“Right now, we can’t talk about anything else,” my friend, a foreign affairs journalist in Rome, wrote to me. She wasn’t talking about politics, but about pasta carbonara.
On March 23, at the same time that Italy was proposing its cuisine as a candidate for UNESCO’s Intangible Heritage list, the Financial Times published an article in which Italian gastronomy expert Alberto Grandi stated that carbonara had actually been invented by Americans living in Italy just after World War II.
The claims in the article created quite a stir in Italy. “A surreal attack!” denounced the Coldiretti agricultural association, while the country was engaged in a juicy debate on social networks.
Why is everyone so passionate? And who invented the authentic carbonara?
“It was a combination of Italian genius and American resourcefulness,” explains Italian food writer Eleonora Cozzella.
She spent six years covering National Carbonara Day, which is celebrated on April 6, and ended up writing a book called The Perfect Carbonara, which won a Gourmand World Cookbook Award in 2020.
Its name is ironic, since perfection is difficult to achieve -and even impossible- in the case of this pasta.
The book
Cozzella interviewed the grandchildren of the innkeepers who, in the late 1940s, after World War II, fed American soldiers in the picturesque Trastevere neighborhood, across the Tiber River, in Rome.
The soldiers reportedly ordered a “spaghetti breakfast”: eggs, bacon and pasta. And at that time, even though the country was on its “knees,” Italians could buy military rations on the black market, including bacon from the Americans and powdered egg from the British.
The first carbonara recipe was published in the US in 1952. In Vittles and Vice: An Extraordinary Guide to What’s Cooked Up Near Chicago’s North Side, author Patricia Bronté featured chefs-owned Armando’s Italian restaurant Pietro Lencioni and Armando Lorenzini- among his favorite places. She added the recipe for her signature dish, the carbonara.
Born in the United States to Italian parents, Lencioni grew up in Tuscany but returned to the country before he was 18 years old.
His carbonara had typically Tuscan, not Roman, ingredients: tagliarini (wide egg noodles from Lucca), mezzina (a Tuscan bacon), Parmesan, and eggs.
Pietro’s adventures do not help to find a clear answer about the paternity of this pasta dish.
“No one has a trademark on the recipe,” says Alessandro Pipero, chef at the Michelin-starred Pipero restaurant in Rome and considered one of the kings of carbonara. “Honestly, I don’t care who invented it,” he adds.
Instead, Pipero cares about other things, like the “extreme browning” of guanciale (cured pork cheeks), a process in which he crisps the meat in a cast-iron skillet.
As the fat is consumed, remove some of the melted liquid with a spoon. In the end, the lean part of the meat is caramelized and becomes a kind of “popcorn guanciale”: crunchy on the outside and tender on the inside.
His carbonara has a very yellow color because he only uses egg yolks, one for every 60 g of pasta. He whips it with pecorino cheese, pepper and some of the fat from the guanciale, creating a tasty zabaione (Italian custard).
The final touch: he does not put the pasta with the egg mixture back on the fire, but heats it in a water bath (by placing it over a hot water bath instead of direct heat), so that it does not “cook” but rather come back creamy
Gradually add a little more liquid fat and the crispy guanciale at the end. “It’s important,” she says. “If you add it before, it softens.” She serves it with pecorino cheese and pepper.
a dangerous debate
If we want to continue discussing the origin of the dish, it should be noted that the first Italian recipe for carbonara was published in August 1954 in the magazine La Cucina Italiana.
“And it’s weird,” says Cozzella. “She has parsley and even gruyere as cheese! It is as if they had heard of him but did not know what they were writing about.
“This debate is ridiculous and dangerous,” says Michele Fino, professor of Law at the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Pollenzo, who considers it “old news.”
Grandi first wrote about the origins of carbonara in his 2018 book Denominazione di origine inventata (Invented Appellation of Origin), and his thesis is supported by author Luca Cesari in his cookbook “The Discovery of Pasta: A story in ten plates” from 2021.
According to Fino, the debate is dangerous because, hidden between the pecorino and a piece of guanciale, or perhaps in the depths of tubular rigatoni, a kind of toxic nationalism could lurk.
“It’s a kind of banal nationalism that runs through the food,” he says. “People consider it unimportant, but it creates a certain climate: we shouldn’t ignore it.”
Fino – who loves Dario Bressanini’s scientific Carbonara recipe because “eggs stay soft” – believes that Italians are too “obsessed” with their origins, building their identity around a series of indisputable truths about food, truths that are believed to be ancient, and therefore sacred. And some of these fundamentals are shaky.
For example, Italians can be draconian when it comes to carbonara and say it’s sacrilege to add heavy cream.
But less than 40 years ago, Gualtiero Marchesi, considered the “father of modern Italian cuisine”, added 250 ml of heavy cream to 300 g of spaghetti, an idea that today gives lovers of Italian cuisine the chills.
So why do we worry so much?
The kitchen: the kingdom of mamma
For Italians, food is care and love. Cozzella, who prefers Arcangelo Dandini’s carbonara recipe – which leaves out pepper – recalled that every time a loved one calls at noon, the first question is invariably about the food: “Have you eaten?”
And Italian families often get into arguments around the table. The classic dilemmas: Does the water get salty before or after it starts to boil? Can you add mayonnaise to rice salads? Can you add a little sugar to the tomato sauce if it tastes sour?
And of course, who will taste the pasta to decide if it’s al dente? Nobody wants to do it; They don’t want to have that responsibility.
Ultimately, food is the kingdom of the mamma, and for Italians – especially men – the mamma is always a final authority that cannot be questioned under any circumstances.
A matter of identity
“There’s no question that carbonara’s identity is Italian,” says Cozzella.
We must not confuse the historical journey -which is made of encounters and exchanges- with identity.
Carbonara has changed over time, like all of us. Although the dish may have stemmed from an Italian-American connection, Cozzella says it would be “stretching” to say that the carbonara is American.
Fino seems to agree: “It’s important to know where you come from, but every day you define who you are.”
And while carbonara was invented by non-Italians, it is now unquestionably Roman. This is because the ingredients are quintessentially Roman.
Among them, rigatoni pasta, which is a classic in other Roman dishes such as pajata (veal intestine pasta; guanciale that all families kept hanging in the fireplace, thus gently smoking the meat; and pecorino that was imposed on the other cheeses used in the past for this recipe, giving it its characteristic umami flavor. “It is an absolute delight,” concludes Cozzella.
carbonara recipe
By Alessandro Pipero
(Recipe adapted with permission for BBC’s World’s Table)
For 4-6 people
INGREDIENTS
1 package (500g) pasta
8 egg yolks
1 guanciale cheek cut into cubes
pecorino cheese
Black pepper
Preparation
Step 1
Pour the guanciale into a cast iron skillet and put it on the fire. Fry the guanciale until crisp, skimming off the fat. Collect the melted fat, put it in a bowl and reserve. (It will give an unmistakable flavor to the dish).
Step 2
In a bowl, add the egg yolks and a small ladle of cold water, and mix well with a whisk. Reserve.
Step 3
Fill a pot with water, add salt and bring to a boil. Add the pasta and cook until al dente according to package instructions.
Step 4
Drain the pasta, reserving the cooking water, and put the pasta in the bowl with the egg yolks. Mix, adding small amounts of the reserved cooking water until the desired consistency is obtained. Add the melted fat and the crunchy guanciale.
step 5
Finish with the ground pepper and pecorino cheese.
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