Study Gastronomy Italy

Food Culture

Section 9 contains all of the publications dedicated more specifically to cultural issues and containing more historic information than your average cookbook.

This section includes a wide range of books that vary in subject from food culture and nutritional history, to single ingredients, regional Italian cuisines, and domestic customs and culture. In this section of the library, history, literature, music, cinema, brotherhood and popular traditions come together to form a world of their own.

The History of Food and Diet

This subsection includes over a hundred books that form the guidelines to understanding gastronomic culture in a wider context. There are the fundamental histories like La fame e l'abbondanza, or “Hunger and Plenty, ” by Massimo Montanari (Laterza, 1993); Storia e geografia dell'alimentazione, or “History and Geography of Diet, ” by Montanari–Sabban (UTET 1996); Storia dell'alimentazione, or “History of Diet, ” by Flandrin–Montanari (Laterza, 1997); and even the “Food & Diet” volume of the monumental Storia d’Italia, “History or Italy, ” book series published by Einaudi (1998).

Questions of economics as they are tied to feeding oneself are addressed in Alimentazione e nutrizione nei sec. XIII–XVIII, “Diet and Nutrition in the 13th to 18th Centuries, ”by the “F. Datini” Institute of Prato (Le Monnier, 1997), while an anthropological approach can be found in La terra e la luna: alimentazione, folclore e società, “The Earth and The Moon: nutrition, folklore and society, ” by Piero Camporesi (Il Saggiatore, 1989). Also look for Onnivoro, “Omnivore, ” by Claude Fischler (Mondadori, 1992), Il crudo e il cotto, “Raw and Cooked, ” by Claude Levi–Strauss (Net, 2004) and Le cucine del mondo, “World Cuisines, ” by Christian Boudan (Donzelli, 2005).