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The Futurist Cookbook
Part manifesto, part artistic joke, Fillippo Marinetti's Futurist Cookbook is a provocative work about art disguised as an easy-to-read cookbook. Here are recipes for ice cream on the moon; candied atmospheric electricities; nocturnal love feasts; sculpted meats. Marinetti also sets out his argument for abolishing pasta as ill-suited to modernity, and advocates a style of cuisine that will increase creativity. Although at times betraying its author's nationalistic sympathies, The Futurist Cookbook is funny, provocative, whimsical, disdainful of sluggish traditions and delighted by the velocity and promise of modernity.
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti was born in 1876 to Italian parents and grew up in Alexandria, Egypt. He studied in Paris and obtained a law degree in Italy before turning to literature. In 1909 he wrote the infamous Futurist Manifesto, which championed violence, speed and war, and proclaimed the unity of art and life. Marinetti's life was fraught with controversy: he fought a duel with a hostile critic, was subject to an obscenity trial, and was a staunch supporter of Italian Fascism. Alongside his literary activities, he was a war correspondent during the Italo-Turkish War and served on the Eastern Front in World War II, despite being in his sixties. He died in 1944.
Lesley Chamberlain is a novelist and historian of ideas. Her thirteen books include Nietzsche in Turin, The Secret Artist: A Close Reading of Sigmund Freud and The Food and Cooking of Russia.
Suzanne Brill is an art historian and writer. She has translated several books for Italian art historians including Caro Pedretti's Leonardo: Architect, which was nominated for the John Florio prize.
'A paean to sensual freedom, optimism and childlike, amoral innocence ... it has only once been answered, by Aldous Huxley's Brave New World' Lesley Chamberlain
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti was born in 1876 to Italian parents and grew up in Alexandria, Egypt. He studied in Paris and obtained a law degree in Italy before turning to literature. In 1909 he wrote the infamous Futurist Manifesto, which championed violence, speed and war, and proclaimed the unity of art and life. Marinetti's life was fraught with controversy: he fought a duel with a hostile critic, was subject to an obscenity trial, and was a staunch supporter of Italian Fascism. Alongside his literary activities, he was a war correspondent during the Italo-Turkish War and served on the Eastern Front in World War II, despite being in his sixties. He died in 1944.
Lesley Chamberlain is a novelist and historian of ideas. Her thirteen books include Nietzsche in Turin, The Secret Artist: A Close Reading of Sigmund Freud and The Food and Cooking of Russia.
Suzanne Brill is an art historian and writer. She has translated several books for Italian art historians including Caro Pedretti's Leonardo: Architect, which was nominated for the John Florio prize.
'A paean to sensual freedom, optimism and childlike, amoral innocence ... it has only once been answered, by Aldous Huxley's Brave New World' Lesley Chamberlain
256 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1932
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About the author
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti
182 books81 followersFilippo Tommaso Emilio Marinetti was an Italian ideologue, poet, editor, and founder of the Futurist movement.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 54 reviews
January 23, 2020
This is a rather bizarre offering from one of the pioneers of the futurist movement. It provides some of the most strange recipes I have ever read and is primarily a plea/demand for Italians to give up eating pasta because it leads to bloatedness and idleness and is not good for the spirit. There's a great deal that's Avant Garde, and slightly surreal. Unfortunately there is a significant amount of misogyny and racism and as this comes from the late 20s and early 30s, a support for fascism.
It's all about novelty and shock and the setting for the food is as important as the food. There may also be an element of prank about it, but it seemed to be taken perfectly seriously at the time. Let me give you a little flavour:
"A Simultaneous Dish
(formula by the futurist aeropoet Marinetti)
Chicken aspic, half of it studded with squares of raw young camel meat, rubbed with garlic and smoked, and half studded with balls of hare meat stewed in wine.
Eat this by washing down every mouthful of camel with a sip of acqua del Serino and every mouthful of hare with a sip of Scira (a non-alcoholic Turkish wine made with must)"
Raw meat of various types is fairly common in the recipes. There's also quite a focus on flying and some of the meals are supposed to be eaten in aeroplane cockpits.
Here's another example:
"Sicilian Headland
(formula by the Futurist Aeropainter Fillia)
Chop together tuna, apples, olives and little Japanese nuts. Spread the resulting paste on a cold egg and jam omelette."
There's a great deal more like this and certainly some of it reminded a little of what Heston Blumenthal has been doing.
I didn't like the political philosophy and after a while the recipes and settings just become boring, but it is an interesting period piece.
It's all about novelty and shock and the setting for the food is as important as the food. There may also be an element of prank about it, but it seemed to be taken perfectly seriously at the time. Let me give you a little flavour:
"A Simultaneous Dish
(formula by the futurist aeropoet Marinetti)
Chicken aspic, half of it studded with squares of raw young camel meat, rubbed with garlic and smoked, and half studded with balls of hare meat stewed in wine.
Eat this by washing down every mouthful of camel with a sip of acqua del Serino and every mouthful of hare with a sip of Scira (a non-alcoholic Turkish wine made with must)"
Raw meat of various types is fairly common in the recipes. There's also quite a focus on flying and some of the meals are supposed to be eaten in aeroplane cockpits.
Here's another example:
"Sicilian Headland
(formula by the Futurist Aeropainter Fillia)
Chop together tuna, apples, olives and little Japanese nuts. Spread the resulting paste on a cold egg and jam omelette."
There's a great deal more like this and certainly some of it reminded a little of what Heston Blumenthal has been doing.
I didn't like the political philosophy and after a while the recipes and settings just become boring, but it is an interesting period piece.
Read
March 26, 2021The best book to read before having a bowl of spaghetti.
August 30, 2013
so so so so wonderful! helps to understand how fascism was able to thrive. a heroic aesthetic movement full of dangers. so many of the ideological tenets have deplorable material consequences, but their prose is enchanting. as if gravity were a whimsical joke whose punchline is a fiery death, and they are hanging in the air along some swoopy trajectory looking for a laugh
February 10, 2011
I got this book to look at the art. The cover's good, but most of the interior is bleckh. The Italian Futurist movement was about art, but also about extreme politics and all the really fun stuff going on over there in the early 20th Century. War as hygiene, dynamism, misogyny, urbanism, flag-waving blah blah blah. Creeped me out a little that the stridency of the language, the sculpting of women figures in meringue-coated metal, the false and frenzied patriotism culminating in WWI is too damn close to pop culture in 2011. The War to End All Wars sort of put a stop to the Italian Futurists. But jolly ol' Marinetti brought it back after the war, and before the next - il secundo Futurismo. What a card!
Want to read
July 20, 2022Replace pasta with soy and you've got the alt-right~
August 8, 2023
not sure what i just read. some bits are very entertaining but overall the book is all over the place and a little repetitive.
September 4, 2024
it's funny that marinetti wrote a book one of the central jokes of which is 'we should abolish pasta because it makes italians too slow and sluggish'
June 17, 2023
super interesting, though i suppose it does start to get a bit repetitive . inspiring at times and often beautiful but of course also super disturbing
October 7, 2014
The afterword declares that this book is at least partly a joke. I'm not sure about that, but I personally find it funnier to believe that Marinetti meant every word.
There's certainly something funny about futurism in general. Not the fascism, misogyny and racism, obviously, but the combination of vertiginous arrogance and child-like naivete, and the boyish enthusiasm for anything to do with aeroplanes, speed and war make for some hilarious moments.
Sometimes the intellectual posturing takes centre stage to the extent that the descriptions of the food, most of which are relegated to an appendix as if an afterthought, are slightly disappointing, and need to be padded with purple prose and provocative declarations in order to make them seem modern and daring, when in fact many of them are just artistically arranged plates of rice or meat with the occasional incongruous slice of fruit.
It's also revealing to see how many of the ideas presented as surreal and shocking in 1930 are now used regularly in molecular gastronomy establishments (the presentation; the attempts to involve all the senses; the use of wit and references). But there are some interesting ideas here, including the assertion that Italian cuisine is far too in thrall to pasta which is too heavy, boring and lacking in nutritive value.
There's certainly something funny about futurism in general. Not the fascism, misogyny and racism, obviously, but the combination of vertiginous arrogance and child-like naivete, and the boyish enthusiasm for anything to do with aeroplanes, speed and war make for some hilarious moments.
Sometimes the intellectual posturing takes centre stage to the extent that the descriptions of the food, most of which are relegated to an appendix as if an afterthought, are slightly disappointing, and need to be padded with purple prose and provocative declarations in order to make them seem modern and daring, when in fact many of them are just artistically arranged plates of rice or meat with the occasional incongruous slice of fruit.
It's also revealing to see how many of the ideas presented as surreal and shocking in 1930 are now used regularly in molecular gastronomy establishments (the presentation; the attempts to involve all the senses; the use of wit and references). But there are some interesting ideas here, including the assertion that Italian cuisine is far too in thrall to pasta which is too heavy, boring and lacking in nutritive value.
February 9, 2022
wtf I hate pasta now
Marinetti's futurist cookbook is fearless and radical. The challenges that Futurists faced with art/music/dance were mere hurdles compared to the struggle of changing a country's palate. While he would mock the the phrase "don't fix what isn't broken" his vacuous destruction of taste and focus on aesthetics of food was a ripple in Italy and the world's menus. Even if you never try and of the recipes in this you must appreciate his passion.. or jetfuel for dynamic, unsurmountable, boundary breaking ideas that could only be fenced in by the universal love for what actually tastes good.
Marinetti's futurist cookbook is fearless and radical. The challenges that Futurists faced with art/music/dance were mere hurdles compared to the struggle of changing a country's palate. While he would mock the the phrase "don't fix what isn't broken" his vacuous destruction of taste and focus on aesthetics of food was a ripple in Italy and the world's menus. Even if you never try and of the recipes in this you must appreciate his passion.. or jetfuel for dynamic, unsurmountable, boundary breaking ideas that could only be fenced in by the universal love for what actually tastes good.
May 23, 2023
Uno spasso unico, e apprezzo tanto l'originalità della cucina futurista.
October 11, 2024
You can take the Italian away from the pasta but you will not take the pasta out of Italy!!
As a manifesto I love this!! As a cook book, babes this would not work. I will not be eating your phallic meat tower and your funky rice soaked in wine and beer.
As a manifesto I love this!! As a cook book, babes this would not work. I will not be eating your phallic meat tower and your funky rice soaked in wine and beer.
November 25, 2021
Il contenuto principale del libro dovrebbe riguardare delle ricette, ma esse sono talmente tanto irrealizzabili e prive di senso che probabilmente non vennero applicate neanche dai futuristi stessi. La maggior parte sono palesemente delle poesie oltretutto, non hanno motivo di essere considerate ricette. Le poesie dunque: non sono particolarmente valide, ho apprezzato molto gli sprizzi di fantasia che stanno alla base, ma il contenuto non è interessante. Questo rende l'opera utile soltanto per chi non abbia a cuore la cucina e per coloro i quali vogliano stimolare con un metaforico elettroshock la loro fantasia per brevi lassi di tempo
May 31, 2015
Italians against pasta! How perfect is that as well as meals that are totally pornography as well as an aesthetic. I like the idea of having perfume sprayed in the dining area. As a vegetarian, I cringed while reading the recipes of some of the dishes - but I do like it when Marinetti & Company do their special magic that appeals to one's stomach. Superb document but also this is a beautifully designed book for the book lover
December 31, 2020
As a child I loved to play a game with my younger brother that involved my whipping up a concoction of various condiments and other ingredients from our fridge, and daring him to eat it without knowing what was in it. I kind of feel like Marinetti was playing the same game, only with all of Italy.
July 13, 2008
For the true hostess with the most-est. Menus for all occasions merrily provided. My favorite being the Wedding Banquet featuring poisonous mushrooms.
February 6, 2023
Thankfully the introduction to the book calls Marinetti and the Futurists on their fascism and mucho violence. But then Intro writer - Lesley Chamberlaine - tries to give Marinetti a pass on some of his transgressions by calling him an “…anarchist whose ideals could never have served the Fascist purpose for longer than a passing hour.” It’s true that some of Marinetti’s artistic propositions are hilarious in their dynamism and absurdity, but are we laughing with him? As far as I know he declared himself for Fascism, not anarchism. Chamberlaine doesn’t need to rescue Marinetti before we’re allowed to examine his output in all its compromised glory.
The dinner that stopped a suicide is hilarious - a suicidal Futurist hornily devouring a woman made of food that his caring Futurist buddies have concocted.
After a few recipes, the cookbook heads into its treatise against pasta, which Marinetti believes makes the Italian people dull and sluggish. P 42 – ‘The Duke of Bovino, Mayor of Naples, in response […] declares that ‘ the Angels in Paradise eat nothing but vermicelli with tomato sauce’, consecrating the unappetising monotony of paradise and of the life of the Angels.’
Marinetti gets jingoistic in his Manifesto Against Xenomania which might’ve read as tongue-in-cheek provocative if the Italians hadn’t joined the Nazis a few years later.
P67, ‘…we may even prepare mankind for the not too distant possibility of broadcasting nourishing waves over the radio’ – Fillìa
P83, ‘Look, my dear friend, in being late even you are passéists; I thought the Futurists, if only to do something new, would have started early but instead there’s the usual boring wait just like at all the banquets in the bourgeois world.’
He looks at me and smiles ironically, ‘To eat in the future… what’s more Futurist than that?’ – Libani
As dodgy as Marinetti and co. can be, you can’t deny the originality of many of their propositions. I’m always telling my art students that much of the cool avant-garde shit credited to pacificist Dada was actually invented by the Fascist Futurists, we just try and nullify these arseholes. And it’s not just Dada ‘inventions,’ here Marinetti’s recipes predate the ‘event scores’ credited to the 1960s Neo-Dada of Fluxus:
P102, ‘RAW MEAT TORN BY TRUMPET BLASTS: cut a perfect cube of beef. Pass an electric current through it, then marinate it for twenty-four hours in a mixture of rum, cognac and white vermouth. Remove it from the mixture and serve on a bed of red pepper, black pepper and snow. Each mouthful is to be chewed carefully for one minute, and each mouthful is divided from the next by vehement blasts on the trumpet blown by the eater himself.
When it is time for the Peralzarsi; the soldiers are served plates of ripe persimmons, pomegranates and blood oranges. While these disappear into their mouths, some very sweet perfumes of roses, jasmine, honeysuckle and acacia flowers will be sprayed around the room, the nostalgic and decadent sweetness of which will be roughly rejected by the soldiers who rush like lightening to put their gas masks on.
The moment they are about to leave they swallow the Throat-Explosion, a solid liquid consisting of a pellet of Parmesan cheese steeped in Marsala.’
P106, ‘..Duelling with that whistle is the long, sharp wail of a violin note escaping from the room on the right belonging to the peasant woman’s convalescent son.
Then, silence for a moment. Then, two minutes of chick peas in oil and vinegar. Then, seven capers. Then twenty-five liqueur cherries. Then twelve fried potato chips. Then a silence of a quarter of an hour during which the mouths continue to chew the vacuum. Then, a sip of Barolo wine held in the mouth for one minute. Then a roast quail for each of the guests to look at and inhale deeply the smell of without eating. Then four long handshakes to the peasant woman cook and off they all go into the darkness-wind-rain of the forest.’
The dinner that stopped a suicide is hilarious - a suicidal Futurist hornily devouring a woman made of food that his caring Futurist buddies have concocted.
After a few recipes, the cookbook heads into its treatise against pasta, which Marinetti believes makes the Italian people dull and sluggish. P 42 – ‘The Duke of Bovino, Mayor of Naples, in response […] declares that ‘ the Angels in Paradise eat nothing but vermicelli with tomato sauce’, consecrating the unappetising monotony of paradise and of the life of the Angels.’
Marinetti gets jingoistic in his Manifesto Against Xenomania which might’ve read as tongue-in-cheek provocative if the Italians hadn’t joined the Nazis a few years later.
P67, ‘…we may even prepare mankind for the not too distant possibility of broadcasting nourishing waves over the radio’ – Fillìa
P83, ‘Look, my dear friend, in being late even you are passéists; I thought the Futurists, if only to do something new, would have started early but instead there’s the usual boring wait just like at all the banquets in the bourgeois world.’
He looks at me and smiles ironically, ‘To eat in the future… what’s more Futurist than that?’ – Libani
As dodgy as Marinetti and co. can be, you can’t deny the originality of many of their propositions. I’m always telling my art students that much of the cool avant-garde shit credited to pacificist Dada was actually invented by the Fascist Futurists, we just try and nullify these arseholes. And it’s not just Dada ‘inventions,’ here Marinetti’s recipes predate the ‘event scores’ credited to the 1960s Neo-Dada of Fluxus:
P102, ‘RAW MEAT TORN BY TRUMPET BLASTS: cut a perfect cube of beef. Pass an electric current through it, then marinate it for twenty-four hours in a mixture of rum, cognac and white vermouth. Remove it from the mixture and serve on a bed of red pepper, black pepper and snow. Each mouthful is to be chewed carefully for one minute, and each mouthful is divided from the next by vehement blasts on the trumpet blown by the eater himself.
When it is time for the Peralzarsi; the soldiers are served plates of ripe persimmons, pomegranates and blood oranges. While these disappear into their mouths, some very sweet perfumes of roses, jasmine, honeysuckle and acacia flowers will be sprayed around the room, the nostalgic and decadent sweetness of which will be roughly rejected by the soldiers who rush like lightening to put their gas masks on.
The moment they are about to leave they swallow the Throat-Explosion, a solid liquid consisting of a pellet of Parmesan cheese steeped in Marsala.’
P106, ‘..Duelling with that whistle is the long, sharp wail of a violin note escaping from the room on the right belonging to the peasant woman’s convalescent son.
Then, silence for a moment. Then, two minutes of chick peas in oil and vinegar. Then, seven capers. Then twenty-five liqueur cherries. Then twelve fried potato chips. Then a silence of a quarter of an hour during which the mouths continue to chew the vacuum. Then, a sip of Barolo wine held in the mouth for one minute. Then a roast quail for each of the guests to look at and inhale deeply the smell of without eating. Then four long handshakes to the peasant woman cook and off they all go into the darkness-wind-rain of the forest.’
February 2, 2025
There are parts of this that are absolutely hysterical, and a lot of it is startlingly well written. Unfortunately, though, it gets quite repetitive by the end. It is definitely extremely unique – I don't know if I'll read a prose-poem cookbook again in my life lmao.
A lot of racism, sexism, fascism, that you have to wade through. Honestly a very interesting read. Some of the shit in here was very Orwellian ( "The word Italy must rule over the word truth.”) despite Marinetti clearly being a disciple of Huxley.
“While recognizing that badly or crudely nourished men have achieved great things in the past, we affirm this truth: men think dream and act according to what they eat and drink.”
“Above all we believe necessary:
a) The abolition of pastasciutta, an absurd Italian gastronomic religion.
“From such disturbances derive lassitude, pessimism, nostalgic inactivity and neutralism.”
“The defenders of pasta are shackled by its ball and chain like convicted lifers or carry its ruins in their stomachs like archaeologists. And remember too that the abolition of pasta will free Italy from expensive foreign wheat and promote the Italian rice industry.”
“All the defenders of pasta and implacable enemies of Futurist cooking are melancholy types, content with their melancholy and propagandists of melancholy.”
“I felt two tears run down my cheeks. So it’s farewell, then, to tagliatelle with ham, delight of my ravenous youth. Please, Fillìa, be merciful: at least spare our old Romagna salami, that venerated succulent salami which, together with the blonde Albana, fired the poetic inspiration of Giosuè Carducci and Giovanni Pascoli.”
“4) In San Francisco, California, the clients of two Italian restaurants, one on the ground floor and one on the first floor of the same building, came to blows for and against Futurist food and there ensued a riotous battle from the windows and in the street with edible projectiles and saucepans. There were a few casualties.”
“The Futurist official dinner avoids the grave defects that pollute all official banquets:
FIRST: the embarrassed silence stemming from the fact that there is no pre-existing harmony between the table companions.
SECOND: the conversational reserve, owed to diplomatic etiquette.
THIRD: the moroseness produced by insoluble world problems.
FOURTH: the rancour of frontiers.
FIFTH: the low, wan, funereal and banal tone of the dishes.”
A lot of these recipes take place, inexplicably, in the cockpits of planes.
“In the cockpit of a Trimotor flying at 3000 metres in a bipartite sky: the maudlin light of a greenish mother-of-pearl half-moon and a hemisphere of half-clouds lit by long scorpions of gold.”
“This year we will succeed in breaking through the envelope of the atmosphere and reach the planets. I invite you all to a banquet next New Year’s Eve on the moon, where we will finally taste foods of a flavour unknown to our palates and unimaginable drinks!”
Next year in Jerusalem
A lot of racism, sexism, fascism, that you have to wade through. Honestly a very interesting read. Some of the shit in here was very Orwellian ( "The word Italy must rule over the word truth.”) despite Marinetti clearly being a disciple of Huxley.
“While recognizing that badly or crudely nourished men have achieved great things in the past, we affirm this truth: men think dream and act according to what they eat and drink.”
“Above all we believe necessary:
a) The abolition of pastasciutta, an absurd Italian gastronomic religion.
“From such disturbances derive lassitude, pessimism, nostalgic inactivity and neutralism.”
“The defenders of pasta are shackled by its ball and chain like convicted lifers or carry its ruins in their stomachs like archaeologists. And remember too that the abolition of pasta will free Italy from expensive foreign wheat and promote the Italian rice industry.”
“All the defenders of pasta and implacable enemies of Futurist cooking are melancholy types, content with their melancholy and propagandists of melancholy.”
“I felt two tears run down my cheeks. So it’s farewell, then, to tagliatelle with ham, delight of my ravenous youth. Please, Fillìa, be merciful: at least spare our old Romagna salami, that venerated succulent salami which, together with the blonde Albana, fired the poetic inspiration of Giosuè Carducci and Giovanni Pascoli.”
“4) In San Francisco, California, the clients of two Italian restaurants, one on the ground floor and one on the first floor of the same building, came to blows for and against Futurist food and there ensued a riotous battle from the windows and in the street with edible projectiles and saucepans. There were a few casualties.”
“The Futurist official dinner avoids the grave defects that pollute all official banquets:
FIRST: the embarrassed silence stemming from the fact that there is no pre-existing harmony between the table companions.
SECOND: the conversational reserve, owed to diplomatic etiquette.
THIRD: the moroseness produced by insoluble world problems.
FOURTH: the rancour of frontiers.
FIFTH: the low, wan, funereal and banal tone of the dishes.”
A lot of these recipes take place, inexplicably, in the cockpits of planes.
“In the cockpit of a Trimotor flying at 3000 metres in a bipartite sky: the maudlin light of a greenish mother-of-pearl half-moon and a hemisphere of half-clouds lit by long scorpions of gold.”
“This year we will succeed in breaking through the envelope of the atmosphere and reach the planets. I invite you all to a banquet next New Year’s Eve on the moon, where we will finally taste foods of a flavour unknown to our palates and unimaginable drinks!”
Next year in Jerusalem
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 22, 2025
He comes across as overtly horny and desperate. He’s clearly not shagged in a while and is trying to quench his hunger through derogatory meals. I understand that at the time this was written this would have been the norm, but it becomes repetitive. It could have included both genders for a bit more fun.
The meals themselves consist of sliced fruits (particularly oranges) and veg and meats. This doesn’t feel crazy or futuristic at all. What would have been truly forward thinking is if he had left his sexual appetite in the food waste.
I agree there is too much focus on pastasciutta. It isn’t exactly an emerging dish. It is intended to be eaten in small quantities alongside something lighter, but it is still a bit ironic to say that pasta makes you sluggish when every recipe is drowning in alcohol.
I also agree we should play with our food more and think about all our senses while eating. I wonder whether food experimentation becomes more common in difficult times. When we struggle, our creative outlets often shift into our everyday routines.
He really loves planes.
It was interesting learning about fascism’s artistic streak coming out in the form of food. This need to make Italians strong comes across as patriotism. I think it is subtle in its fascist values and easy to miss unless you know Marinetti’s connection to fascism. Once you do, all the references to space, the food shaped like aeroplanes, the obsession with aluminium and the desire to futurise Italy so it becomes supreme makes the cookbook feel like a manifesto on how to enjoy food while preparing for war and seducing women.
It reminds me of current food designers. It is very reminiscent of Marije Vogelzang and her food experiments.
It is genuinely funny at times. I like the repetition at first because it keeps honing in on ideas until they become more digestible. But after a while the book gets boring and the recipes feel tedious. It picks up again once the illustrations appear.
It sort of reminds me of my family’s antipasti served at Christmas.
The meals themselves consist of sliced fruits (particularly oranges) and veg and meats. This doesn’t feel crazy or futuristic at all. What would have been truly forward thinking is if he had left his sexual appetite in the food waste.
I agree there is too much focus on pastasciutta. It isn’t exactly an emerging dish. It is intended to be eaten in small quantities alongside something lighter, but it is still a bit ironic to say that pasta makes you sluggish when every recipe is drowning in alcohol.
I also agree we should play with our food more and think about all our senses while eating. I wonder whether food experimentation becomes more common in difficult times. When we struggle, our creative outlets often shift into our everyday routines.
He really loves planes.
It was interesting learning about fascism’s artistic streak coming out in the form of food. This need to make Italians strong comes across as patriotism. I think it is subtle in its fascist values and easy to miss unless you know Marinetti’s connection to fascism. Once you do, all the references to space, the food shaped like aeroplanes, the obsession with aluminium and the desire to futurise Italy so it becomes supreme makes the cookbook feel like a manifesto on how to enjoy food while preparing for war and seducing women.
It reminds me of current food designers. It is very reminiscent of Marije Vogelzang and her food experiments.
It is genuinely funny at times. I like the repetition at first because it keeps honing in on ideas until they become more digestible. But after a while the book gets boring and the recipes feel tedious. It picks up again once the illustrations appear.
It sort of reminds me of my family’s antipasti served at Christmas.
May 9, 2023
A cookbook is a very loose definition for this bizarre text. Marinetti was an ideologue to the core. He wrote the manifesto of futurism in 1909 and launched the Italian futurist movement which was closely linked to fascism, then 20 years later, released this cookbook.
The first part, a controversial article that breaks down the ideology, was published in newspapers around the world to widely mixed reactions. He outlines the bases of futurist cooking, starting with a strong condemnation of pasta and Italians’ idolisation of it. He says pasta is bad for the Italian race (remember he’s a fascist), it is bad for the body and the brain and so on. He says that futurist food must aim to elevate Italian cuisine into the contemporary world and liberate it from its bourgeois traditions.
The food needs to be textural and tactile, eaten by hand, inspiring virility, stimulating to the senses and mind (the cookbook some dinner settings where poetry is read intermittently and perfume is sprayed on their faces between bites); the food of the future needs to inspire virility in the bedroom and it needs to value Italian aesthetics, it needs to have an element of sculpture and art, non monotonous. The meal of the future shall to be non-routine, always keeping you guessing and on your feet. The menus of the future are free of French and English words (he appends a list of Italian word substitutions).
The sample dinners in the books are closer to theatre performances. Overall, these recipes are highly conceptual and purposefully exaggerated -camp even-, and it’s hard for us to gauge how much of Marinetti’s tongue was in his cheek. I encourage everyone to look up some reproductions of the futurist recipes if only for their shock value.
The first part, a controversial article that breaks down the ideology, was published in newspapers around the world to widely mixed reactions. He outlines the bases of futurist cooking, starting with a strong condemnation of pasta and Italians’ idolisation of it. He says pasta is bad for the Italian race (remember he’s a fascist), it is bad for the body and the brain and so on. He says that futurist food must aim to elevate Italian cuisine into the contemporary world and liberate it from its bourgeois traditions.
The food needs to be textural and tactile, eaten by hand, inspiring virility, stimulating to the senses and mind (the cookbook some dinner settings where poetry is read intermittently and perfume is sprayed on their faces between bites); the food of the future needs to inspire virility in the bedroom and it needs to value Italian aesthetics, it needs to have an element of sculpture and art, non monotonous. The meal of the future shall to be non-routine, always keeping you guessing and on your feet. The menus of the future are free of French and English words (he appends a list of Italian word substitutions).
The sample dinners in the books are closer to theatre performances. Overall, these recipes are highly conceptual and purposefully exaggerated -camp even-, and it’s hard for us to gauge how much of Marinetti’s tongue was in his cheek. I encourage everyone to look up some reproductions of the futurist recipes if only for their shock value.
February 28, 2023
Art is for adrenaline
I can only find this manifesto quite valuable for the slogan above. What remains is the futurism movement, which has become the philosophy of fascism in the 20th century in the name of dynamism and mobility, taking the subject instead of the object as its basis and contradicting itself in action.
A link can be easily established between futurism and today's vital speed, and futurism stands as a trend that can be easily carried to the present day with a new interpretation. However, when you look at the elements that he opposes, one does not think much to carry and protect.
Specifically for the book, it is a manifesto that I can easily say, in which Marinetti, one of the pioneers of the futurism movement I mentioned above, deals with the futurist rebellion, and that it is an ideological rebellion as much as it is in art.
This is a kind of misuse of energy, the inability to convert kinetic energy into potential energy. and today, this movement, which has created itself mostly in the field of culture and art, positions itself in its most ideal form.
I can only find this manifesto quite valuable for the slogan above. What remains is the futurism movement, which has become the philosophy of fascism in the 20th century in the name of dynamism and mobility, taking the subject instead of the object as its basis and contradicting itself in action.
A link can be easily established between futurism and today's vital speed, and futurism stands as a trend that can be easily carried to the present day with a new interpretation. However, when you look at the elements that he opposes, one does not think much to carry and protect.
Specifically for the book, it is a manifesto that I can easily say, in which Marinetti, one of the pioneers of the futurism movement I mentioned above, deals with the futurist rebellion, and that it is an ideological rebellion as much as it is in art.
This is a kind of misuse of energy, the inability to convert kinetic energy into potential energy. and today, this movement, which has created itself mostly in the field of culture and art, positions itself in its most ideal form.
January 6, 2021
Really interesting use of the form and worth picking up and working through some chunks but it tends to start dragging pretty quickly. The absurd mental pictures it conjures up are imaginative but it's more interesting as a primary source to study the gross fascist politics and rhetoric that the Italian Futurists loved so much. You can read in the shock value peppered here that they worshiped art and violence with similar fervor.
April 10, 2021
So daft, but illuminating of the appalling guff that we perpetually fall into when trying to be fashionable. Acres of newsprint expended on postures and poses, all of which is transparently worthless. As a youth i used to appreciate futurism as a misguided attempt to shake up a moribund society, looking at it with older eyes, I just see the pointless dandyism of it and wrong headed worship of power, in every form, which is repellant.
July 16, 2022
Absurd, surreal, and poking fun at the established routines of society - the leitmotifs of Italian Futurism played out through the medium of a cookbook focused not on taste but the phenomenological experience of the meal.
Particularly amusing is Marinetti’s hatred of pasta - fascist notions of Italian supremacy lay the blame for the lethargy of the Neapolitan people at the door of pasta dishes…
…Yes, seriously!
Particularly amusing is Marinetti’s hatred of pasta - fascist notions of Italian supremacy lay the blame for the lethargy of the Neapolitan people at the door of pasta dishes…
…Yes, seriously!
March 28, 2023
insomma… interessante ma pieno di ideologia fascista e razzista dell’epoca. consigliato per capire un momento storico e per il manifesto contro la pastaciutta ma certo non per le ricette e i consigli di pasti spaziali. mi ha fatto ridere un paio di per quanto fosse ridicolo pensare a certe scene, ma tutto sommato mi ha lasciato l’aspro in bocca.
February 11, 2025
full points for panache
when the pastaciuttist ingurgitates his biquotidian pyramid of pasta, he has the feeling of stopping up a black hole...[his state] does not favor the possibility of possessing a woman
many delicious recipes and practical entertainment ideas
must be a bad audience member and disavow the aspiration to foodpills
when the pastaciuttist ingurgitates his biquotidian pyramid of pasta, he has the feeling of stopping up a black hole...[his state] does not favor the possibility of possessing a woman
many delicious recipes and practical entertainment ideas
must be a bad audience member and disavow the aspiration to foodpills
July 26, 2019
At times it is gloriously surreal and bizarre, which accounts for the relatively high rating. The proto-fascist and nationalistic elements in it are....about what you'd expect, and not exactly the high points of the book.
December 3, 2017
Ξεπερασμενο καλλιτεχνικο αστειο που σοβαρευει επικινδυνα σε στιγμες. Αλλα με εναν απελευθερωτικο ενθουσιασμο.
March 4, 2018
Insane, absurd, dark, scary, hilarious. One of the most memorable books I've ever read.
July 9, 2019
Það er svo örþunn lína milli bráðfyndni og gríðarlegs harms í öllu sem snertir Marinetti. Sérstaklega því hann tók sig svo alvarlega.
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