Some may not know it, but April 6 puts pasta carbonara in the spotlight by celebrating “
CarbonaraDay
”.
The opportunity for all lovers to highlight one of the most loved but also the most discussed dishes of Italian cuisine.
Its composition is at the center of many debates, although purists all agree to condemn the use of cream.
But a completely different controversy has caused a lot of ink to flow in recent days.
And for good reason, this sauce which is the pride of Italians would have American origins.
"Surreal Attack
"
It all started on March 23 during a press conference bringing together several ministers, the government announced the candidacy of Italian cuisine for UNESCO's intangible cultural heritage.
On the same day, Alberto Grandi, food historian, professor at the University of Parma and judge at this year's Tiramisu World Cup in Treviso, gives an interview to the Financial Times and comes to demystify the Italian culinary tradition, going as
far
as to say that "
typical Italian cuisine is actually more American than Italian
".
It does not take less to create the scandal in the transalpine peninsula.
For the agricultural association Coldiretti, it is
"a surreal attack".
But then is it really a sacrilege to affirm that the recipe comes from the Americans?
For Alessandra Pierini, co-author with François-Régis Gaudry of the book
We are going to taste Italy
and specialist in Italian gastronomy, the origins of this sauce have been discussed for a long time and the debate periodically revives.
Several hypotheses exist, but the most probable historically is that which grants the origin to the American soldiers present in Italy during the Second World War.
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The recipe is therefore linked “
with the presence between 1943 and 1945 of the American army, which swapped their “k ration” composed of bacon and powdered eggs.
They also used to eat
“
breakfast spaghetti
” with these ingredients
, which would have inspired Italian restaurateurs
.
The first mention of this pasta dates back to 1950 in
La Stampa
(Turin daily), where a restaurateur speaks of these American officers who returned to Italy after the war to ask for this spaghetti alla carbonara in his restaurant called Da cesaretto alla cisterna
”.
To be correct, Alessandra Pierini claims that this recipe was born from "
the creativity of Italian genius on the basis of American logistics
".
It was in 1952 that the first carbonara pasta recipe was published in
Vittles and vice: an extraordinary guide to what's cooking on Chicago's Near North Side
, written by Patricia Bronté.
When Filippo Grandi asserts that "
Italian cuisine is really more American than Italian",
he is referring to a gastronomic culture strongly intertwined between the two countries through history
.
American influence
Italian gastronomy and its worldwide popularity is inseparable from the history of the migration of millions of Italians to the United States in the 19th century.
“
You have to understand that in the 1870s, Italy was still not unified.
The concept of Italian cuisine therefore did not exist and the recipes were regional.
An immigrant from southern Italy ate bread and vegetables, that from the North polenta and chestnuts
,” explains Alessandra Pierini.
“
Once they arrived in the United States, they had the products they could not afford at home, such as olive oil, pasta and tomatoes,” she continues
.
Alberto Grandi explains, for example, that pizza has become a typical Italian dish thanks to these immigrants.
A dish coming from Naples, it was exported to the United States even though the rest of the Italians did not know of its existence.
“To my father in the 1970s, pizza was just as exotic as sushi is to us today,”
he explains in his
Financial Times
interview .
According to his research, “
the first pizzeria opened not in Italy but in New York in 1911
”.
Originally composed of very few ingredients, it has been enriched to know different forms today.
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Considered at first as a poor cuisine, “
Americans began to take an interest in this gastronomy from 1929 with the Great Depression.
The middle bourgeoisie, with less means, frequent these more economical restaurants
,” explains Alessandra Pierini.
This popularity experienced a resurgence after the War when the Americans went to Italy and in the 1960s when cinema and culture honored this gastronomy, notably with Scorsese and Coppola or the singer Frank Sinatra.
However, for the Italians, the cuisine is a true marker of their traditions.
For Alessandra Pierini, the late unification of Italy at the end of the 19th century helped place gastronomy at the heart of her national identity.
