An essay claiming carbonara’s American ancestry has sparked outrage in Italy and increased interest in the United States. But where did the famed meal originate, and why do people care so much about it?
“Right now, we can’t talk about anything else,” wrote my pal, a foreign affairs reporter in Rome. She wasn’t discussing politics, but rather pasta carbonara. A few minutes after she sent her message, a New York writer acquaintance told me he was being flown to Rome right away to look into the matter.
On the same day that Italy submitted its cuisine for inclusion on Unesco’s list of Intangible Cultural Heritage, the Financial Times published an article in which Italian food expert Alberto Grandi claimed that carbonara was invented by Americans living in Italy shortly after WWII. The article’s assertions sparked outrage throughout Italy. “A surrealist assault!”
criticised the agricultural organisation Coldiretti, while the country weighed in on a heated social media debate. Why is everyone so invested in this? And who created the original carbonara?
“It was a combination of Italian genius and American resources,” argues Eleonora Cozzella, an Italian cuisine author. She spent six years documenting National Carbonara Day on April 6th, and eventually wrote The Perfect Carbonara, which earned a Gourmand World Cookbook Award in 2020. Its name is a play on words, because in the case of carbonara, perfection is difficult, if not impossible.
criticised the agricultural organisation Coldiretti, while the country weighed in on a heated social media debate. Why is everyone so invested in this? And who created the original carbonara?
“It was a combination of Italian genius and American resources,” argues Eleonora Cozzella, an Italian cuisine author. She spent six years documenting National Carbonara Day on April 6th, and eventually wrote The Perfect Carbonara, which earned a Gourmand World Cookbook Award in 2020. Its name is a play on words, because in the case of carbonara, perfection is difficult, if not impossible. She included the recipe for the restaurant’s famous dish, carbonara.
Lencioni was born in America to Italian parents and grew up in Tuscany before returning to the United States when he was 18. His carbonara was made with Tuscan, not Roman, components such as tagliarini (Lucca’s wide egg tagliatelle), mezzina (a Tuscan bacon), Parmigiano, and eggs. Pietro’s wanderings don’t help in determining the paternity of this pasta dish.
No one has a trademark on the recipe. Honestly, I don’t care who invented it
“No one has a trademark on the recipe,” says Alessandro Pipero, chef at the Michelin-starred Pipero in Rome and one of the carbonara’s monarchs. “To be honest, I don’t care who invented it,” he says.
Pipero is more concerned with other aspects of the guanciale (cured pork cheek), such as the “extreme browning” of the meat on a cast-iron skillet. As the fat renders, he spoons part of the molten liquid away. The lean component of the meat eventually caramelises and turns into “popcorn guanciale”: crispy on the exterior and tender on the inside.
[fast forward to Pipero’s recipe]
Because he only uses egg yolks – one every 60g of pasta – his carbonara is exceptionally yellow.
He combines it with pecorino cheese, pepper, and part of the rendered fat from the guanciale to make a savoury zabaione. (an Italian custard). The finishing touch: instead of returning the pasta and egg mixture to the burner, he warms it up using the bain-marie technique (putting it over a heated water bath rather than direct heat), so that it does not “cook” but instead becomes creamy. He gradually adds more liquid fat, finishing with the crispy guanciale. “That’s significant,” he remarked. “It becomes soft if you add it before.” He tops it with pecorino and black pepper.
If we’re still splitting hairs about the dish’s origins, the first Italian recipe for carbonara was published in August 1954 in La Cucina Italiana magazine. “And it’s a strange one,” Cozzella continues. “It contains parsley and even gruyere cheese!” It’s as though they were aware of it but had no idea what they were writing about.”
“This debate is ridiculous and dangerous,” Michele Fino, a law professor at Pollenzo’s University of Gastronomic Sciences, said, calling it “old news.” Grandi originally discussed the origins of carbonara in his 2018 book Denominazione di origine inventata, and his argument is backed up by author Luca Cesari in his 2021 cookbook The Discovery of Pasta:
Ten Courses of History. According to Fino, the discussion is harmful because a toxic type of nationalism may be lurking between the pecorino and a piece of guanciale, or perhaps deep inside the tubular rigatoni. “It’s a kind of banal nationalism that pervades food,” he explains. “People dismiss it as unimportant, but it creates a climate that we should not ignore.”
Fino, who adores Dario Bressanini’s Scientific Carbonara recipe because “the eggs stay runny,” believes that Italians are overly “obsessed” with their origins, basing their identity on a set of incontrovertible truths about food that are supposed to be ancient, thus sacred. And some of these pillars are unstable. When it comes to carbonara, for example, Italians can be draconian, declaring that adding heavy cream is a blasphemy. Gualtiero Marchesi, known as the “Father of Modern Italian Cuisine,” would add 250ml of heavy cream to 300g of spaghetti less than 40 years ago, a concept that still sends shivers down the spines of Italian foodies today.
So, why are we so concerned? For the Italians,
Food is about love and caring. Cozzella, who prefers Arcangelo Dandini’s carbonara dish, which leaves the pepper on the side, reminded me that if a loved one calls around midday, the first question is always about food: “Did you eat?” And conflicts at the dinner table are common in Italian households. The age-old question: Do you salt the water before or after it begins to boil? Can mayonnaise be added to rice salads? Can you sweeten the tomato sauce if it tastes too acidic? And, of course, who will determine whether the pasta is al dente? Nobody wants to do that; no one wants the responsibility. Food is ultimately the domain of the mom, and for Italians – especially males – mamma is always the final authority whom you must never challenge.