Cream or no cream? Onions or no? What sort of cured pork, or cheese? And who knew that spaghetti ‘carbonara’ probably didn’t exist before 1950?

Preziosa (Precious) was the title Ada Boni gave to the home economics magazine she established in 1915. Six years later, the accumulation of slender monthly magazines formed the basis of her cooking manual Il Talismano della Felicità (The Talisman of Happiness), which is still in print today. Boni would continue directing Preziosa until 1959, allowing for a lively symbiotic relationship, with the popular magazine nourishing the constantly updated editions of Il Talismano, making a dynamic reflection of evolving cooking and recipes over the decades.

I have a 1949 fabric-covered 18th edition of Il Talismano. Its hundreds of recipes were gathered from all over Italy (and a few beyond), but Boni was Roman, so it’s interesting to see her interpretations of classic pasta recipes at the time: spaghetti all’amatriciana (with guanciale, onion, tomato and pecorino or parmesan), spaghetti al guanciale, spaghetti con tonno e funghi (tuna and mushrooms). But what about carbonara? She doesn’t include a recipe, and in fact it would be another few years before anyone included a recipe for that anywhere.