The story behind cookbooks 'The Talisman of Happiness' and 'Will This Make You Happy'

Summary

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NPR's Book of the Day – April 3, 2026

Overview

In this episode, NPR’s Book of the Day explores the transformative power of cookbooks, focusing first on the English translation of the Italian culinary classic The Talisman of Happiness and then on Will This Make You Happy, a memoir-cookbook about finding catharsis through baking. These interviews delve into the stories behind each book, the journey of their creators, and the deeper meaning of food in personal and cultural contexts.

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Segment 1: The Talisman of Happiness – An Italian Classic Arrives in English

Interviewees:

• Michael Zurban, publisher at Voracious
• Host: Juana Summers

Iconic Origins and Cultural Impact

[02:09–03:35]

• The Talisman of Happiness (Il talismano della felicità), written by Ada Boni in 1929, is described as “the most iconic Italian cookbook ever written” and a staple wedding gift in Italy throughout the 20th century.
• Ada Boni is hailed as “the most important forgotten culinary icon in Italian cooking history” (Michael Zurban, 03:00).
• She was the first to catalog regional Italian recipes after Italy’s unification, organizing “the symphony of Italian cuisine from a few simple notes, the simple ingredients she had on hand” (03:14).

Bringing the Book to English Readers

[03:35–05:10]

• Michael Zurban’s first exposure was while working with Samin Nosrat on Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat. Nosrat recounted the book's influence on her cooking education in Italy.
• Translating and publishing the book took Zurban over a decade due to complex rights and the challenge of locating stakeholders:

  “I spent years Google translating scripts and dialing random numbers internationally, trying to find the right way...” (04:31)

• The breakthrough came after “eight or nine years” with the help of a “British packager... who knew a guy who knew a guy who knew a guy” (04:46).

Translating Timeless Recipes

[05:10–06:14]

• The translation involved eight translators and significant curation. Most original content was preserved, “almost 2,000 recipes in total... the framework for all of Italian cooking” (Michael Zurban, 05:29).
• Special care was given to maintain Ada Boni’s “voice” and “magic”, honoring her legacy and her family’s wishes.

Surprising Discoveries & Challenging Assumptions

[06:14–07:48]

• Zurban was surprised by the modernity of Boni’s methods:

  “What surprised me was how modern this cooking felt... For instance, there is a risotto...that you bake in the oven. You’re not standing in front of the stove, stirring it endlessly...” (Michael Zurban, 06:26)

• Ada Boni’s practical approach reflected a society in transition; her recipes emphasize economy, efficiency, and not wasting food.
• Zurban draws a parallel across generations:

  “It feels like I’ve got my own grandmother whispering to me in the background...” (07:36)

Personal Favorites & Culinary Wisdom

[07:48–08:56]

• Zurban’s favorite recipe: zuppa acqua cotta (“cooked water soup”):

  “I love it so much. It is so simple and yet so beguiling and good.” (08:16)

• The dish exemplifies making something from nothing, and the adaptability and resourcefulness central to Italian home cooking.

Why Italian Cooking Endures

[08:56–09:34]

• Italian cuisine’s universal appeal stems from its clarity and simplicity:

  “All of the notes that you can build a song with are so clear... it’s something that any of us can do.” (Michael Zurban, 09:08)

• Ultimately, “cooking with heart” is the essential ingredient.

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Segment 2: Will This Make You Happy – Baking as Catharsis

Interviewees:

• Tanya Bush, author, pastry chef at Little Egg, Brooklyn
• Host: Jose Detrow

Baking Through Difficult Times

[11:35–12:51]

• Tanya Bush turned to baking during a depressed period in her early twenties, living in Brooklyn during the pandemic:

  “I was just sort of desperate. Anything that I could possibly make, I wanted to make... I tried to make this almond cake and it doesn’t go exactly as planned... this sort of humiliation, this massive failure.” (Tanya Bush, 12:01)

• Bush’s vulnerability about failure challenges glossy cookbook conventions:

  “The first instance of baking turn out to be... this massive failure.” (12:14)

Learning from Failure and Embracing Imperfection

[12:51–13:45]

• The book offers an honest take on growth—through failed experiments and persistent effort:

  “The first version is rarely the right one. And it takes work to make anything meaningful and to really teach yourself a new skill.” (Tanya Bush, 13:06)

• Bush hopes her book affirms: “it’s not going to be this easy, linear journey... there are ways to think about rescuing a mistaken pastry. And you can always try again.” (13:31)

Addressing Baking Anxiety

[13:45–14:51]

• Many home cooks feel paralyzed by baking’s reputation for rigidity. Bush encourages creative flexibility:

  “There are, of course, technical demands and certain rules... But within the margins, I think there’s a lot of room for play and experimentation.” (Tanya Bush, 14:18)

• She suggests bakers “insert your own palette into a pastry recipe” (14:38).

A Misguided “Eat, Pray, Love” in Italy — and Valuable Lessons

[14:51–16:37]

• Bush recounts her disappointing internship at a Tuscan agriturismo:

  “I was less interested in this sort of 10 component, fastidious, little perfect pavlova. I realized that I loved the slightly messier and the more informal and the things that are delicious and hearty and homey, but are not meant to be served on a fine china platter.” (15:59)

• This formative failure taught her to prefer rustic baking and honest flavors over perfectionism.

Professional vs. Home Baking

[16:37–18:10]

• As a pastry chef, Bush navigates the tension between large-scale, consistent production and the personal, intuitive pleasure of home baking.
• At work, “everything should look the same, everything should be consistent.” At home, “I just want something, like, easy and delicious that’s going to make other people happy.” (Tanya Bush, 17:42)

Advice for Her Younger Self

[18:10–19:21]

• Looking back, Bush would urge her younger self:

  “Keep playing and trust your own instincts... applying yourself to something, trying to learn something new is in and of itself a success.” (Tanya Bush, 18:29)

• She hopes this ethos—“there’s no one linear right path... trust yourself, trust your own curiosity and interest”—comes through in her book and her life.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Who wouldn’t want the magical thing that is your introduction to Joy?”
  — Michael Zurban, on the allure of The Talisman of Happiness (03:46)

• “Ada was just like us. She needed to put food on the table.”
  — Michael Zurban (07:17)

• “It feels like I’ve got my own grandmother whispering to me in the background.”
  — Michael Zurban, on connecting across generations through Ada Boni’s recipes (07:36)

• “The first version is rarely the right one. And it takes work to make anything meaningful...”
  — Tanya Bush (13:06)

• “I realized that I loved the slightly messier and the more informal and the things that are delicious and hearty and homey, but are not meant to be served on a fine china platter.”
  — Tanya Bush (15:59)

• “Just applying yourself to something, trying to learn something new is in and of itself a success.”
  — Tanya Bush (18:32)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Classic Italian Cookbooks & Ada Boni’s Legacy: 02:09–03:35
• The Challenge of Translation & Publication: 03:35–05:10
• Recipes, Surprises & Modern Lessons: 06:14–07:48
• Power of Italian Cooking: 08:56–09:34
• Baking as Catharsis – Tanya Bush’s Journey: 11:35–13:45
• Facing Failure & Learning to Bake: 13:45–15:20
• Baking in Italy Gone Awry: 14:51–16:37
• Professional vs. Home Baking: 16:37–18:10
• Advice to the Younger Self: 18:10–19:21

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Tone and Style

The episode flows with a warm, thoughtful, and occasionally humorous tone, encouraging listeners to see both food and growth as ongoing, imperfect journeys. Guests are candid, relatable, and generous in sharing not just their expertise but the missteps that got them there. The joy in the kitchen, as on the page, can be found in experimentation, resourcefulness, and heart.

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Transcript

[Tin Bidermias]

Hello there. It's NPR's Book of the Day. I'm tinpidermias Today, two cookbooks that are a real treat. In a moment, we'll hear about baking as catharsis. But first, a classic. The Talisman of Happiness, the most iconic Italian cookbook ever written, was first published in 1929. It was written by Otto Bony and as the title suggests, it's a canonical work, but until now hadn't been translated into English. That is, until book publisher Michael Zurban got to work on making it happen. He tells All Things Considered host Juana Summers about that process and some of his favorite recipes from the book.

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[Juana Summers]

about classic wedding gifts, what comes to mind? A lot of them revolve around food, a new set of dishes, tablecloths, maybe a stand mixer or various other kitchen appliances. Well, in Italy for many years, throughout the 20th century, a classic cookbook published in 1929 was among the most common wedding gifts. The book is called Il tell talismano della Felicita, or the Talisman of Happiness. And now, for the first time, this classic Italian cookbook has been translated in full into English. That is thanks to the efforts of Michael Zurban, a publisher at Voracious. This new edition of Talisman of Happiness was published in October, and Michael Zurban is with us now. Hi there.

[Michael Zurban]

Hi there. Thank you so much for having me.

[Juana Summers]

Thanks for being here, Michael. First, start by telling us who wrote this cookbook and how did it become so popular in Italy?

[Michael Zurban]

Wow. The person who wrote the book was named Ada Boni, and she was born in the 1880s in Rome, and she is, I think, the most important forgotten culinary icon in Italian cooking history. She was the first person to go out and catalog all of the different regional Italian recipes from all over Italy, which had just been unified as one country only 20 years before she was born. And then she turned it into this magical cookbook that told you how to play the symphony of Italian cuisine from just a few simple notes, the simple ingredients she had on hand.

[Juana Summers]

When did you first hear about this book?

[Michael Zurban]

I first heard about this book about 12 years ago. I was working on another book at the time, a book called Salt Fat, Acid Heat by Samin Nusrat. And we were talking about Pesto when she mentioned that she had heard of this book that was in everybody's kitchens that she learned from in Italy when she was over there learning to cook. And something about that title just stuck with the Talisman of Happiness. Who wouldn't want the magical thing that is your introduction to Joy? At first, I just wanted to get a copy of it for myself, but the more that I dug into it, the more I realized there was a whole story that wasn't being told to American cooks.

[Juana Summers]

Publishing the English translation of this cookbook took you more than a decade. Take us on that journey. Why did it take so long?

[Michael Zurban]

Well, usually when you want to acquire a book, there's a. An easy path to it. There's a publisher that you can call up, there's a descendant that you could lightly Internet stalk. You can try to find a person to get the rights to publish it. I tried to do that, but at every turn, it seemed like I was hitting a dead end. It was a very difficult challenge to try to capture this. And so I spent years Google translating scripts and dialing random numbers internationally, trying to find the right way to find the people who could actually help me publish this in English. Then finally, I had a breakthrough about eight or nine years in with a British packager, which is like a book producer who knew a guy who knew a guy who knew a guy and managed to unlock the whole thing for us. Eight translators, and a few more years later, we've got the book.

[Juana Summers]

I mean, I am holding this book in my hands. In our studio. And it is a massive tome. So many different, diverse recipes. Michael, what were some of the challenges that came came with translating a cookbook that was Originally published nearly 100 years ago.

[Michael Zurban]

You know, it wasn't as challenging as you might think because the recipes are so simple and so good and so resonant. We did cut a few things that were completely irrelevant to the home cook today, but we kept almost everything else. It's almost 2,000 recipes in total, and it's the framework for all of Italian cooking. So you've got the big classics, your ragu bolognese, a bunch of different lasagnas, 19 different kinds of risotto, 12 minestrone. But there's also stuff that I had never heard of before, and those were the dishes that I thought were the most difficult to make sure that we were getting right. We wanted to translate the book, but we wanted to keep it in its original voice. That was important to us and to the descendants in Adeboni's family. We wanted it to have her magic in it.

[Juana Summers]

I mean, there are so many incredible recipes in this book. One thing I'd love to know is, were there any that surprised you after you tried them for the first time after discovering them in this book?

[Michael Zurban]

What surprised me was how modern this cooking felt and how many sacred cows about Italian cuisine that I had received were actually just not present in ada's book from 100 years ago. For instance, there is a risotto. She calls it risotto with seven flavors, that you actually bake in the oven. You're not standing in front of the stove, stirring it endlessly for 30 minutes. You bake this risotto in the oven. Then you pour on this interesting sauce of milk and mascarpone cheese and parmigiano and rehydrated dried mushrooms and prosciutto and a couple of other things. And then you stir it all together once at the end, and you serve it. And it's the most magnificent feast style dish, but it is almost entirely hands off. I thought that there were so many things in Italian cooking that they had to be a certain way, and they're great that way, whether you're stirring the risotto or making your lasagna a certain way. But Ada was just like us. She needed to put food on the table. The time when she was writing was a moment of great transformation in Italian society. And people had the same challenges that we do today. They were busy. They needed to be economical. They didn't want to waste things. And so when I'm cooking from one of these recipes. It feels like I've got my own grandmother whispering to me in the background, telling me how to just add just a little bit more to make it taste good.

[Juana Summers]

Michael, I wonder, do you have a favorite recipe out of this cookbook?

[Michael Zurban]

Yes, I would say my favorite recipe out of this book is something called zuppa aqua cotta, and that translates literally as cooked water soup. And it's my favorite for a couple of reasons. One, aquacotta was one of the first real Italian recipes, like Italian from Italy, that I cooked when I was just learning to cook in my teens. It was a recipe from Lidia Bastianich, who wrote the foreword to this book. And so I feel a deep connection to it. But the other reason why I love this dish is because it shows how a good cook can make something out of nothing. Adeboni's recipe begins just with onions, tomatoes, and a big handful of mint. And it is incredible. I love it so much. It is so simple and yet so beguiling and good. And you, of course, can take it somewhere else. You could add arugula instead of the mint. You could add fewer onions and more tomatoes. You could poach an egg in it if you wanted. But the lesson for me is that if you start somewhere and you point yourself in the right direction, you can get there.

[Juana Summers]

I mean, Italian food is so popular all over the world. So many of us, including myself, absolutely love it. What do you think it is about Italian cooking that is so widely appealing?

[Michael Zurban]

I think it's that all of the notes that you can build a song with are so clear. And so when you put them together, the music sounds good no matter how you're arranging them. It's simple, it's clear, it's uncomplicated, and it's something that any of us can do. Technique is important. Ingredients are important. But the main thing is cooking with heart, and anybody can do that.

[Juana Summers]

Publisher Michael Zurban talking with us about the first full English translation of the classic Italian cookbook, the Talisman of Happiness. Michael, thank you.

[Michael Zurban]

Thank you so much.

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[Tin Bidermias]

Up next, Will this make you happy? By Tanya Bush. It's a cookbook all about baking, but was developed at a time in Bush's life that was pretty tough. So she took to baking and learned a lot about herself in the process. She tells All Things Considered Jose Detrow all about it.

[Jose Detrow]

During a gray New York winter during the height of the pandemic, Tanya Bush was depressed. The present, the future, everything felt bleak. At the time, she was in her early 20s, unemployed and living in Brooklyn with no idea what to do next. She barely had enough motivation to get out of bed, let alone plan her life. So Bush turned to something that had made her feel good when she was a kid, baking, even though she hadn't baked anything in years.

[Tanya Bush]

I was just sort of desperate. Anything that I could possibly make, I wanted to make. And I turned to the kitchen. I tried to make this almond cake and it doesn't go exactly as planned. It goes awry. And I think that's kind of rare in cookbooks to see, you know, the first instance of baking turn out to be, you know, this sort of humiliation, this massive failure.

[Jose Detrow]

You wrote it in such a succinct way. I deem it a failure. I feel like a failure. It thumps like lead as I slide it into the trash.

[Tanya Bush]

I can still feel it all these years later.

[Jose Detrow]

In her new cookbook, Will this Make youe Happy? Tanya Bush writes about her experiences and recipes during a year of baking and self discovery that eventually led to her current position as pastry chef at Little Egg in Brooklyn. I asked her how she learned to deal with all those failures.

[Tanya Bush]

A lot of the cookbooks that I was, you know, consuming while I was teaching myself how to bake were these beautiful glossy tomes that are really offering this, like perfect finished product. And that was just so different than the experience that I was having. And I think that one of the things I really learned in both sort of writing and in baking, the first version is rarely the right one. And it takes work to make anything meaningful and to really teach yourself a new skill. And I think that I wanted to articulate in this book that it's not going to be this easy, linear journey. And I think that's true of life, right? That the cake might crater in the center or the madeleines will have weird pockmarks, and that's okay. And there are ways to think about rescuing a mistaken pastry. And you can always try again.

[Jose Detrow]

I'm probably not alone in this. I'm sure lots of people say this to you, but I love cooking. I have a very hard to quiet mind and I find it to be a relaxing thing to do because there's so much motion. But baking intimidates me. And I just look at a baking recipe and I'm paralyzed by the exactness of it and the complexity of it. What do you say to people who kind of have that paralysis feeling when they're like, I love the idea of eating a creme brulee, but making it seems terrifying?

[Tanya Bush]

I do think that there's this anxiety that, like, baking is all chemistry and science and if you don't adhere to the recipe exactly right, it's going to fail. And my experience is that there are, of course, technical demands and certain rules to adhere to. We know what it looks like to beat your butter and sugar together until it's fluffy, or what does dairy look like when it's simmering? But within the margins, I think there's a lot of room for play and experimentation. There are a lot of ways to insert your own palette into a pastry recipe that already exists when it comes

[Jose Detrow]

to embracing the failure. I want to talk about one particular part of the book that I'm sure was not really fun to live through, but is a really entertaining read. This is when you go to Italy for this internship that you're at first really excited about. This seems like an opportunity, especially during the pandemic, to get out in the world to start testing and learning and maybe, you know, begin your journey to becoming a professional baker. And that is not quite what happened. Tell us about this experience.

[Tanya Bush]

Yeah, it was sort of a misguided attempt to have my own Eat, Pray, Love experience and it went awry. I, yeah, was like, very hungry to learn in a professional setting. You know, before I started working in bakeries in New York, you know, I wanted to travel. I wanted to be steeped in the tradition of Italian pastry. And it turned out to be, you know, very different than what I had anticipated. It was a agriturismo in Italy that was very much sort of serving a Taurus palate. It was very persnickety tweezered fare. And unfortunately, I had sort of a little bit of a failure at the beginning of the internship, and they really were not interested in having me bake. And it was actually really a formative experience for me because it taught me a lot about the kinds of pastry that I didn't want. I was less interested in this sort of 10 component, fastidious, little perfect pavlova. I realized that I loved the slightly messier and the more informal and the things that are delicious and hearty and homey, but are not meant to be served on a fine china platter.

[Jose Detrow]

Tweezered fare is such a specific insult. I really appreciate it. To that end, can you tell me how you think about when you're professionally baking and when you're baking at home for joy and how both of those things ideally should influence each other a little bit more? What you take from one to the other when everything's going well?

[Tanya Bush]

Yeah. So I'm the pastry chef at Little Egg, which is the community restaurant, and Prospect Heights. And, you know, there I'm thinking a lot about scaling things up for production. And, you know, we're making hundreds of crullers a week and cinnamon rolls and brioche buns, but it is, you know, it's institutionalized baking, right? It's. Everything should look the same, Everything should be consistent and taste the same. But when I'm baking at home for myself, I'm really getting in touch with what I'm hungry for. And I think that, you know, the reality is that I bake a lot less at home because I have made baking my job, right? And it has fundamentally changed my relationship to the nature of pleasure in baking. And so when I do feel hungry to get into my own kitchen, I'm really thinking about, like, simple things that come together pretty quickly. I'm thinking about what I want to bring to people who I love and who I'm in community with. You know, a simple sense of spoon cake, a delicious sort of, like, shortcake moment with a quick whipped cream. I'm not gonna spend a ton of time. I just want something, like, easy and delicious that's going to make other people happy.

[Jose Detrow]

Writing a book like this is a little bit like mental time travel. What would you tell your 20202021 self if you could reach through time and get a message to 2021? You trying to figure out how to bake and trying to figure out what to do with your life from this vantage point, given all this success, I

[Tanya Bush]

would tell her to keep playing and to trust her own instincts. I think that there was a lot of moaning and groaning and worrying and wishing and I think at a lot of junctures I wondered if I was on the right path. And I think now I can say in retrospect, you know, there was no one linear right path. But just applying yourself to something, trying to learn something new is in and of itself a success. And you know, I hope that that ethos sort of comes through in the book and more generally comes through in living and in life, that you have no idea how things are going to unfurl and you've got to make some mistakes along the way in order to actualize it and trust yourself, trust your own curiosity and interest.

[Jose Detrow]

That is Tanya Bush, author of the new cookbook and memoir Will this Make youe Happy? Thank you so much for talking to us.

[Tanya Bush]

Thank you so much for having me.

[Tin Bidermias]

That's it for this week on NPR's Book of the Day. Let us know what you think. You can write to [e-mail] I'm Tin Bidermias. The podcast is produced by Chloe Weiner and edited by Megan Sullivan. Our founding editor is Petra Mayer. The show elements for this week were produced and edited by Emiko Tamagawa, Todd Mund, Ryan Bank, Ed McNulty, Elena Tuarek, Samantha Balaban, Melissa Gray, Gabe O', Connor, Fernando Nero Roman, William Troup, Daniel Offman, Alaina Burnett and Jeanette Woods. Yolanda Sanguine is our executive producer. Thank you so much for listening.

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