Sicilian Food by Mary Taylor Simeti

  • Fava bean soup (Maccu) (page 16)

    from Sicilian Food: Recipes from Italy's Abundant Isle Sicilian Food by Mary Taylor Simeti

    • Categories: Soups; Italian; Vegetarian; Vegan
    • Ingredients: dried fava beans; wild fennel
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Notes about this book

  • SULibraries on October 20, 2025

    CJ 394.109458 S589p (LOU)

  • mama_c on November 11, 2022

    Thank you robm. I just purchased this book again today at a thrift shop, even though it looked very familiar! I bring my phone and look up ISBNs while I'm shopping, to avoid purchasing duplicates, but this ISBN was not found in the index (not by author or title either). My second copy is: 9780394568508. It's a terrific history and enjoyable read.

  • robm on June 03, 2021

    mama_c is correct: this wonderful book was reissued under the title "Sicilian Food." It's otherwise the same book, it seems. This is an invaluable addition to the library of anyone interested in seeing how foods and cooking methods have come down to us from antiquity and medieval times. Most people, I dare say, have no idea just how old some of the dishes we eat today really are. Simeti does a wonderful job tracing and describing contemporary recipes as far back as the days of ancient Greece and Rome. She does sometime take a somewhat authoritarian tone, like some other well-known cookbook authors ("Do it exactly the way I say or don't bother even trying this.") But her history and research are impressive and illuminating. Some of her recipes are more "modern." Pasta came to be known in Italy as much as 1000 years ago, and tomatoes and New World ingredients nearly 500 years ago. So all of these foods have long pedigrees!

  • mama_c on June 13, 2020

    I purchased this on Amazon in May 2020; I think a newer edition, ISBN 978-1-63561-851-8

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  • ISBN 10 1908117915
  • ISBN 13 9781908117915
  • Published May 24 2010
  • Format eBook
  • Page Count 352
  • Language English
  • Countries United Kingdom
  • Publisher Grub Street
  • Imprint Grub Street

Publishers Text

Pomp and Sustenance: Twenty Five Centuries of Sicilian Food--back in print! If there is one book that belongs on the shelf of food lovers, it is Sicilian Food by Mary Taylor Simeti. This book is a classic, the definitive work on Sicilian cooking and it is full of authentic, hard to find recipes gleaned from the author's friends, family and acquaintances on the island itself. Originally published in 1989 under the title Pomp and Sustenance: Twenty Five Centuries of Sicilian Food and then unavailable for almost ten years, Mary Taylor Simeti’s affectionate, exhaustive work has come to be recognized as the definitive book on the food, traditions and recipes of this sun-drenched island.

The author, an American married to a Sicilian, set out to discover Sicilian food first hand. She haunted former convents and palaces where Palermo's libraries have been maintained. She tested each ancient recipe herself and updated the methods. Her directions are clear and easy to follow. The book is organized so that the material reflects both the external influences of a series of conquerors, and the domestic changes brought about by peasant, clergy and aristocrat alike. Her chapter titles hint at the enticing discoveries waiting for the reader and the recipes reflect the chapter titles.

There are recipes using the vegetable abundance of the Sicilian landscape, for ice cream or granita, and, yes there are recipes for Virgins Breasts and Chancellor's Buttocks. The book contains more than a hundred illustrations from Sicilian archives and museums and the text quotes freely from Homer, Plato, Apicius, Lampedusa, and Pirandello. Simeti's prose is so descriptive that to read it is to be in Sicily.

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