Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well by Pellegrino Artusi, Murtha Baca, Luigi Ballerini Page A

the case, why not trim it and treat it as a main course?
    To balance these two assessments, we may wish to turn to the endorsement of Artusi’s recommendations that Emanuela Djalma Vitali proffers in her review of the celebrated Einaudi 2001 edition of
Scienza in cucina
, whose author she notes, “prematurely died at the age of 91” due to an overdose of good food. “There is no great cuisine (or health) wherever there is room for margarine, seed, palm, or coconut oil, processed fats and ‘light’ cheeses, or other disgusting abominations. This is sensorial squalor … It occurs when butter (a great deity among foods), lard, rendered pig cheek, and rendered lard (why not?) are ostracized. You cannot live to be almost one hundred if you allow yourself to be ground up by nutritional whims, by fears of lipids and cholesterol. These are diseases of the soul.” 132
    Whatever you yourself choose to do, I sincerely hope you will not pronounce the same malevolent (but largely justified) verdict that Artusi reached with regard to his competitors: “Beware of books that deal with this art: most of them are inaccurate or incomprehensible, especially the Italian ones. The French are a little better. But from either, the very most you will glean are a few notions, useful only if you already know the art”. 133
    Of course, much more can be said about the “gastronomic father of us all” and his epochal book, and we would gladly oblige anyone kind (or hungry) enough to advance a request for further information, had we not been taught by schoolteachers and parents, at a time and in a country where many children did not have enough to eat, to chew each morsel thirty-three times, regardless of its consistency, and to leave the dinner table with a little bit of appetite.
NOTES
     
    1 The number of recipes had also grown prodigiously: from 475 to 790. The second edition (1895) brought the number to 575, the third (1899) added 19 new recipes, the fifth (1900) 35, the sixth (1902) 25, the eighth (1905) 15, the tenth (1906) 15, the eleventh (1907) 8, the twelfth (1908) 88, the thirteenth (1909) 10. Artusi’s death, which occurred on 30 March 1910, ensured that this figure would not increase further.
    2 This section was added to the sixth edition and reprinted in all subsequent editions.
    3 ”Story (of the Success) of a Book” appears in
La cucina bricconcella
(Cooking is a troublesome sprite), a precious collection of essays edited by Andrea Pollarini and published in 1991 by the Region Emilia Romagna (Grafis Edizioni) to celebrate the one hundredth anniversary of
Scienza in cucina
.
    4 Landi and/or his heirs reissued
Scienza in cucina
thirty-one times, until 1928.
    5 Or, rather, international distribution: in 1901, an unidentified American customer placed an order for 100 copies. In the beginning books were sold directly by the author. As late as 1932 they were sold by R. Bemporad e Figlio as well as by the estate of Pellegrino Artusi.
    6 See p. 5.
    7 Bemporad began its own printing in 1924, creating a four-year overlap with Landi.
    8 Displaying on the front cover the number of copies sold in the hope of enhancing sales was a widespread practice, not merely a promotional device introduced by Bemporad. In fact, the same kind of information was avialable on the front cover of the editions issued by Landi. It would also seem to bear the “imprint” of the author’s churlish style.
    9 Not too many Italians (literati or otherwise) can claim to have achieved a similar station in their lifetime or after. The few exceptions include Machiavelli, whose name stands, quite mistakenly, for political cunning and even treachery; and Casanova, of course, whose name now has a mildly obscene connotation. Unless otherwise noted, all translations from the Italian are mine.
    10 In 1908 Salani “retrenched” to the third edition, which featured a much reduced number of recipes. This edition, to which they had legal rights, was then reissued for a good