697: Translating Italian Cooking’s Holy Grail

This Is TASTE

Book editor Michael Szczerban joins us in the studio to talk about The Talisman of Happiness, a book he worked over a decade to have translated from Italian into English. As we find out, it’s an iconic (and quite unwieldy—1,680 recipes!) text that its author, Ada Boni, originally published in 1929. The book’s influence cannot be overstated, and for first-time readers, it gives insight into the foundational Italian cooking that we still see today. Michael shares how he was introduced to the book by Samin Nosrat while editing Salt Fat Acid Heat, which sent him down many dead-end roads toward acquiring it for publication in English. This is a wonderful conversation for Italian food nerds like us.

Read: The Book That Taught Nonna to Cook Is Coming to America [NYT]

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

More description

Book editor Michael Szczerban joins us in the studio to talk about The Talisman of Happiness, a book he worked over a decade to have translated from Italian into English. As we find out, it’s an iconic (and quite unwieldy—1,680 recipes!) text that its author, Ada Boni, originally published in 1929. The book’s influence cannot be overstated, and for first-time readers, it gives insight into the foundational Italian cooking that we still see today. Michael shares how he was introduced to the book by Samin Nosrat while editing Salt Fat Acid Heat, which sent him down many dead-end roads toward acquiring it for publication in English. This is a wonderful conversation for Italian food nerds like us.

Read: The Book That Taught Nonna to Cook Is Coming to America [NYT]

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

2025-12-05 51 min
Listen elsewhere

Available Results

Generated results are saved to your library for reuse and search.

No generated results are available for this episode yet.

Transcript

No transcript is available for this episode yet.
Sign in to generate a transcript for review.
Sign in

Chapters

No chapters available.