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Pellegrino Artusi (1820—1911) was the author of famous Italian cookbook La scienza in cucina e l'arte di mangiare bene (The Science of Cooking and the Art of Eating Well).

Artusi was born in Forlimpopoli, a town near Forlì, and made his fortune as a silk merchant, but after retiring devoted himself to fine dining. In 1891, at age 71, he completed his cookbook, but could not find a publisher. So he used his own money to self-publish, selling a thousand copies of the first edition in four years. Soon, however, the cookbook caught on, and before Artusi died in Florence in 1911, more than 200,000 copies had been sold. Filled with amusing anecdotes as well as recipes, the book is a perennial best seller in Italy, and has been translated in Spanish, Dutch, German and English.

In 1904 Artusi published a practical manual for the kitchen, with over 3,000 recipes and 150 tables, simply entitled Ecco il tuo libro di cucina (Here is your cookbook) with the anonymous participation and influence of the baroness Giulia Turco. Donne, cucina e ricettari at www.questotrentino.it

Writing only two decades after the unification of Italy, Artusi was the first to include recipes from all the different regions of Italy in a single cookbook. He is often credited with establishing a truly national Italian cuisine for the first time.

This author page uses material from the Wikipedia article "Pellegrino Artusi", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0