The Pasta Codex: 1001 Recipes

This is the first complete translation of a landmark 1973 collection of 1001 pasta recipes gathered from throughout Italy.

Although there was a significantly abridged 1976 edition in English, entitled simply Pasta, this edition fully reproduces the original Il codice della pasta, including the page layouts and illustrations by renowned designer and commercial artist John Alcorn, who also created the titles for Fellini's Amarcord and other films.

Author Vincenzo Buonassisi was born in Abruzzi and reared in Rome. His work as a journalist led him to become a food critic and the author of many books on gastronomy, of which this is the most notable.

At first impression, the page layout of The Pasta Codex makes it appear that Buonassisi is simply providing an exhaustive catalog of recipes. But his comments are run right in with the instructions, telling us in one place that the name of dish is taken from the Neapolitan dialect word for start, implying that it is commonly served in small portions at the beginning of a meal.

Elsewhere he offers the favorite tortellini of Pope Paul III, and some fifty pages later mentions that a pasta shape associated with Piacenza in the north has cousins found in Calabria and Puglia. The pasta dishes themselves are almost all easily made, but the very Italian sensibility of the book is perhaps its greatest pleasure.

Hardcover. Color illustrations throughout.