If you needed homemade Italian pork sausage in the mid-1950s and happened to be living near Wooster Square, Cavaliere’s Market on Wooster Street was the place to go. It had a balance of spices and herbs so unique that it drew customers from as far away as Massachusetts, and a flavor so tantalizing that, when the market closed in 1999, people would tell owner Emiddio Cavaliere that they could still taste it.

As an alternative, there was the homemade sausage at Gizzi’s Market on St. John Street, where Frank Gizzi “allowed his customers, whom he knew personally, to pay a weekly tab,” as Branford High School teacher Richard Biondi writes in “Gli Italiani de Wooster Square,” his latest installment in a series that brings back to life the vibrant Italian American enclave before redevelopment initiatives in the 1960s left the area a shell of itself.