In 1891, Pellegrino Artusi, a 71-year-old retired silk merchant, gave up on trying to find a publisher for his cookbook, La Scienza in Cucina e L'Arte di Mangiar Bene (The Science of cookery and the Art of Eating Well), and self-published it. It took him four years to sell a thousand copies.

The next edition sold faster, so he increased the print-run of the third. Then, a miracle happened: The book was discovered by the middle class. Sales skyrocketed, and continued undiminished to this day. L'Artusi, as the book is called in Italy, is a household icon, a source of inspiration for generations of cooks, a family heirloom passed from mother to daughter.

Artusi provided his readers with tasty, easy to follow recipes. Though he concentrated on the dishes of his native Romagna and his adopted Tuscany, people throughout the peninsula sent him recipes, and he included those he thought would be accepted nationally to the successive editions of his book. In this sense, as many food historians have pointed out, Artusi laid the foundations for Italian cuisine as we know it.

Artusi was a bon-vivant, a noted raconteur, and a celebrated host; he knew many of the leading figures of his day and read widely in the arts and sciences. Almost half his recipes contain anecdotes or snippets of advice on subjects as varied as regional dialects and public health: While you may open the book to find out how to make Minestrone or a German cake, you will probably read on to find out how Artusi escaped cholera, or what the Austrian troops who occupied Northern Italy in the 1840's were like.




LucaNov 4, 2005 @ 18:43