During the Renaissance, the Italian diet consisted primarily of wine and bread, with a small portion of meat (preferably a type of foul, because birds lived closer to the heavens when they took flight ...

Aimee Levitt is a freelance writer in Chicago. Marcella Hazan was the Italian superhero in the Judith Jones cookbook universe that dominated food publishing from the 1960s through the early 2000s.

A descendant of a storied family, she was an author, TV host and cooking school director who showed that Italian cuisine was about more than tomatoes, pizza and pasta. By Clay Risen Before Lorenza de’ ...