A very cool book by a Piedmontese nationalist, so much so that the book contains sentences written in Piedmont dialect -- how many people speak it today -- and ascribes all culinary "firsts" to Italians, and most to the Northern Italians. But it is a pleasure to read.
[1] I would make a single comment concerning Italian, rather than the French origin of the "Russian Salad". The story that it emerged because the Italian chefs replaced beets in Insalata Rossa (Rusa in some dialect) for the Tsar (more probable, for the heir to throne) with potatoes and carrots and renamed it Insalata Russa in honor of the august guest is quite possible. In Russian a beet version is called vinegret (from the word 'vinegar'). But the reason for occasional renaming must have been that the red color was associated with the French Revolution, equally detestable for the Imperial Prince and his hosts in Nice.
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