Italian Cuisine

Food social practices: Theory of practice and the new battlefield of food quality

“…In order to first give the heuristic dimension to the field of power where the culinary practice analysed is situated, I must start from the historical trajectory of the field itself. I chose to study the gastronomic field of a particular northern urban centre in Italy because it illustrates the empirical pattern of the broader national field as a whole (Benporat, 1999; Capatti and Montanari, 2005). The socio-historical analysis of the progressive institutionalization of the Italian gastronomic field presents, in fact, a couple of interesting features, especially when compared to the French and the American contexts.…”

“…In the case of French gastronomic field, many researchers have already shown how commercial cooking led to a shared definition of food quality – later known as nouvelle cuisine (Rao et al 2003) – on the basis of a national-oriented market and the hegemony of the pre-revolutionary cuisine resulting from the central political influence of the Parisian court (Boudan, 2004; Ferguson, 2004). By contrast, the lack of a comparable national political situation coupled with the commercial primacy given to the trade between different county towns contributed to the Italian gastronomic field being structured in a very different way, on a regional if not urban basis (Capatti and Montanari, 2005). Accordingly, the actual structure of the food supply-side is still mostly based on small businesses with a low rate of capital-intensive production (ISMEA Report, 2009), where innovation still relies on highly human-embodied competences.…”

Science in the Kitchen and beyond: Cooking with Pellegrino Artusi in Post-Unified Italy

“…In the nineteenth century, cooking like many other traditional practices was changing. As noted by historians, food has always been central to national identity (Capatti and Montanari, 2003a, 2003b; Scholliers, 2001; Sorcinelli, 1999). However, in Italy we cannot talk about national cuisine, or a proper culinary tradition, until the publication of La Scienza in Cucina .…”

Television as a trattoria: Constructing the woman in the kitchen on Italian food shows

“…It was, and still is, common to find women preparing and selling food in stalls on the street’ (Parasecoli, 2004: 126). In this type of restaurant, women are cooks and entrepreneurs, but not chefs (Capatti and Montanari, 2003: 238). Trattoria cooking, thus, is a bastion of the local and a form of resistance against the global in which female cooking becomes professional.…”