The Silver Spoon, the most influential and successful Italian cookbook of the last 50 years, is now available in a brand new revised edition. Originally published in 1950, it became an instant classic, selling over one million copies in eight editions. Considered essential in every household, it is still one of the most popular wedding presents today. The Silver Spoon was conceived and first published by Domus, the design and architectural magazine famously directed by Gio Ponti from the 1920s to the 70s. A select group of cooking experts was commissioned to collect hundreds of traditional Italian recipes and make them available for the first time to a wider modern audience. In the process, they updated ingredients, quantities and methods to suit contemporary tastes and customs, at the same time preserving the memory of ancient recipes for future generations. They furthermore included modern recipes from some of the most famous Italian chefs, resulting in a style of cooking that appeals to the gourmet chef and the amateur enthusiast alike. A comprehensive and lively book, its uniquely stylish and user-friendly format makes it accessible and a pleasure to read. The new edition features new introductory material covering culinary matters such as how to compose a traditional Italian meal, typical food traditions of the different regions, and how to set the table. It is also illustrated with twice as many newly commissioned photographs and contains a new section of menus by celebrated chefs cooking traditional Italian food. This is a monumental and unsurpassably prestigious cookbook that will share the bookshelves with classic titles such as The Joy of Cooking and Larousse Gastronomique. With over 2,000 recipes illustrated with specially commissioned art work and photography, the book is destined to become a fresh and definitive classic in the Italian cuisine booklist.

Italy, the country with a hundred cities and a thousand bell towers, is also the country with a hundred cuisines and a thousand recipes. Its great variety of culinary practices reflects a history long dominated by regionalism and political division, and has led to the common conception of Italian food as a mosaic of regional customs rather than a single tradition. Nonetheless, this magnificent new book demonstrates the development of a distinctive, unified culinary tradition throughout the Italian peninsula.

Alberto Capatti and Massimo Montanari uncover a network of culinary customs, food lore, and cooking practices, dating back as far as the Middle Ages, that are identifiably Italian:

o Italians used forks 300 years before other Europeans, possibly because they were needed to handle pasta, which is slippery and dangerously hot.

o Italians invented the practice of chilling drinks and may have invented ice cream.

o Italian culinary practice influenced the rest of Europe to place more emphasis on vegetables and less on meat.

o Salad was a distinctive aspect of the Italian meal as early as the sixteenth century.

The authors focus on culinary developments in the late medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque eras, aided by a wealth of cookbooks produced throughout the early modern period. They show how Italy's culinary identities emerged over the course of the centuries through an exchange of information and techniques among geographical regions and social classes. Though temporally, spatially, and socially diverse, these cuisines refer to a common experience that can be described as Italian. Thematically organized around key issues in culinary history and beautifully illustrated, "Italian Cuisine" is a rich history of the ingredients, dishes, techniques, and social customs behind the Italian food we know and love today.