Del Conte was born in 1925 into a prosperous and cultured Milanese family; her father was a stockbroker (which required him to be a member of the Fascist Party) and Anglophile, while her mother, with whom she had a tempestuous relationship, was of ‘good aristocratic stock’. After spending a part of the war years in Emilia-Romagna, the family returned to Milan. Here, having lost most of his money, her father returned to work while she studied history at the University of Milan before moving to England in 1949 to learn English while working as an au pair. There she married and raised a family while engaging in part-time work.

In mid-life she turned to cookery writing. Her first book, Portrait of Pasta, was published in 1976. An adaptation of Marcella Hazan’s Classic Italian Cookbook for a British readership followed and in 1984 The Gastronomy of Italy, an encyclopædic work covering the topic from the Roman period to the present for which she was awarded the Duchessa Maria Luigia di Parma prize. Subsequent books included Entertaining all’Italiana (1991), shortlisted for the André Simon Award, and The Classic Food of Northern Italy (1995) which received the Orio Vergani prize from the Accademia Italiana della Cucina, as well as an award from the Guild of Food Writers. She has also written many articles for Sainsbury’s Magazine, winning a Glenfiddich Award in 1999.

In 2009 she published Risotto with Nettles: A Memoir with Food in which she places her recipes in the context of her memories of a life in Italy and England. Currently, she lives in a barn conversion in a Dorsetshire village.