Cookbooks proliferate because food binds people together. When we break bread, we get to know one another, we converse, talk about the past, the future, and discuss how to move forward despite our differences.
Michael Szczerban began chasing his literary white whale one afternoon in 2013.
He was editing Samin Nosrat’s cookbook “Salt Fat Acid Heat” when she mentioned “The Talisman of Happiness,” a collection of recipes intended for the modern Italian woman that was written by Ada Boni in 1925.
“Everybody I learned from in Italy knows this book,” he recalled her saying, “but I guess it’s not available here.”
Szczerban became obsessed. “The poetry of that title stuck with me,” he said.
With more than 2,000 recipes, “Il Talismano della Felicita” is as ubiquitous in Italian homes as “Joy of Cooking” is in American ones. It’s been an indispensable gift for Italian brides for decades.
Marcella Hazan used it to transform herself from a baffled new immigrant from Italy into America’s preeminent teacher of the cuisine. In “Marcella,” the recent documentary about her life, her husband, Victor, pulls their copy from a shelf, its brittle, stained pages marked with sticky notes.
“This book is the only cookbook that we had in the house,” he said, “so she picked up this book and looked at it and began to cook from it.”
With the exception of a 1950 edition abridged and watered down for American cooks, Boni’s masterwork has never been available in English. On Oct. 28, after 13 years of what at times seemed a quixotic mission, Szczerban will publish a complete translation under the Voracious imprint he founded at Little, Brown & Co.
“It took years of irrational behavior and I guess what you might call pure mania,” Szczerban, 41, said. “This was a book that’s a thousand pages long from a hundred years ago with an author who nobody knows in this country and who’s been dead for 42 years and didn’t have any heirs.
For American cooks of Italian descent, news of an English language edition is thrilling. Chef Mario Carbone grew up eating dishes like the sweet fried carnival dough called frappe that his grandmother, Lina Sanna, made. He still has her copy, held together with rubber bands.
“Just seeing the name Ada Boni takes me back to her tiny kitchen in Queens,” he said.
The new edition is a heavy compendium of 1,680 recipes, with careful translations that capture Boni’s straightforward language and sometimes sparse instructions. She offers tips and asides, but assumes that a cook understands what she’s talking about when she calls for a half a glass of something. To her way of thinking, cooks should already know how to remove the backbone from a sardine, and can decide for themselves how many potatoes they might want to slice for patate fritte.
Katie Parla, a gastronomic authority whose new book “Rome: A Culinary History, Cookbook, and Field Guide to the Flavors That Built a City,” comes out in November, wrote one of the introductions.
Parla, who lives in Rome, has long collected issues of Preziosa, the women’s magazine Boni started publishing with her husband in 1915. It contained many of the recipes she had collected while traveling through Italy. Those, and hundreds of others readers sent her, filled the first edition of “Talisman.”
Boni began her work just a half-century after the various independent states across the Italian peninsula had come together to form a country. The culture was modernizing. More people were moving to the cities. Gender roles were changing. The oral tradition that had kept regional dishes alive was eroding.
Boni believed that regional home cooking was essential to maintaining Italy’s national culture, and the book evolved along with the cuisine. When she published the first edition, northern Italian cooks rarely used tomatoes and didn’t make much pasta.
Spaghetti carbonara, which is believed to have been invented in Rome after World War II, didn’t become a popular dish until the late 1950s, and wasn’t in the early editions. Boni begs to differ with those who insist there is only one way to make it (guanciale, pecorino, eggs and black pepper). She offers one recipe with butter and pancetta, and a vegetarian version with Gruyère and Parmesan.
She includes condimento alla papalina (sauce for the pope), a simple blend of butter, cheese and milk created in honor of Pope Pius XII. She likes it tossed with fettuccine.
“She was writing through the complete transformation of Italian cuisine in real time,” Parla said.
Boni also wanted the book to elevate the domestic arts. In her introduction, she addresses women directly. You might be an accomplished musician or painter, a holder of advanced degrees or a capable athlete, she writes, “but, alas, if you examine your conscience, I am certain that not all of you can honestly say that you know how to perfectly coddle an egg.”
Parla admires her feminist sensibility. “She was writing for middle-class, intelligent women who wanted to express themselves,” she said. “She was saying cooking is a job and it has value. You can think about it intellectually, whether the people around you acknowledge it or not.”
Szczerban had little to go on when he began his search for publishing rights. There was no literary agent to call, and it seemed the original publisher might have gone bankrupt. Boni didn’t even have a Wikipedia page. He began asking anyone he thought might have a lead, but kept striking out. He blindly phoned the Rome-based publishing house that had printed most of the editions, trying to communicate in awkward, Google-translated phrases.
“I was trying to get the maximum information across in a minimum amount of time before somebody hung up on me,” he said. “I could not tell you how many people were always out to lunch.”
He lost hope more times than he can count. And he was having an increasingly hard time convincing the people around him that his quest was a worthy one. “I was trying to say that this is an important chapter of history that the rest of the world was treating like a footnote,” he said. “The more I dusted things off, the more I thought that I saw sparkle underneath. I had this sense of duty.”
Finally, he found an employee at a British firm that collaborates with international publishers who thought she might know someone from southern Italy who knew someone who might be able to track down a descendant. Eventually, the company found a great-nephew, and proposed working with Szczerban on a translation.
The relative was Stefano Tambone, 83, who grew up eating dishes Boni and her brother had tested in their Rome kitchen. He can still remember seeing her hunched over a rickety Remington typewriter. Tambone inherited her cookbook collection and the worn copper pots she used.
In a translated email exchange, he said the family is thrilled the book is now available in English. He thinks his great-aunt would be, too.
“I don’t think she specifically hoped for success, but she was sure at the time that she had done something good for young women in general,” he said from his home near Rome. “It wasn’t so much a legacy that she wanted, but the love that was expressed by cooking for your family.”
Condimento alla Papalina (Creamy Cheese Sauce for the Pope)
Recipe from Ada Boni
Adapted by Kim Severson
Yield: 4 to 6 servings
Total time: 15 minutes
Ingredients:
7 tablespoons butter
2 egg yolks
1 cup finely grated Parmesan
1 cup finely grated Gruyère
2 tablespoons whole milk, plus more if needed
Salt
Freshly cooked pasta, for serving (see Tip)
Preparation:
- In a saucepan, melt the butter over very low heat. Once melted, transfer to a large bowl and stir with a wooden spoon. Add the egg yolks, mix well, and then add both grated cheeses. Lastly add the milk and a little extra salt.
- Toss with freshly drained pasta to coat evenly, adding more milk if needed to loosen the sauce. Season with a little salt and serve immediately.
Tip: The sauce needs to be mixed with hot pasta for the cheese to melt. Start cooking a pound of dry fettuccine before making the sauce. When it’s al dente, drain it and toss with the sauce.
Kim Severson wrote this article that originally appeared in The New York Times. Image courtesy of Ryan Liebe from The New York Times.
