When in 1932 the Italian Futurists published their cookbook, La cucina futurista, it was hailed as a radical and provocative avant-garde experiment, with its demands that Italians embark on a "crusade" against pasta and prepare explosive "simultaneous bites" to be consumed without forks or knives. However, widening our historical lens, we discover that the Futurist cookbook is in fact indebted to a long line of cookbooks before it, stretching back at least to the Renaissance recipe collection, and that it shares many characteristics with its textual ancestors. By comparing La cucina futurista with its historical predecessors in this strange and complicated genre, the Italian cookbook reveals itself to be not just a communicator of food culture, but also a path to fame and fortune, and even a tool for wielding political power.
Program
November 24, Villa Sassetti 6:00 pm The Politics of Pasta: The Italian Cookbook in History from the Renaissance to the Avant-Garde, A Dialogue with Danielle Callegari, NYU Florence alumna 7:00 pm Question & Answer session 7:30 pm Reception
