him. Now that I had apprentices of my own to manage, I understood just how much they needed to be smacked for anything to sink through their thick skulls.

“I know I’m late!” a man’s voice called from the courtyard, and boots sounded through the scullery and then the cold room. “Carmelina—”

“All in hand, Marco,” I called back without looking. My cousin would pause in the doorway, looking sheepish and running a hand through his black curls, and then there would be the excuses.

“Sorry,” he cajoled me. “I found that, ah, new butcher I was telling you about—beautiful prosciutto on offer, it’ll do for the credenza tomorrow—”