Italian Cuisine: A Cultural History / Edition 1

Italian Cuisine: A Cultural History / Edition 1

ISBN-10:
0231122322
ISBN-13:
9780231122320
Pub. Date:
09/17/2003
Publisher:
Columbia University Press
ISBN-10:
0231122322
ISBN-13:
9780231122320
Pub. Date:
09/17/2003
Publisher:
Columbia University Press
Italian Cuisine: A Cultural History / Edition 1

Italian Cuisine: A Cultural History / Edition 1

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Overview

Italy, the country with a hundred cities and a thousand bell towers, is also the country with a hundred cuisines and a thousand recipes. Its great variety of culinary practices reflects a history long dominated by regionalism and political division, and has led to the common conception of Italian food as a mosaic of regional customs rather than a single tradition. Nonetheless, this magnificent new book demonstrates the development of a distinctive, unified culinary tradition throughout the Italian peninsula.

Alberto Capatti and Massimo Montanari uncover a network of culinary customs, food lore, and cooking practices, dating back as far as the Middle Ages, that are identifiably Italian:

o Italians used forks 300 years before other Europeans, possibly because they were needed to handle pasta, which is slippery and dangerously hot.

o Italians invented the practice of chilling drinks and may have invented ice cream.

o Italian culinary practice influenced the rest of Europe to place more emphasis on vegetables and less on meat.

o Salad was a distinctive aspect of the Italian meal as early as the sixteenth century.

The authors focus on culinary developments in the late medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque eras, aided by a wealth of cookbooks produced throughout the early modern period. They show how Italy's culinary identities emerged over the course of the centuries through an exchange of information and techniques among geographical regions and social classes. Though temporally, spatially, and socially diverse, these cuisines refer to a common experience that can be described as Italian. Thematically organized around key issues in culinary history and beautifully illustrated, Italian Cuisine is a rich history of the ingredients, dishes, techniques, and social customs behind the Italian food we know and love today.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780231122320
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Publication date: 09/17/2003
Series: Arts and Traditions of the Table: Perspectives on Culinary History
Edition description: New Edition
Pages: 400
Sales rank: 938,342
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)
Age Range: 18 Years

About the Author

Alberto Capatti is author of several books on food and eating and editor of the food section of Einaudi's History of Italy. Massimo Montanari teaches medieval history at the University of Bologna and is the preeminent historian of Italian food and eating habits. He is author of A History of European Nutrition and The Magic Pot, and co-editor of Food: A Culinary History (Columbia, 1999).

Table of Contents

Introduction: Identity as Exchange
Italy: A Physical and Mental Space
The Italian Way of Eating
The Formation of Taste
The Sequence of Dishes
Communicating Food: The Recipe Collection
The Vocabulary of Food
The Cook, the Innkeeper, and the Woman of the House
Science and Technology in the Kitchen
Toward a History of the Appetite

What People are Saying About This

Frances Mayes

Alberto Cappatti and Massimo Montanari deserve a feast. They have thoroughly researched and described the cultural context of Italian food throughout history. Why are prosciutto and melon paired? What did people eat in the middle ages? Who invented sorbet? A fine tour of the history of the peninsula with a fork in hand. This book will live on my desk right beside the Italian dictionary.

Frances Mayes, author of Under the Tuscan Sun and Bella Tuscany

Lidia Matticchio Bastianich

Italian Cuisine: A Cultural History is the book I have been waiting for. It gives the history of the Italian eating tradition, exploring ingredients and recipes of the Italians within an economic and topographical context. This is a great book with layers of information, research and examples of what constitutes the Italian culinary tradition.

Lidia Matticchio Bastianich, cookbook author, public television host, and restaurateur

Cesare Casella

This book is an amazing resource for anyone interested in how the world ended up loving pasta, mozzarella and osso buco--and the cultural story Italian food tells. All you have to do is dip in and out of a few chapters and you'll feel like you've graduated from a culinary history class lead by the masters, from Apicius to Platina to Artusi.

Cesare Casella, author of Diary of a Tuscan Chef

publisher

"Alberto Cappatti and Massimo Montanari deserve a feast. They have thoroughly researched and described the cultural context of Italian food throughout history. Why are prosciutto and melon paired? What did people eat in the middle ages? Who invented sorbet? A fine tour of the history of the peninsula with a fork in hand. This book will live on my desk right beside the Italian dictionary."
-Frances Mayes, author of Under a Tuscan Sun and Bella Tuscany

"This book is an amazing resource for anyone interested in how the world ended up loving pasta, mozzarella and osso bucoand the cultural story Italian food tells. All you have to do is dip in and out of a few chapters and you'll feel like you've graduated from a culinary history class lead by the masters, from Apicius to Platina to Artusi."
-Cesare Casella, author of Diary of a Tuscan Chef

"Italian Cuisine: A Cultural History is the book I have been waiting for. It gives the history of the Italian eating tradition, exploring ingredients and recipes of the Italians within an economic and topographical context. This is a great book with layers of information, research and examples of what constitutes the Italian culinary tradition."
-Lidia Matticchio Bastianich, cookbook author, public television host, and restaurateur

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