L'Italo-Americano

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2026 www.italoamericano.org 24 L'Italo-Americano teenth century, thanks to P e l l e g r i n o A r t u s i , a wealthy businessman from Forlimpopoli who settled in Florence and devoted much of his later life to collecting and testing recipes. In 1891, after failing to interest a pub- lisher, he paid for the first edition of La scienza in cuci- na e l'arte di mangiar bene himself. It contained 475 recipes, tested in his house- h o l d w i t h t h e h e l p o f h i s cooks, Marietta Sabatini and Francesco Ruffilli, whose p r a c t i c a l k n o w l e d g e w a s essential to the enterprise. Artusi's great advantage was that he wrote for people c o o k i n g a t h o m e , a n d h e explained his recipes in an a p p r o a c h a b l e l a n g u a g e , adding observations, stories and advice drawn from expe- rience. He also listened to his readers, who sent recipes and corrections that he incorpo- rated into later editions. By the time of his death in 1911, he had supervised fifteen edi- tions, and the first posthu- mous edition contained 790 recipes. A household in Flo- rence could now learn to pre- pare dishes from Romagna, Naples or Lombardy without h a v i n g t r a v e l e d t o t h o s e places, and readers began tivated. Naturally, the experi- ence depended on what one could afford, as a fashionable café catered to a very differ- ent public from the neighbor- hood osteria, where artisans, laborers and travelers could find wine, food and company without paying for the refine- ments expected by the upper c l a s s e s . B o t h , h o w e v e r , b e c a m e p a r t o f I t a l y ' s expanding public life, even if their customers seldom sat at the same tables. But the contrast was even greater inside people's homes because while wealthy fami- lies consulted elaborate cook- b o o k s , m o s t I t a l i a n s a t e w h a t e v e r t h e i r w o r k a n d i n c o m e a l l o w e d : b r e a d , legumes, seasonal vegetables and occasional cheese sus- tained many rural house- holds, and meat was general- l y r e s e r v e d f o r s p e c i a l o c c a s i o n s . I n n o r t h e r n I t a l y , p o l e n t a w a s s o important to poorer families that an excessive dependence on maize, without enough other nutrients, contributed to the spread of pellagra, a d i s e a s e a s s o c i a t e d w i t h niacin deficiency. A more recognizably Ital- ian culinary literature began taking shape during the nine- sharing a vocabulary of cook- i n g t h a t c r o s s e d r e g i o n a l boundaries. Of course, buy- ing a cookbook and having t h e m e a n s t o e x p e r i m e n t with its contents remained privileges, so Artusi's Italy was principally that of the lit- erate middle classes. T h e n e x t g r e a t c h a n g e came through industry and m a s s c o n s u m p t i o n , a s improvements in transporta- tion and food preservation allowed products to travel farther from their places of origin; by the beginning of t h e t w e n t i e t h c e n t u r y , canned foods and increasing- ly organized food production were altering what could be supplied to large numbers of people, a development that became especially significant during the First World War. Men from different regions found themselves serving together, sometimes encountering foods and even Italian words they had rarely heard at home; pasta cooked in insulated field kitchens and canned products sup- plied by manufacturers in cities such as Turin, Genoa a n d B o l o g n a b r o u g h t a degree of uniformity to mili- tary meals. For some soldiers from desperately poor rural backgrounds, the army's reg- ular ration could initially seem substantial, although conditions varied enormous- ly and deteriorated badly when supplies failed. B y t h e t i m e t h o s e m e n returned home, Italy had spent more than half a centu- ry becoming a nation, and its food habits had begun chang- ing alongside its political institutions. That process was f a r f r o m c o m p l e t e , a n d regional traditions remained remarkably resilient, as they still do. The exhibition at Palazzo Carignano, which continues until April 4, 2027, s h o w s h o w m u c h o f t h e change happened outside the kitchen as well as within it: at café tables, in dining rooms, through printed cookbooks and eventually in the army. And on that Sanremo hotel menu, French remained the language of fashionable din- i n g w h i l e t o r t e l l i n i h a d already earned a place at the table. title was effectively an adver- tisement: here was a Pied- m o n t e s e c o o k w h o h a d learned to do things properly by studying French methods: it would take generations for Italian culinary traditions to gain comparable prestige in their own right. W h e r e p e o p l e a t e w a s changing too, especially in c i t i e s , w h e r e c a f é s a n d restaurants were becoming important places to meet outside the home. Turin's Caffè Fiorio, established around 1780 under the porti- c o e s o f V i a P o , b e c a m e a favorite meeting place for politicians, aristocrats and intellectuals. Cavour, Cesare Balbo and Massimo d'Azeglio were among its regular visi- t o r s , a n d a c c o r d i n g t o a much-repeated story, King Carlo Alberto would begin his morning audiences by asking what people were say- ing at Fiorio. Cavour also fre- quented Del Cambio, the restaurant opposite Palazzo Carignano, where politics could continue over dinner. T h e s e e s t a b l i s h m e n t s offered more than simple refreshments: they provided places where newspapers w e r e r e a d , o p i n i o n s exchanged and alliances cul- A m o n g t h e o b j e c t s d i s - p l a y e d a t Turin's Museo Nazionale del Risorgimento Italiano is a menu from the Hôtel de l'Eu- rope in Sanremo, written in F r e n c h , a s f a s h i o n a b l e r e s t a u r a n t m e n u s w e r e e x p e c t e d t o b e , b u t w i t h tortellini among the dishes on offer. It belongs to a peri- od when Italian cooking was beginning to find its own identity, although the lan- guage of respectable dining s t i l l o w e d a g r e a t d e a l t o Paris. The menu is part of A Tavola! Cucina, cibo e g u s t o n e l l ' I t a l i a d e l Risorgimento, an exhibi- tion that opened on October 21 at Palazzo Carignano and follows Italian eating habits from the late eighteenth cen- tury to the First World War. Its curator, historian Ilaria Porciani, brought together cookbooks, menus, paintings and kitchen equipment to tell a story that goes considerably further than what people put on their plates. When Italy became a uni- f i e d k i n g d o m i n 1 8 6 1 , i t s inhabitants had very little experience of being Italian in t h e e v e r y d a y s e n s e . T h e y spoke different languages and dialects, lived under dif- f e r e n t c u s t o m s a n d h a d d e v e l o p e d t h e i r c o o k i n g around whatever their partic- ular region produced. A fami- l y i n P i e d m o n t m i g h t e a t polenta and rice regularly, while farther south pasta, vegetables and bread took different forms according to local agriculture and house- hold means. Even among the wealthy, there was no univer- sally accepted Italian way of dining, and the upper classes frequently looked to France for guidance on how a proper meal should be prepared and served. In Turin, French influ- e n c e w a s a l r e a d y f i r m l y established a century before unification. In 1766, a cook- b o o k a p p e a r e d u n d e r t h e wonderfully revealing title Il cuoco piemontese perfezion- ato a Parigi, or The Pied- montese Cook Perfected in Paris. Much of its material drew on the French author Menon's La cuisinière bour- g e o i s e , p u b l i s h e d t w e n t y years earlier, and the Italian volume went through more than twenty editions. The From Cavour's cafés to Artusi's kitchen: how Italy learned to eat together CHIARA D'ALESSIO Tinned foods, made in cities like Turin and Genoa, became familiar across Italian tables after their diffusion during the First World War (Original image created for L'Italo-Americano with the assistance of AI) LA BUONA TAVOLA RECIPES COOKING TIPS SEASONAL DISHES

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