Pomp and Sustenance - Sicilian Food: Twenty-Five Centuries of 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 0805016015
  • ISBN 13 9780805016017
  • Published Apr 01 1991
  • Format Paperback
  • Page Count 349
  • Language English
  • Edition 1st ed
  • Publisher Henry Holt & Co (P)

Publishers Text

Pomp and Sustenance is a celebration of one of the oldest, most varied, and best-loved cuisines of Europe, at once frugal and extravagant, robustly simple yet often handsomely ornate. For twenty-five centuries, the people of Sicily have been creating what is perhaps the basic cuisine of Europe on the beautiful island in the heart of the Meditteranean.

Beginning with the oldest and most elementary components in the Sicilian diet, Mary Taylor Simeti surveys the bounty of the Sicilian table and Sicilian history. Simeti provides authentic recipes as well as evocations of the dishes' origins: from the simple glories of vine, olive, and wheat to the culinary innovations of Arab and Norman invaders; from the plain but mouth-watering dishes prepared by peasants in the Middle Ages to the ritual luxuries of Sicily's aritocracy; from the succulent delicacies made in monasteries and covents to the street-food pleasures that have become favorites all over the world.

With more than 100 photographs and illustrations, this comprehensive volume is a book to cook from, a book to read, and a book to treasure as a testament to one of the finest cuisines in the world.

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