Exactly two weeks have passed since the publication in the Financial Times of the interview with Alberto Grandi, professor at the University of Parma and food historian. Great uproar and countless reactions, mostly of indignation, for having dared to question the Italian origin of some symbolic recipes of national gastronomy : from Parmigiano to Panettone, from Pizza to Carbonara.

And speaking of Carbonara, what better day to discover some curiosities about one of the most loved dishes on an international level? Indeed, April 6 is Carbonara Day , established in 2017 by the IPO (International Pasta Organization) and the Unione Italiana Food.
Numerous urban legends and false myths gravitate around the origins of this recipe, sometimes very fascinating but often far from reality.
The fact is that there is little reliable information on the history of Carbonara, which certainly is not an ancient dish , but rather looks like a "ufo" dish that suddenly appeared on Italian tables, as defined by Eleonora Cozzella, author of “The perfect Carbonara”.

Up until the Second World War, Carbonara was not mentioned in any recipe book . No trace in "Science in the kitchen and the art of eating well" by Pellegrino Artusi, considered the founder of Italian gastronomic criticism, who lived between 1820 and 1911. Not even in "The little talisman of happiness" by Ada Boni of the 1949, which instead reads the recipe for "Spaghetti with guanciale", which would later take the name of Gricia . Not even the first edition of the famous Italian cookbook “Il Cucchiaio d'argento” (1950) contains references to Carbonara.

The first recipe, in fact, appears in 1952 in the United States , in a guide edited by Patricia Bronté, in which the restaurant "Amando's" in Chicago is reviewed, which proposes a dish in which the protagonists are the same as the Carbonara.
In Italy, the recipe was published for the first time in 1954 in the magazine "La Cucina Italiana" . But it's not the Carbonara we know today, the ingredients mentioned are: spaghetti, egg, bacon, gruyere and garlic .

The following year, Felix Dessì published "The lady in the kitchen", which contains a recipe closer to today's one, made with eggs, pepper, bacon and parmesan , which can be replaced with pecorino. In 1960 pork jowls arrived , replacing bacon and accompanying cream , present (in abundance) until the 1980s. Maestro Gualtiero Marchesi himself in 1989 recommended preparing Carbonara using a quarter of a liter of cream for 400 grams of spaghetti . During the 1990s, the triad currently accepted by Carbonara purists took hold: egg (mainly yolk), bacon and pecorino with the more or less abundant addition of pepper .

If it is true that the origin of a dish can be deduced from recipe books, it is equally true that one wonders how the idea of combining these ingredients came about. A hypothesis as highly plausible as it is fascinating is that linked to the so-called K ration of American soldiers , a concentrate of energy who spoke their home language. It contained dehydrated eggs and bacon (our local guanciale) which together with the pasta and cheese give a preparation very similar to Carbonara.

It is therefore not so outrageous to say that this iconic dish is the result of contaminations, borrowings and crossings masterfully orchestrated by the savoir faire of Italian cuisine. Is this what Alberto Grandi meant? Who knows, what is certain and leaves no room for interpretation is that everyone really likes Carbonara!

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