Artusi – founder of the Italian kitchen

Pellegrino Artusi

Rome was not built in a day, but the Italian kitchen was made by one man – Pellegrino Artusi (1820–1911). He was the author of the famous Italian cookbook “La scienza in cucina e l’arte di mangiare bene” (The Science of Cooking and the Art of Eating Well).

Artusi was born in Forlimpopoli, a town near Forlì, and made a fortune as a silk merchant, but after a family tragedy he retired and devoted himself to rt of fine dining. At the age of 71, in 1891, he completed the first dition his famous cookbook, but no one was intetested in publishing it. He had to use his own money to print the book himself.

In the first four years, he only sold only a thousand copies. Then, however, the book caught on, and before Artusi died in 191,1 in Florence, more than 200,000 copies had been sold.

La scienza in cucina e l'arte di mangiare bene

As it became popular, women started to send in recipes they thought should be in the book. Artusi added the best and the book grew for every edition. Filled with amusing anecdotes as well as recipes, the book is a perennial best seller in Italy, and has been translated in Spanish, Dutch, German and English.

In 1904 Artusi published a practical manual for the kitchen, with over 3,000 recipes and 150 tables, simply entitled Ecco il tuo libro di cucina (Here is your cookbook) with the anonymous participation and influence of the baroness Giulia Turco.

Writing only two decades after the unification of Italy, Artusi was the first to include recipes from all the different regions of Italy in a single cookbook. He is often credited with establishing a truly national Italian cuisine for the first time.

We will come ack to him many times in the future.