I really enjoyed this. It reminded me of a talk I heard in Turin between two Italian scholars about the "traditional" or un-traditional character of what tends to be seen as the canon of Italian food. They agreed that like most active national traditions it was a recent invention built on relatively recent technological innovations. Equally I recall my late Italian father-in-law never choosing anything except "zuppa di giorno" [soup of the day] while in England. He was the same generation as my parents and only yesterday I published something reminiscing about how times have changed in England https://medium.com/promptly-written/whats-cooking-7958452d8eb8?sk=c8772e97db098d4414c65988fc5e61fd

Thanks again.