The Tome rests with a noble weight in one’s hands, its paper coated, the photographs preserving that slightly textured grain so characteristic of the early nineteen-eighties. "The Book of Pasta" thus announces itself even before it is opened—and a mere two pages suffice to find oneself transported, “à rebours”, forty years into the past.

 The volume traverses the realms of dried and fresh pasta, the sacred doughs, the fillings: one artisanal shape after another. Perchance it is not a volume to be read from cover to cover—one opens it mid-way, retraces twenty pages in search of that recipe glimpsed but once, deferring the remainder to another occasion. Each entry carries with it a regional kitchen, a home, gestures that in 1985 were of the everyday and today, for many, are already a cherished family memory.

 Certain photographs betray their age: colours somewhat softened by time, layouts that today appear rather naïf. The concept, however, is sempiternal—and holds true. For the book was not designed to beckon from a shelf, but to remain open upon the workspace, perhaps adorned with a stray droplet of sauce upon the page and a dusting of flour on the cover.

 And it is precisely in this «practical imperfection» that its magic endures. Pasta, here, is no mere pretext: it is the dough to be kneaded with one's hands, the filling to be sealed with devotion, the sauce to be tasted with a wooden spoon—an affective and domestic heirloom of an epoch that seems no more—and adjusted until it is "perfectly seasoned". And, in the background, almost inadvertently, the Book restores to us an Italy that has since transformed: hands for whom creation was still a daily wisdom, and the modest yet authentic triumph of a dish flawlessly rendered.

Recipe books such as this found their home beside the hearth, not in the lounge. And it is precisely there, weathered by use and beautifully lived-in, that they rightfully belong.