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While it's true that you won't find published Carbonara recipes pre dating 1952, the Lazio region has had for centuries pasta dishes based on the same ingredien
by epolanski 4mo ago
While it's true that you won't find published Carbonara recipes pre dating 1952, the Lazio region has had for centuries pasta dishes based on the same ingredients. And they are thoroughly documented.
Both gricia and amatriciana, too other famous pasta dishes from the same region use the same cheese (pecorino) and guanciale. In fact carbonara is nothing more than a gricia with egg yolks.
It just makes no sense to have parmiggiano or french cheese in a recipe coming from a region that did not have these ingredients in the first place and are not part of its culinary history.
And thus the point of authenticity is into rooting where the recipe originated with local ingredients.
Anybody's free to change the recipe all they want, but to call it carbonara when ingredients don't match is misleading the customer expecting a roman dish with roman ingredients.
- fluoridation 4mo agoThe point of a word is to convey meaning with a short string of sounds. The meaning of a word referring to a dish would normally describe the taste of the dish and what it's made of in general terms, because as you've pointed out, recipes are subject to individual variation. To say that a restaurant should not serve a dish called "carbonara" made with French cheese to me sounds similar to saying that an Italian carpenter should not sell a mahogany table and call it "tavolo in legno", because they don't grow mahogany in Italy. Who cares where the ingredients come from if the dish tastes good?
- cwnyth 4mo agoGreat analogy. Why is it only food that gets this treatment? Are Italian clothes only made from Italian fabrics, grown from Italian plants? Is every part of an Italian car sourced and made completely within Italy? But people have an irrational desire treat food as some sacred, immutable artifact.
- epolanski 4mo ago[dead]
- ciupicri 4mo agoBecause not all cheese is the same.
- fluoridation 4mo agoYour point being?
- ciupicri 4mo agoThe cheese you'll find in a typical French store or village will probably not be the kind required to make carbonara.
- fluoridation 4mo agoI had no idea the Italian government had regulations on what ingredients may be used to make "carbonara". /s
- epolanski 4mo ago[dead]
- tptacek 4mo agoBut pasta alla gricia only gets you back to the 1920s; I think the one Roman pasta that goes back centuries (and is in the same clade as carbonara) is cacio e pepe.
- asveikau 4mo agoIronically Italians criticize Americans for non-authentic "Alfredo sauce" but that has its origins in Rome in roughly the same early 20th century time period.
- epolanski 4mo agoDo they? I don't think anybody cares about fettuccine Alfredo in Italy, it's not something you will find on restaurant menus or that people cook at home. In 40 years I've never had it, and I'm a Rome citizen. I'm quite confident most Italians don't even know what's in the recipe besides maybe hearing there's butter. I did try a month ago to go to the original Alfredo restaurant near via del corso, but the queue and prices (28€ for the pasta alone is crazy) made me go to the restaurant literally on the other side of the street. It was quite clearly a tourist trap.
- asveikau 4mo agoYes, this is what I mean. They deny that Alfredo is Italian. But it's from Rome. It's just no longer popular with Romans.