On this day in 1934, Sophia Loren was born in Rome, and she grew up in Pozzuoli, just along the bay from Naples, through the war and the very thin years that came after it. Ninety-two years ago today, in a city where the flour situation was about to get complicated.

I read her 1971 cookbook the way I read any recipe collection, which is as a primary source with olive oil on it. You can always tell when a cook has known scarcity. It isn't in what they say about the war, it's in the instructions: the stale bread has a job, the cooking water has a job, the tough end of the vegetable has a job, and nothing in the pan is ever told to be discarded. A grandmother's kitchen written down by somebody who remembers exactly how much was in the cupboard. Recipes from Naples generally assume you are clever and a little short, which is my favourite kind of assumption.

The photograph below, five young women walking hand in hand across a sunny lawn in swimsuits and heeled sandals, is from the years when a good lawn and a good smile could move a career along. Somewhere behind all of it, someone was still working out how to stretch the pasta.

I'll take the Neapolitan approach to my Tuesday batch: assume you are short, proceed anyway.