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

number of years.
    11 See
La scienza in cucina etc
., ed. Davide Paolini (Milan: Sperling & Kupfer Editori, 1991). The title page informs us that this “most famous cookbook” has been “revisited by five great chefs: Gianfranco Bolognesi, Arrigo Cipriani, Gualtiero Marchesi, Fulvio Pierangelini, Gianfranco Vissani.” That same year, under the auspices of the Comitato Segavecchia (a club, in Forlimpopoli, created to preserve a folklore tradition that dates back to 1547), the Association of Chefs from Emilia-Romagna celebrated the one hundredth anniversary of the book by “slimming down” Artusian recipes and reformulating Artusian menus. See
L’Artusi cent’anni dopo
(Artusi, one hundred years later) (Bertinoro: Tipolitografia Ge. Graf, 1991). Prior to these centennial “reformulations,” in 1962 Luigi Volpicelli had authored a much quoted preface to a luxury edition of
Scienza in cucina
, featuring a valuable “panorama della cucina italiana nei secoli” (panorama of Italian cooking through the centuries), while in 1968 a dietetically conscientious Irene Bosco brought forth a “selected and reduced”
Nuovo Artusi
.
    12 An anthropologist and literary historian, Piero Camporesi (Forli, 1926-Bologna, 1997) taught Italian literature and cultural history at the University of Bologna. In the early 1960s he published the vernacular writings of Giulio Cesare Croce, a sixteenth-century Bolognese author. This was a prelude to a series of original studies dealing with topics such as blood, milk, sex, hunger, and the Italian landscape. Some of his titles are
La came impassibile
(1986),
La via del latte
(1993), and
Le belle contrade
(1995).
    13 It is also sprinkled with the witty prefatory remarks of the prominent writer/painter Emilio Tadini.
    14 The complete text, penned for the exhibition of Delia Casa’s watercolors at the Biblioteca civica Luigi Poletti in Modena (March-June 2002), is now available at:
http://www.comune.modena.it/bibliotecbe/artusi/artusi
.
    15 Issued by Marsilio Publishers in 1997. Prior American editions of
Science in
the Kitchen
are plagued with grave faults. Some are abridged, and many have simply misunderstood the original (Artusi, who was not a Tuscan, chose to flavor his Italian with expressions from that a true Tuscan would have perhaps avoided, ultimately complicating a translator’s task). Worst of all, they have not paid due attention to the things that make this book exceptional: anecdotes, literary references, personal reminiscences. In editing out most of these jewels, they have, regrettably, transformed a classic into a poorly translated cookbook. Needless to say, ours is not a perfect edition either. We apologize for any mistakes on our part, and would be very grateful to any readers who can bring them to our attention. In the true spirit of Artusi, we will incorporate plausible suggestions in all future editions.
    16 Piero Camporesi, introduction to
La scienza in cucina e l’ arte di mangiar bene
(Turin: Einaudi, 1970), lix.
    17 See
La cucina italiana: www.emmeti.it/Food/Toscana/Storia/Firenze7.it.html
.
    18 In his
Storia linguistica dell’ Italia unita
(Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1970), Tullio De Mauro writes that in 1861 a meager 2.5 percent of the Italian population could read and write standard Italian. Although this figure increased dramatically in the following decades – thanks, primarily, to the enforcement of compulsory (elementary) education – results were not as encouraging as they could have been. Writing in 1910, Camillo Corradini, reported that the structure for the dissemination of literacy resembled more closely that of a chain for the distribution of “luxury items,” depending as it did on the revenues of individual municipal administration that were, by and large, indirectly proportional to the seriousness of the problem. See, in particular, De Mauro,
Storia linguistica
, 92–5.
    19 ”For many … this book represented the only reading of their lives, the singular