The first time Marcella Hazan cooked a full Italian meal, she did it in Forest Hills, Queens. Hazan moved to New York with Victor, her Italian-born American husband, in 1955. She knew no English, but she taught herself the language by watching TV—especially Brooklyn Dodgers games—in their Queens apartment.

It’s also where she taught herself to cook. “I never cooked a day in my life until I was married,” Hazan said. “I never boiled water if it wasn’t in a beaker in the laboratories.” That made no difference: when she started cooking, it came to her as easily “as words come to a child, when it is time for her to speak.”