The secret is out, everyone loves the Italy in Bocca cardboard cookbook series. Lot’s and lot’s of people are asking us how to find and buy this amazing cookbook series. No, we don’t sell them, we really have nothing to do with them other then we love them, so, we’ll share of a few secrets on how we pieced together two complete collections.

First off, you can expect to pay anywhere from 50 to 500 dollars per book. This obviously has to deal with the condition of the book (they are made out of cardboard which is wild) and how rare the particular volume is (some were way more popular then others). If you are lucky enough to find a complete set you can expect to pay anywhere from 4 to 10 thousand dollars. If you can find a complete set.

With prices in mind, there are lots of ways to suss these beautiful books out. Here are the top three places we’ve had the most success:

1. Contact Us!
   We’re always happy to help people find and buy books from the series Italy In Bocca. We get lots of requests and either have extra copies we’ll be willing to let go of or know of sellers in the community we can get you connected to. Emailing us is the easiest and fastest way to get in touch.

2. Amazon/Ebay

   Amazon and Ebay is a great place to start, as there a lot of these books floating around still in pretty good condition. Some editions are easier to find then others (Tuscany, Rome, Sicily for example) and others like Trieste and Valle D’Aosta are rare, but it’s a great place to start collecting.

3. Specialist Booksellers

   If you are looking for a specific volume then it might be a great idea to contact a bookseller who will do the difficult legwork of tracking down your cookbook. There are a few we have had great success with, like Abebooks, Rebelaise Books, and Margherita Marandino who helped us track down some of the more obscure books like this additional 3 from Sicily that seem to have been produced out of nowhere.

4. Ebay … Italy.

   This is a bit of a hack, but Ebay.it has a lot more of these books then you would think and the prices are generally much lower then in the United States. Whats the rub? Well you got to get them to you in the States if you don’t live in Italy. So for us a work-a-round is having the books shipped to my cousin in Rome, and shipping them bulk to us. Thank God for family.

It is possible to find complete sets for sale but this is a unicorn in the wild, and usually are ridiculously expensive, and lets face it, not nearly as fun as collecting them individually. Beside, these are rich, profound cookbooks, and while you find a new one, the old one will definitely give you enough to go through. It can take months to fully explore one volume of these books, so slow your roll;)

There are a few things to keep in mind that we’ve found while collecting:

1. There are two official editions.

   The original was published by Il Vespro beginning in 1976 and features an illustration of usually a character with some sort of a plate of food. The second edition was Edikronos with more cartoonish covers, and we’ve even found a third publisher called Gulliver that produces some sort of knock-off variety. While the reprints are all faithful to the original, only the Il Vespro first editions are worth a substantial amount of money.

2. None are “perfect”

   These books were published almost half a century ago and are made of cardboard and recycled oatmeal paper. Any book that old will feature some sort of wear and tear, but a cookbook made of paper is particularly susceptible. So expect the quality of your book to vary greatly, usually effecting the price, and at all costs keep them away from grease and the kitchen sink!

3. There are 3 secret books.

   Yeah. Secret books. Three of them! They are all from Sicily and while they say they are published by Il Vespro, we could not find them in the “official” catalog. What’s weirder is while they all follow the same style and format as the other cookbooks, these three books deal in extra-culinary topics. Sapore di Siciliano deals in the “tastes” of Sicily, Siciila al Tappo deals with broths, and Erbuario Siciliano deals with herbal remedies.

We’re not chefs, but we love to cook, and we love cookbooks in general. Personally we find them a great way to explore a country, especially in these days when travel is difficult. Cookbooks don’t ever age, and if you can look deep into the recipes, and have books as special as In Bocca that give you so much more culturally then just recipes, you get a sense for a country unlike any other way. If you don’t believe us, then you obviously haven’t seen the short film we made about these beautiful cookbooks.

Rs