Yesterday’s lunch and this week’s recipe is thanks to my friend, the designer Jake Tilson, who gave me a pristine 1977 edition of The Talisman Italian Cook Book. With a cover of red, white and green stripes cover that makes me think as much of seaside rock as Italy’s national colours, the edition was part of the 24th printing of the US translation of Il Talismano della Felicità (The Talisman of Happiness), by Ada Boni. First published in 1950, the abridged translation was sold as a complete guide to Italian cookery, covering all notable dishes. Well, on the cover at least; inside, the introduction is more realistic, warning the reader that, “to criticise the writer [Boni] or translator [Mrs Matilde La Rosa] for failing to include certain dishes is useless”, because no living man or woman can be acquainted with all the variety of dishes of a such variegated country.
The introduction, by a man called Mario A Pei, goes on to explain that the variety of dishes mirrors the wide dialectical array in Italy at the time (1950); its diversity of speech, customs, costumes, psychology and general world outlook. In the next sentence, he notes that this variety was undoubtedly a very bad thing from the standpoint of national unity and progress (the professor and polyglot was an ardent supporter of European fascism and uniting humans under one language). Not that you would guess that from his following sentence: “Variety is the spice of life.” I regretted reading his introduction, and also telling an Italian friend, who said, laughing: “You don’t know the half of it”, in reference to my romanticism about the original Talismano, which may be great, but also (in her opinion) endorses a Stepford Wives fantasy of womanhood; a journey with Boni as patient guide.
