Structured like a cookbook, the autobiographical novel Casalinghitudine (1987) by Clara Sereni uses food preparation, consumption, and preservation as a narrative mechanism to reflect on the protagonist’s journey towards self-awareness and gender and ethnic identity formation. The highly subjective nature of this text is immediately obvious in several ways, such as the assertive tone of the recipes through the predominance of the agent ‘I’ and the overall organization of the book that unusually starts with a section on baby food. Drawing on feminist and clinical theory, I discuss in the present article how Sereni uses and organizes the recipes of her autobiographical narrative in a way that suggests strong agency and an obsessive need to regain control over her personal history. This obsession over control reminds us of the reasonings given by many anorectics for their eating disorder. In Sereni’s autobiographical novel Casalinghitudine, I maintain that food preparation, consumption, and preservation helps the narrator to eventually reaffirm her subjectivity as a mother, wife, woman, and intellectual, beyond the overwhelming influence of her father, and to reconnect with her Jewish roots.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.15781/8mys-fc51