You’re likely to know by now that food in Italy is a serious matter, almost a religion, but you may not have known that it’s to the extent that true cults exist across the country, dedicated not only to saints, but to cuisine. Here in Italy, there are fraternities devoted to worshiping specific recipes or ingredients, complete with initiation rites, oaths, and ceremonial attire.

Academics of cod, brothers of polenta, devotees of ossobuco, and staunch defenders of the rotisserie; between revelry and preservation of national gastronomic heritage, from the Alps to Sicily, each region boasts its food-obsessed confederations.