ADA BONI was one of Italy's first and most influential food writers. She founded the food magazine Preziosa with her husband, Enrico, in 1915 and later opened a culinary school in Rome. In 1925, she gauged interest from her readers and students in a cookbook. After five hundred of them committed to buying a copy, Il Talismano della Felicità (The Talisman of Happiness) was born. It has never gone out of print.