Elisabeth Luard
Catnip to the Gastronome
Delizia! The Epic History of the Italians and their Food
By John Dickie
Sceptre 416pp £20 order from our bookshop
The Oxford Companion to Italian Food
By Gillian Riley
Oxford University Press 637pp £19.99 order from our bookshop
These two books turn a searchlight on the history and habits of the Italian kitchen. One advises abandoning the ‘syrupy stories about how Italian food got where it is today’, while the other provides a scholarly guide to what it actually is.
John Dickie follows Cosa Nostra, his much-praised study of the Sicilian Mafia (scary stuff – I read it in Palermo), with a subject just as likely to earn a knife between the ribs. Delizia! is a page-turner, catnip to the gastronome, delving into the store cupboard of a uniquely rich culinary habit. That said, the basic premise – that the story of Italian food is the story of Italian cities – is open to question.
First in the firing line is the ‘Molino Blanco myth’ – a reference to the highly successful marketing campaign of the 1990s which associated Italy’s culinary traditions with the ‘sun-weathered old peasant with a twinkle in his eye; the noisy family gathered under the pergola while mamma serves the pasta’.
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'As it starts to infect your dreams, you realise that "Portal 2" is really an allegory of the imaginative leap: the way in which we traverse the space between distant concepts, via the secret conduits we place within them.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/portal-agony
'Any story about Eden has to be a story about the Fall; unchanging serenity does not make a narrative.'
@suzifeay reviews Jim Crace's 'eden'.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/trouble-in-paradise
The first holiday camps had an 'ethos of muscular health as a marker of social respectability, and were alcohol-free. How different from our modern Costa Brava – not to mention the innumerable other coasts around the world now changed forever'.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/from-mont-blanc-to-magaluf