The Oxford Companion to Italian Food

Universally acclaimed by the critics, and now available for the first time in paperback, here is an inspiring, wide-ranging, AZ guide to one of the world's best-loved cuisines. Designed for cooks and consumers alike, The Oxford Companion to Italian Food covers all aspects of the history and culture of Italian gastronomy, from dishes, ingredients, and delicacies to cooking methods and implements, regional specialties, the universal appeal of Italian cuisine, influences from outside Italy, and much more.

Gillian Riley here celebrates a heritage of amazing richness and delight. She brings equal measures of enthusiasm and expertise to her writing, and her entries read like mini-essays, laced with wit and gastronomical erudition, marked throughout by descriptive brilliance, and entirely free of the pompous tone that afflicts so much writing about food. The Companion is attentive to both tradition and innovation in Italian cooking, and covers an extraordinary range of information.

For anyone with a hunger to learn more about the history, culture and variety of Italian cuisine, The Oxford Companion to Italian Food offers endless satisfactions.


Italian Food shouldn't remain on the shelf; instead, it should be savored.--Chicago Tribune

Exhaustive.--Saveur Top Ten Reads

Italian food buffs on your list may welcome a mini-encyclopedia that turns out to be almost an anti-encyclopedia: Gillian Riley's determinedly personal, quirky, wide-ranging The Oxford Companion to Italian Food.--Anne Mendelson, The New York Times

Food historian and gastronome Gillian Riley's witty, expansive compendium deftly deconstructs everything from antipasto (benign titillation of the palate with only a few delicacies) to zeppole (overkill can be achieved with a filling of custard).--Bon Appetit

A magisterial (recipe-less) book that anyone even mildly interested in the subject must own....encourages you to read entry after entry for the pleasure of learning marvelous oddments about the obscure and the familiar.--The Atlantic

[Riley is] a good, spunky writer who really knows what she's talking about...a master of the pithy observation.--Russ Parsons, The LA Times Blog

Erudite, witty, and stuffed with gems--The Telegraph

She writes in [a] characteristically colloquial but never too casual tone, a lovely, rare style...laden...with humor, sly political commentary, and a general sense of the author's total immersion in and great passion for Italian cuisine and its connection to all other aspects of Italy.--Bookforum

A scholarly yet entertaining volume. Recommended for all culinary reference collections, but those who love Italy or Italian food will enjoy reading it for pleasure.--Booklist

A grand buffet of curious delights. Riley writes to entertain as well as to inform, and never holds back when there is a choice anecdote to relate....essential browsing for the serious Italo-foodlie.--John Dickie, The Guardian

Authoritative, erudite, and unexpectedly entertaining.--The Independent

For anyone who takes these styles of cooking seriously, these books are essential....First is Gillian Riley's The Oxford Companion to Italian Food, a fascinating encyclopedia of the Italian food world. Though it contains no recipes, it is a wonderful resource for understanding Italian recipes and how to cook them.--Associated Press

WORTH READING: [This] new book will do more than spruce up your coffee table...The Oxford Companion to Italian Food reads like a literary dictionary, with entries covering all aspects of Italian cuisine paired with striking illustrations.--La Cucina Italiana

Gillian Riley has assembled between the covers of this volume more useful information about the foods of Italy than is available in any other form, or in any other language, Italian included. Anyone with more than a passing interest in this seminal cuisine should be grateful to her, as I am.--Marcella Hazan

Erudite, engaging, and captivating: an indispensable guide for Italophiles, food lovers, and the greedily curious.--Nigella Lawson

A great tribute to a rich and complex culinary culture: the Italian. It contains all the essential information and more, from the earth to the table, within a historical, artisanal and cultural context. This is a must-have reference book for any serious lover of Italian food.--Lidia Bastianich