Italian Food (Penguin handbooks) [Mass Market Paperback]

Elizabeth David (Author), Renato Guttuso (Illustrator)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1, 1964 | Series: Penguin handbooks

When ITALIAN FOOD was first published, the sort of ingredients that Elizabeth David was writing about were almost unobtainable in England and many of the dishes unknown. Since them, the English have undergone a revolution in their eating habits. This book conveys the richness, colour and variety of the Italian cooking tradition.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

France and Italy are especially famous for wine and food. David studies and analyzes cooking the way a scholar analyzes literature, and, as a result, her titles are far more than just cookbooks. Along with the recipes, of which there are many, she explains at length the histories of the dishes and offers splendid advice on serving wine with the meals. Both volumes, published in 1960 and 1958, respectively, contain forewords by Julia Child. Italian Food was the author's personal favorite.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Penguin; Revised edition (February 1, 1964)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140460985
• ISBN-13: 978-0140460988
• Product Dimensions: 7.1 x 4.3 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,610,061 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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34 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An absolute must, July 3, 2000

By 

M. Fantino (San Francisco, California USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Italian Food (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics) (Paperback)

While this book on it's own does not complete a cooks library of Italian Cuisine, on the other hand, it does contain the proper approach to the myteries, simpicities and charm of Italian food, all on it's own. The descriptions are very thourough due to it's 1950's audience who may have never heard of Risotto, Gorgonzola, Prosciutto, Gelato, or even olive oil for that matter! However, she writes so comfortably and calm that you can almost picture her leaning against the stovetop. Her book is better than probably 90% of what is out today. Since the cuisine hasn't changed (much), this book is even more useful today than the 1950's, because, now we can taste the ingredients she writes so lovingly about. I often find myself looking up something and end up wandering through other musings she weaves. The artwork is great too, I especially love the painting of The Pasta Eater.

ITALIAN FOOD by Elizabeth David, combined with the works of Waverly Root, Carlo Middione, and Anna Tasca Lanza should be enough to grant anyone Italian citizenship (or at least drooling for it).

28 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Indispensible Scholarly Study. Buy It!, July 24, 2005

By 

B. Marold "Bruce W. Marold" (Bethlehem, PA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Italian Food (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics) (Paperback)

`Italian Food' is one of the three major books Elizabeth David wrote in the first five years of her culinary writing career, the other two being `French Provincial Cooking' and her first, `Mediterranean Food'. The titles of two of these three books, being about `Food' and not strictly about `Cooking' is very telling of the fact that Ms. David's major books on food are simply not like any other writer of her generation.

For starters, it is a mistake to see Ms. David as `the English Julia Child'. While Julia Child was possibly the most outstanding teacher of cooking methods writing in English, Ms. David was the most distinguished scholar of English, French, and Italian cooking methods and cuisine. The hallmark of that difference was that while Julia Child reworked and expanded traditional recipes so that no detail was left to chance for the amateur American cook, Ms. David goes to equal lengths to describe exactly how Italians really cook, down to the marked inexactness of their measuring.

Unlike all the great modern writers in English on Italian cuisine such as Marcella Hazan, Giuliano Bugialli, and Lydia Bastianich, Ms. David not only gives us a survey of Italian ingredients, recipes, and methods, she gives us a critique of them as well. Can you possibly imagine Marcella Hazan saying that the Italians generally do not cook eggs very well?

Note that Ms. David is as rigorous about her giving the correct Italian names to things as the very best of the Italian writers, but unlike the Italians, she is really seeing Italian cooking through French colored glasses. Today, we commonly think, for example, of a frittata as a distinct type of dish. Ms. David translates `frittata' into `omelet'. Her description of the technique is perfect, something even Mario Batali would be proud to quote, but he may object to the interpretation of the dish as seen by `the F country'.

The importance of Ms. David's achievement, which required a full year's research in Italy, can only be appreciated when you realize that she was working in a climate of opinion in England which saw Italian cuisine as very dull, being nothing more than variations on pasta and veal. As we are well aware today, Ms. David found an enormous wealth of regional diversity in ingredients, methods, and even language, as the same pasta shape can be called three or four different names in different parts of the country.

Since this is a critical and analytical look at Italian cooking, it is done by type of dish rather than by region. And, the book is not intended to be a `complete' survey of Italian dishes. There are a few well known dishes such as `pasta puttanesca' or `timbales' which are not here, and some, such as `spaghetti alla carbonara' which are found under a slightly different name, `Maccheroni alla carbonara' (which is actually more appropriate, as many types of pasta shapes are done with this eggy preparation).

One of the many things that stand out in this book is how well Ms. David's personality and point of view come out on practically every page. In a recent competition for `The next Food Network Star', the judges stated over and over that the contestants must project who they were while presenting the culinary material. Like her great contemporaries, M.F.K. Fisher and Julia Child, this is certainly one thing which Elizabeth David does to great effect. I was especially pleased when she spoke of her connection to the much older travel writer, Norman Douglas. While Ms. David's biography did not clearly reveal the source of Elizabeth's love of food and food writing, the statements in Ms. David's own `Italian Food' make it clear that the elder Norman Douglas was her primary mentor in establishing her professional interest in food and writing about it at a very high standard.

Ms. David's high standards are evident when you compare her writing with that of Tony May in his recent handbook, `Italian Cuisine' where I found several mistakes in identifying ingredients. While the culinary content was sound, Mr. May, and his publisher's copy editors, had relatively low standards for factual accuracy.

A quick look at the back of `Italian Cooking' confirms the fact that this is more a work of scholarship than of a simple book on cookery. There are appendices of bibliographies on both cooking and tourism and notes on wine. One may need to be a little careful with any references, especially on wine and travel, as much in this area has changed in the last 50 years.

Short of stumbling across an autographed copy of the hardcover edition with the original illustrations, you will want to refer to the revised edition, first published by Penguin Books in 1963, as this edition incorporates most of the footnotes into the main text, as the footnoted material was largely segregated due to the 1954 rationing of food in England.

While Ms. David had several major culinary writing disciples, especially Jane Grigson and Claudia Roden, I believe the only place you will find writing at her level of scholarly criticism is from the leading modern columnists such as John Thorne, Jeffrey Steingarten, and James Villas.

You may not want to cook from this book on a daily basis, but as I have, I believe you can use this as your primary source of Italian recipes, and be all the wiser for choosing this volume.

24 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Absolutely The Best Book on Traditional Italian Food, November 20, 2000

By 

Gerard Cheyne (Tokyo) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Italian Food (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics) (Paperback)

I've been carrying around my 1969 Penguin editon of Elizabeth David's book for over 30 years. It's now a wreck - it's been used so much! It is absolutely the best book I have read (and used constantly) that describes the art of cooking Italian food. Great descriptions of Italian (including regional) ingredients and really easy to follow practical menus. I was so delighted to learn that a new edition of this marvelous book (first published in 1954!) was available.