‘Cavoli Riscaldati’ and the Origins of Its English Counterpart

Every week on the BBC Radio 4 programme Unspeakable, lexicographer extraordinaire and novelist Susie Dent delights the audience with her favourite word or phrase from around the world for her ‘word of the week’. In the Sunday 13 September episode (at 08:30 in) it was the Italian cavoli riscaldati, which Susie explained: ‘basically, it describes the doomed attempt to revive an old romance only to find that the old problems are still there’.

It caught my attention for three reasons. First because I used to speak pretty good Italian, though now it’s rather rusty, so my ears immediately pricked up – yes, another animal metaphor!

Then, because where the stress fall in Italian words can catch you out. Susie stressed it ca-VO-li ris-cal-DA-ti, and the majority of Italian words do indeed bear the stress on the penultimate syllable. However, the stress falls on the first syllable of CA-vo-li.

Which reminds me that when I first arrived in Italy – where I lived for two blissful years – equipped only with the basics of the language, in a pasticceria some almond tarts caught my eye. The Italian for ‘almond’ is mándorla, but I stressed it mandórla as I asked for one, and the assistant tactfully and smilingly corrected me. It stuck if I can remember it all these years later: I hate making mistakes in language. (Doesn’t everyone?)

Third, the phrase struck me because I had come across a related English set idiom, to boil (chew, sell) one’s cabbage twice – first recorded in 1640 – while researching my next book, and through it had found the Italian cavoli riscaldati.

What does the English idiom mean?

As the OED notes, you usually use it in negative contexts. The speaker means they’re not going to repeat themselves. From 1870 this:

‘Won’t you say it again, old man?’ ‘It’s no use to sell your cabbages twice, says I, and I never repeats.’

And from 2011 this:

What was that again, miss?’ I entreat… ‘I don’t boil my cabbages twice,’ she hisses mysteriously.

That ‘mysteriously’ makes it clear that the hearer didn’t know the phrase – as I didn’t before my research.

But not reboiling your cabbage does not only mean not repeating what you’ve just said. It also suggests that something is stale, old hat, not a novelty, and therefore totally uninteresting:

He might, of course, call, but again his instinct warned him that this would be rather like boiling his cabbages twice. It would be an anti-climax.

(1914)

What does the Italian mean?

As Susie said, people use it to talk about a dead relationship or friendship they might try to revive.

Here are authentic – I hope – examples AI found for me. The translations, which strike me as very idiomatic, are courtesy of Google translate (it’s quicker than my brain).

Loro ci riprovano per la quarta volta, ma secondo me sono solo cavoli riscaldati; i problemi di fondo rimangono gli stessi.

(They’re giving it another shot for the fourth time, but in my opinion, it’s just warmed-up leftovers; the underlying problems remain the same.)

Non voglio rimettermi con il mio ex. Le minestre riscaldate e i cavoli riscaldati non sanno mai di niente.

(I don’t want to get back together with my ex. Reheated leftovers never taste of anything.)

But you can also use it to say that you think something is just a reheated idea, something that was a flop the last time round:

La nuova strategia aziendale ricalca esattamente quella del 2018 che era già fallita. Ci stanno proponendo dei cavoli riscaldati.

(The new corporate strategy is an exact replica of the 2018 one, which had already flopped. They are serving up warmed-over leftovers.)

Where do the English and Italian idioms come from?

It could just be a natural image; ‘reheated cabbage’ might be boiled to death, floppy and insipid, if not actively distasteful. Think 1984. But when English and a European language share an idiom, I always suspect a Latin source. And sure enough, the OED tells me, the English was inspired by Juvenal, the first/second century Roman satirist’s: Occidit miseros crambe repetita magistros, ‘the same old cabbage served again and again is the death of the poor teachers.’ (7:154).

In fact, that Latin word for ‘cabbage’, crambe, was used in English from 1565 for a couple of centuries, referencing Juvenal.

And then there’s the mediaeval Latin crambe bis cocta, bis posita ‘cabbage twice sodden, twice served up’, which is echoed in the earliest citation for not boiling your cabbage twice:

There is no sweetnesse in a Cabadge twice sod, or a Tale twice told.

F. Quarles, Enchyridion

(‘Sod’ here is the past participle of to seethe, ‘to boil’ food, which goes back to Old English sēoþan, ‘to cook, to boil’, past participle ġesōden).