Cookbook editor extraordinaire Maria Guarnaschelli has died

Legendary editor Maria Guarnaschelli, whose canon includes influential cookbooks, nonfiction titles, and works of literature, died on Saturday, February 6, from complications of heart disease, according to her daughter, chef and Food Network television personality Alex Guarnaschelli. She was 79 years old.

You may find one of your favorite cookbooks among the many Guarnaschelli edited during her 40+ year career: she shepherded the 1997 revision of The Joy of Cooking, J. Kenji López-Alt’s The Food Lab, Judy Rodgers’ The Zuni Café Cookbook, Rose Levy Beranbaum’s The Cake Bible, and The Food of Southern Italy, which she co-authored with Carlo Middione.

W.W. Norton chairman and president Julia Reidhead described Guarnaschelli as “brilliant; exuberant; a stunning reader; laser-like in spotting quality or falsity.” In a Facebook post, cookbook writer Rick Rodgers said she was “one of the major forces in cookbook publishing,” and that she had “Big emotions, big ideas and she acted on them.”