Marcella Hazan lived an improbably eventful life. An immigrant woman trained as a scientist, she never set foot in a kitchen until she married and moved to America in the 1950s. A childhood injury had left her with an injured right arm, a challenge for the physical work of food preparation. But before long, she was not only preparing the Italian dishes she remembered from home, but writing the definitive cookbooks that introduced millions of Americans to the glories of authentic Italian cuisine. The New York Times wrote that “the impact Mrs. Hazan had on the way America cooks Italian food is impossible to overstate.” Julia Child called her “my mentor in all things Italian.” As uncompromising as she was beloved, her influence went beyond cooking: “These were elemental truths that was telling us,” one former student notes, “it wasn’t just how to make dinner.”
This timeline explores Marcella Hazan’s life and the major milestones in her career.
EARLY LIFE
Marcella Polini is born on April 15, 1924 in Cesenatico, Italy, a seaside town in the province of Emilia-Romagna.
At seven years old, Marcella is injured on a beach in Alexandria, Egypt, where her family has moved. Surgeries in Bologna, Italy save her arm, but leave her with a lifelong disability.
Marcella relocates with her family to Lake Garda in hopes of escaping World War II.
Marcella completes dual doctorates in the natural sciences and biology at the University of Ferrara. She teaches science at a teachers’ college in Rimini.
MARRIAGE TO VICTOR HAZAN
Marcella marries Victor Hazan, an Italian-born American man whose Jewish family had fled Italy for New York City in the late 1930s, and who had temporarily returned to Italy in the early 1950s.
Marcella relocates with Victor to New York, where the couple lives in Forest Hills, Queens and eventually Manhattan. Marcella learns to cook for the first time, tapping into taste memories from her life in Italy, but with the limited ingredients available in the U.S. at that time.
Giuliano Hazan, Marcella and Victor’s only child, is born.
Marcella, Victor and Giuliano relocate to Italy—first to Milan, then Rome—where Victor gets work for American advertising agencies. Marcella shops and cooks with authentic Italian ingredients for the first time.
TEACHING COOKING CLASSES
The family returns to New York. Marcella enrolls in a Chinese cooking class with cookbook author/teacher Grace Zia Chu. Madame Chu drops out of teaching the class and fellow students ask Marcella to teach them Italian cuisine instead. She starts to give classes in her Manhattan apartment.
Craig Claiborne, food editor of The New York Times, learns of the class, visits Marcella at home for lunch and writes a half-page article about the experience. Her cooking classes become well-known, and Harpers Magazine Press proposes a cookbook. Marcella resists, because she could not write in English. But Victor, Harvard-educated and an able writer, offers to translate and they complete a manuscript in a year.
PUBLISHING HER FIRST BOOK
Harpers Magazine Press publishes “The Classic Italian Cook Book,” which is enthusiastically reviewed but sells modestly. The Hazans reach out to Julia Child, who admires the book and introduces Marcella to Judith Jones, the great food editor at Alfred A. Knopf.
Knopf reissues “The Classic Italian Cook Book” and it becomes a hit. Marcella writes and publishes “More Classic Italian Cooking” in 1978, followed by “Marcella’s Italian Kitchen.”
Marcella begins leading cooking classes in Bologna, where she could introduce her students to great Italian ingredients. Celebrities (including Burt Lancaster, Danny Kaye, and Peter Boyle) attend her classes and Marcella’s profile rises as culinary star. She appears regularly as a guest on television (Good Morning America, The Today Show, etc.).
MOVING TO VENICE
Marcella and Victor buy an ancient palazzo in Venice, fix it up and move in by 1982. She moves her cooking classes from Bologna to Venice, with waiting lists of Americans eager to spend a week in her kitchen. The Hazans live and teach in Venice for nearly two decades.
With sales of her first two books declining, Victor and Marcella propose a new volume combining the two books and updating the recipes. Editor Judith Jones is dubious, but when “Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking” is published, it becomes a best seller. The Hazans and Jones have a falling out over whether to submit the book for a James Beard Award, which it goes on to win. After years of collaboration and friendship with Jones, Marcella leaves Knopf.
A bidding war leads to HarperCollins commissioning Marcella’s next book, “Marcella Cucina,” which garners the largest advance for a cookbook to date.
With advancing age and health challenges, Marcella and Victor move to Longboat Key, Florida to escape the physical rigors of living in Venice, and to be near their son Giuliano and his family.
LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD
Marcella receives a Lifetime Achievement Award from the James Beard Foundation, her seventh James Beard Award.
Marcella is knighted by the President of Italy.
Marcella publishes a new cookbook, “Marcella Says.”
Marcella publishes a memoir, “Amarcord.” She continues to teach, write and appear on television.
Marcella dies on September 29, 2013, in Longboat Key, at the age of 89. Her final book, completed posthumously and her first to credit Victor as a co-writer, is “Ingredienti,” an appreciation of essential Italian ingredients.
The Smithsonian Museum of American History acquires Marcella’s recipe notebooks and cooking tools for its permanent collection.
