Anna Del Conte

Anna Del Conte is an Italian-born food writer whose works cover the history of food as well as providing recipes. Resident in England since 1949, she has been influential in raising the country’s awareness of Italian cuisine: her 1976 Portrait of Pasta has been described as ‘the instrumental force in leading [the English] beyond the land of spag bol, macaroni cheese and tinned ravioli’. Still in 2009 she remained critical of ‘Britalian’ cookery, however: mixing too many ingredients and suffering from the English palate’s liking for much stronger flavours, it lacked the subtleties of its Mediterranean original.