Ricettario Immaginato

This book’s contents are based on two handwritten notebooks containing recipes collected by Giosuè Fiorentino between November 1917 and January 1918, while interned in a German prison camp. He was captured along with other Italian soldiers during the Battle of Caporetto. The imprisoned young men, exhausted and malnourished, took solace in compiling recipe books in a reinvention of a community tradition. By writing down the fondly remembered recipes from family feasts, they projected a convivial act of resistance into the future, hoping for a time of peace. This is the first time that the recipes from the notebooks are transcribed and published in both Italian and English. With contributions by Annarita Caputo and Andrea Wiarda, and interview with Leone Contini by Yana Foqué.