Beloved Italian cookbook finally gets an English edition

like a child growing up ItalyLidia Bastianich saw a special cookbook in almost everyone’s kitchen – Talisman of happiness.

It was often given as a wedding gift to couples starting a new life together.

“It has all the basic recipes. And it says the basic thing – that food is a connector, that food is happiness,” he said.

Ada Boni’s book – this Italian the title is talisman of happiness – was first published in 1929, and became a favorite place to find recipes for Spaghetti Carbonara or Pork Galantine.

Its simplicity and ease of use compared it to joy of cookingBut this Irma S. Predates Rombauer’s iconic work.

This autumn, the first English The edition of the entire work – with approximately 1,700 recipes – arrives on the shelves, thanks to years of hard work by voracious publisher Michael Szerbon.

Search continues

He first heard about it from author Samin Nosrat salt fatty acid heatAnd that, combined with his love of Italy, led him on a decade-long journey to obtain the rights to publish it in English.

“Just that poem of that name – talisman of happiness -It felt timeless and also felt like it was from a long time ago,” Szerban says.

Boni, who died in 1973, was one of Italy’s first food writers, and the seeds of talisman of happiness Evolved from a magazine. He codified and tested recipes that remain the backbone of Italian cooking and reflect regional differences. There are 10 gnocchi recipes, 12 minestrone, and 20 risottos.

“It’s a cookbook that’s really for cooking. It’s a book for cooks. It’s a book that’s meant to be used, not just sit on a coffee table or on a shelf, but to become yours,” says Szerban.

There is no pretentious language or stories. Each entry includes ingredients, and instructions are usually only a few paragraphs, telling the home cook to see that the meat is “prepared” and the vegetables are cooked “to taste.”

Unlike recipes from Milk Street, Bon Appétit or America’s Test Kitchen, Bonnie doesn’t weigh things by the gram or set oven degrees. His cod With white wine only “a few teaspoons” of wine are specified. Elsewhere, she asks for a “finger of oil” or “a few leaves of rosemary”.

“I think there was a very specific editorial approach to these recipes, which was to give you just enough to make it, but not so much that you can’t make it your own,” says Szerban.

12 Years of Detective Adventure

Szerban learned more talisman of happinessThe more curious he became. What initially was an impulse to find a copy for myself grew into something bigger.

“As I began to understand what it was – what place it had in Italian history and culture, and then the spread of Italian cooking around the world – I thought, ‘I don’t need just one copy of this. I need to be able to use my position as a publisher to bring it to the rest of the English-language world,'” he says.

The book was regularly updated in Italy and some stabs were made in the English version, but the recipes were changed to adapt them. American Flavorful and heavy concise.

“Nobody had translated the whole animal,” Szczerban says.

Szerban began an investigative adventure that took about 12 years – calling random numbers at an Italian publisher with a script. google translateLooking through bankruptcy reports to see who might have inherited the intellectual property rights, and talking to every Italian book personality and agent.

A breakthrough came when he contacted a book packer – like a filmmaker, but for books – who knew someone who knew someone else who could perhaps locate a relative. A few months later, he got a nephew.

“I think you need someone at the grassroots level in Italy to open up a relationship of trust,” Szerban says.

He decided to use the 1959 Italian edition as the model, using eight translators. He only removed recipes that were completely impractical and sections on Italian etiquette that were dated. The original version was constantly consulted.

He says, “We wanted it to be Ada’s book. We weren’t trying to modernize it. We were trying to preserve it and keep it intact.” “For me, the word talisman has such power. I wanted it to be the same talisman it was when it was first published.”

Bastianich wrote a foreword for the English edition and said it reflected the culture, religion, topography and climate of Italy. “Italians really cherish their cultural heritage,” she says.

Szerban has already seen the impact. For an office potluck, a sales representative who liked the book decided to make baked wine donuts – a type of shortbread cookie with wine in the dough.

“He’s not a baker. He’d never seen this thing before. But there was something interesting about it that drew him into the kitchen and, I’ll tell you, these were amazing,” he says.

“They’re exposed for the first time, and going a little outside their comfort zone gives them the confidence to take on the next recipe and the next recipe. For me, that’s the magic of a book like this: It might tempt you in some way, but then it gives you something back.”