Marcella Hazan Spread The Gospel Of Italian Food But Was Far From Alone in Doing So

Forbes

19-05-2025

In writing about cookbook author Marcella Hazan, the subject of a new documentary film, New York Times food writer Pete Wells contends, 'She changed thoroughly and irreversibly the way Italian food is cooked, eaten and talked about in the United States' after her first book, The Classic Italian Cookbook came out in 1973, supposedly eschewing the cuisines of Southern Italy that had been carried and altered by immigrants from Campania, Calabria and Sicily to the U.S. in the late 19th century.
Hazan, from Emilia Romagna, herself never criticized that Italian-American strain as did others who held her more northern cookery in higher esteem. And while it is true that Hazan's first and subsequent books were best sellers––she was not a professional chef­­––she had nothing like the influence on Italian food that Julia Child had on French. Yet Hazan, was vigorously promoted by in the 1970s promoted by Times food editor Craig Claiborne, saying, 'No one has ever done more to spread the gospel of pure Italian cookery in America.'
But Hazan already had strong shoulders to stand on: Long before she came on the scene one of the most popular cookbooks in America was The Talisman Italian American Cookbook––1,054 pages, written by Ada Boni and published in Italy in 1929, to be followed by a British and best-selling American edition in 1950 (including a few Italian-American recipes), which was compared to canonical The Joy of Cooking and Fannie Farmer for its comprehensive authority. Just as successful was Italian Food by British writer Elizabeth David, which appeared in its U.S, edition in 1958, which went to a series of updates and revisions through three successive decades. As early as 1954 the Culinary Arts Institute of Chicago published The Italian Cookbook: 160 Masterpieces of Italian Cookery that went far beyond the clichés of spaghetti-and-meatballs and chicken parmigiana, with recipes for five pizzas, Milanese risotto, polenta, pasta con piselli, spinaci alla fiorentina, panettone, agnello al forno, baccalà alla marinara and more.
Journalist Waverly Root's two scholarly books, The Cooking of Italy (1968) and The Food of Italy (1971) had great impact on the way people thought of regional Italian food. Tuscan food authority Giuliano Bugialli published The Fine Art of Italian Cooking based on enormous historical research, and it, too, became a best seller and had tremendous influence on Italian cooking in the U.S. Hazan, then, was not the first or the most authoritative voice on the subject. She was, however, the most promoted, as much for her brusque, chain-smoking demeanor as for her expertise in the kitchen.
By the pub date of Hazan's cookbook, Italian food was already mutating in the U.S., led by New York chef-restaurateur Romeo Salta, whose own cookbook, The Pleasures of Italian Cooking appeared in 1962, was largely devoted to northern Italian food of a kind also being served back then at chic midtown places like San Marino, Giambelli and Orsini's, which were among the most important and fashionable restaurants of their day. A 1949 guidebook named Knife and Fork in New York devoted 13 pages to the city's Italian restaurants that showed regional variety was available back then, including the exquisite Piemontese cuisine served at Barbetta (still going strong) upon opening in 1906. Enrico & Paglieri (1908) offered spinach pastas, stracciatella, risotto alla piemontese with squash and truffles; Adano (named after John Hershey's novel) had osso buco and rollatine di vitello; Amalfi's menu listed zuppa di pesce, linguine with artichoke sauce and pollo alla Toscana; and Sorrento featured the cooking of that southern Italian region.
I do not wish to deny Hazan's importance as a spreader of the true Italian gospel, but those who again and again scorned Italian-American as little more than overcooked red sauce with an overdose of garlic might have been surprised not only by the variety of Italian-American food and the canny way it was an adaption of southern Italian food, but that scores of the recipes in Hazan's own cookbooks could easily be found on the menus of post-war Italian-American restaurants, including her versions of fried zucchini and calamari, braised beef in red wine, garlic bread, chickpea minestrone, chicken alla scarpariello, veal cutlet alla milanese, scaloppine of veal with Marsala, potato croquettes, shrimp scampi, tortellini in brodo, spaghetti with clam sauce, cannelloni, pasta aglio e olio, penne al pesto, meatballs, escarole soup, stracciatella soup, eggplant alla parmigiana, pastry fritters and zabaione.
For our Italian-American Cookbook (2000), my wife Galina and I compiled 250 recipes that we believed should be part of the culinary culture brought by immigrants who enriched it. Our recipes did not stop with dishes made before World War II, for it was in the post-war period and on into the 1960s and 1970s that Italian food both in Italy and the U.S. was utterly changed by the availability of true Italian products, cheeses, pastas, extra virgin olive oil, Prosciutto di Parma, white truffles and, not least, hundreds of superb Italian wines.
By the time Hazan's book came out in 1973 she was able to capitalize on this new bounty and to add dimension to Italian food, yet even though she spoke about the regionality of dishes in Italy, it took successive cookbooks for her to include them, while still keeping those dishes Italian-Americans had been enjoying for decades.
And lest we forget, Italians had never laid eyes on tomatoes, potatoes, chile peppers, corn, turkey, strawberries and much more until imported from the Americas after Columbus reached the New World, so that it would have been impossible for Italian food culture to develop as it did until such foods arrived, starting in the 16th century. So that when Italian immigrants came to American shores they were already very familiar with what they found in the markets here that they could turn into their own Italian-America cuisine.
Marcella Hazan was an important figure in her day, her recipes always worked and many Americans learned much from her. But she did not and could not do it alone without the influx of Italian products entering the U.S, around the time she wrote her first cookbook. True credit should always be spread around.