Pellegrino Artusi & Building Of A National Italian Cuisine

PELLEGRINO ARTUSI AND THE BUILDING OF A NATIONAL ITALIAN CUISINE:A LECTURE BY PROFESSOR MASSIMO MONTANARI

November 15, 6 pm

Italian Cultural Institute
500 N Michigan Ave, Suite 1450

This lecture by will focus on Pellegrino Artusi's book Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well (La scienza in cucina e l'arte di mangiar bene). This cookbook, published in 1891, is much more than a cookbook. Rather, it is a political project - the contribution Artusi wanted to give his country, laboriously unified a few years earlier. Artusi's work aimed to reflect the traditions of the whole country, not denying the extraordinary variety of local traditions, rather putting them into circulation, making them known and shared. This project - also a linguistic one: telling the kitchen in a "national" language that everyone could understand - worked in a "inter-active", almost a collective way, involving many readers that used to send Artusi suggestions, advices and new recipes. That's why La scienza in cucina became a sort of collective work, adding more and more recipes over twenty years and fifteenth editions, published until Artusi's death (1911).

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