Italian Cuisine

August 1, 2003
In this history of Italy's food, cooking, and eating, the authors have opted for an "everything including the kitchen sink" approach. Throughout, Capatti, who has written several books on food and eating, and Montanari (history, Univ. of Bologna) offer extensive lists of foodstuffs and names of dishes, sometimes to the detriment of the point they are trying to make. Organized topically rather than chronologically, the book constantly folds back on itself, leaving the reader with an ongoing feeling of familiarity with recurring names but not with an appropriate context. Although the topics range widely, from the lexicon of Italian food to the dress code for kitchen staff, one senses that there are still gaps. The 20th century and the effects of the open European Community on Italian eating, for example, are scarcely touched. The wealth of notes and suggested readings are the book's greatest offering. Suitable for academic libraries.-Peter Hepburn, Univ. of Illinois at Chicago Lib.

Copyright 2003 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2003
The latest volume in the Art and Traditions of the Table" "series focuses on the cultural history of Italian cooking. With an authoritative command of the subject, Capatti and Montanari trace the changing vocabulary of Italy's earliest cookbooks from classical Latin to vernacular Italian, showing how this shift reflected the increasing significance of passing culinary skill from one generation to the next. Bit by bit, Italian cookbook writers also eliminated Gallicisms from their vocabulary to express the uniqueness of Italian cooking. Pleasures of the table then, as today, related to images of health and well being, the north favoring voluptuous fatness, the south tending to ascetic thinness. The authors limn the decline of the servant class and the gradual shift to femininity in the Italian kitchen. Contrary to contemporary emphases on Italian cookery as an agglomeration of microcuisines, Capatti and Montanari stress its unity across the nation. This relentlessly academic work has an impressive bibliography of historic Italian sources.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2003, American Library Association.)