30 DAYS OPEN PURCHASE
La scienza in cucina e l'arte di mangiar bene is the book that invented Italian cuisine, and that is not an exaggeration.
When Pellegrino Artusi published it in 1891, Italy had been a unified country for thirty years, but still consisted of regions that could barely understand one another's dialects, let alone one another's food. There was Tuscan, Neapolitan and Piedmontese cooking. There was no such thing as Italian cuisine.
Artusi was a silk and textile merchant, not a chef. He collected recipes from across the peninsula, wrote them in Tuscan based Italian and published the book at his own expense after publishers had turned it down. Then something unusual happened. Readers began sending him their own recipes, he tested them and incorporated them, and the book grew edition by edition until it contained 790 recipes across fifteen editions published during his lifetime. It is often said to have done more to unite Italy linguistically than any government initiative, because millions of households were reading the same Italian every day.
What keeps it readable to this day is the tone. Artusi constantly goes off topic, tells anecdotes, argues with his readers, moralises gently and jokes about his own digestion. It is a book you actually read, not merely consult.
He left the rights to the book to his housekeeper Marietta Sabatini and his cook Francesco Ruffilli, which tells you something about the man.
This edition is the scholarly English translation by Murtha Baca, with an introduction by Luigi Ballerini and published by University of Toronto Press. The notes and introduction are not embellishments but essential, since a text from 1891 contains measurements, ingredients and methods that no longer exist.
The Silver Spoon, Ada Boni and Marcella Hazan all draw on this book. If you want to own the root rather than merely the branches, there is only one choice.
Format: Paperback/Softback
Number of recipes: 790
Translation: Murtha Baca
Introduction: Luigi Ballerini
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 9780802086570
Language: English
First published: 1891, this translation: 2003
The Kitchen Lab Selection
This is the root of all Italian cookbooks. Until Artusi, cookbooks were written largely by chefs for courts and grand houses, describing what was served at the finest tables. Instead, he wrote down what ordinary people cooked in ordinary kitchens: precisely the part of food history that otherwise disappears, because nobody thought it worth preserving. It is not the most accessible book to cook from, but the fact that it remains in print says something about its cultural and historical importance.
It also demonstrates something uncomfortable for anyone who talks about authentic food. A national cuisine is not something that is inherited, it is something that is assembled. Here you can see exactly when, by whom and according to which choices. Few cuisines in the world can be traced so closely to their own beginnings.
