IL LUNARIO DELLA PASTASCIUTTA di Gustavo Traglia – 1956
Academia Barilla - Gastronomic Library
Did you know that one of the best-known anecdotes told in the book concerns "Sunday pasta"? Traglia, in an ironic tone, describes how homemade pasta was an almost sacred event, with grandmother kneading and children stealing small pieces of raw pasta, celebrating not only the pasta, but also the value of family sharing and culinary tradition.
Pasta is a universe: of shapes, flavors, stories... Gustavo Traglia (1898–1957), a Gastronomy teacher in State Schools for Tourism development, was well aware of this: in the years immediately following World War II, he created the first real monograph dedicated to pasta published in Italy: the Lunario della Pastasciutta.
A brilliant journalist and witty writer, Traglia is the author of over thirty books-novels, essays on international politics, music writings, and children’s stories-but he links his name to food and history publishing with a work unique of its kind.
The book starts out from references to pasta in literature and then suggests clever links between pasta shapes and zodiac signs, goes deep into the history of pasta with many anecdotes and discusses cooking techniques, then presents 365 recipes, one each day, and 52 for during Lent. The selection continues with careful research of historic gastronomic manuals divided by centuries, then turns to the main historic figures who loved pasta, from Lucrezia Borgia to Paolina Bonaparte, from Cavour to Garibaldi. An entire section is devoted to regional recipes, while the world of pasta explores current recipes from every continent, and also addresses pasta in menus, analyzing nutritional aspects and the evolution of production technology through the centuries. For the first time, it attempts to define a dictionary of pasta shapes which, after more than half a century, is still not finished.
Like the ancient almanacs from which it gets its name, it is a book rich in ideas and curiosity, which, despite the passage of time, preserves much of great current interest.
