Mother Sauce

Home cook and author Lucinda Scala Quinn shares 100 iconic and beloved Italian-American recipes from the last 100 years.

In America today, nonna's cooking is everyone's favorite food with spaghetti, lasagna, and pizza some of the most popular dishes. Yet this is a cuisine that is only a century old. When Italian families first arrived in the U.S. in the first part of the twentieth century, mammas brought with them the skills and ingredient know-how to fashion a whole new foodway in spite of living in poverty and their ostracization from their newly adopted country. These remarkable women gave birth to a cuisine that their fathers, husbands, and sons then monetized outside the home. Red sauce joints thrive around the U.S., but rarely are these women actually credited as the true founders of the Italian-American cuisine.

In her latest book, home cook and author Lucinda Scala Quinn cooks 100 iconic Italian-American recipes. Along the way, she shares the origins of the recipes and gives credit to the incredible women who developed our cherished Italian dishes. Home cooks and food lovers alike will delight in this masterful collection of America's favorite comfort foods, from Baked Ziti and Sausage and Pepper Hoagies to Chicken Marsala and Cannolis. With gorgeous recipe shots, archival photos, ingredient sidebars, and cultural essays, Mother Sauce brings nonna's cooking to kitchens everywhere.

"Recipes feature the best elements of Italian cooking blended with American ideas and transmuted into culinary creations of their own. . . . The book has the basics covered, from Sunday's spaghetti and meatballs to stromboli, penne alla vodka,
and fettuccine alfredo. Readers will also find dishes not seen in other collections, like creamy lemon spaghetti, mini meatball sandwiches, or Quinn's brother's Easter lamb, covered and marinated in a garlicky, herbaceous honey-vinegar blend. Italian classics have a place here too, for those looking for variations on carbonara and amatriciana. Quinn's irresistible cookbook concludes with an array of desserts, ranging from light to luscious, from granita and sweet taralli to orange olive-oil cake with ricotta frosting and tiramisu."--Booklist
"Lucinda has a mastery of her craft and is a true custodian of tradition in the American foodways, one deliciously made its own by Italian women."--Camille Becerra, author of Bright Cooking
"While there may be other cookbooks preserving Italian-American cooking, no one gets to the heart of this storied cuisine with more passion and perspective than Lucinda Scala Quinn. Using her own very personal family history, spanning five generations, countless relatives and dishes, she puts into focus the creation and evolution of our country's most beloved recipes. MOTHER SAUCE honors the hard-working, often unrecognized, immigrant women whose grit and gumption paved the way for every delicious swirl of pasta in Sunday gravy, meatball sub and cacciatore we have come to know and adore. With Lucinda's expert guidance and generous approach in the kitchen, these classics are sure to be passed down again and again."--Gail Simmons, Food Expert, TV Host and Author of BRINGING IT HOME
"Mother Sauce is a superb, inspiring cookbook drawn from generations of family wisdom. . . . These recipes come from the heart and will find their way into your own repertoire."--Jody Williams, chef and coauthor of Via Carota
"Lucinda pays loving tribute to the Italian women who stubbornly kept the food traditions of the old country alive in American kitchens. An indispensable collection of Italian American classics."--Giada De Laurentiis
"Lucinda Scala Quinn is a legend in the culinary field, and I have been inspired by her work for years. I am thrilled and tantalized yet again by her newest offering of heartfelt, straightforward, family recipes."--Nicole Rucker, chef and author of Fat + Flour

Lucinda Scala Quinn is the author of eight cookbooks, including the best-selling Mad Hungry trilogy. Her mantra is, "cook for the ones you love, teach them to cook for themselves and they will pass it on." Her passion for cooking took root growing up in an Italian American family, which inspired her to begin cooking professionally at age sixteen. As a late-blooming entrepreneur, she founded the Mad Hungry kitchenware brand which makes multi-use tools for the home cook. For over a decade she oversaw all food content for Martha Stewart Living OmniMedia. She was the host of the television show Mad Hungry: Bringing Back the Family Meal and cohost of Everyday Food on PBS. Her radio show EatDrink on Sirius FM was an innovative precursor to podcasts. She lives in New York City and can be followed @madhungry.

This item is eligible for free returns within 30 days of delivery. See our returns policy for further details.