A food historian from Bologna, Italy, is calling into question a classic of Italian cuisine. He says we all do Carbonara wrong.
Egg, pecorino, pepper, dried pork cheek. These are, in theory, the pillars of a good carbonara. At least, that’s what we all thought until now. Because Luca Cesari, a food historian from Bologna, Italy, thinks this classic of Italian cuisine is not done correctly today.
He presented the original version (according to him) of carbonara. Cesari said he discovered the original recipe, published nearly 70 years ago in an Italian cooking magazine, and wanted to show how the recipe developed over the decades. So how is the original Carbonara recipe prepared? According to the original post, the sauce should contain garlic, bacon, beaten eggs and Swiss cheese – specifically Gruyere.
But food is serious business in Italy, part of the national identity. So much so that as soon as his “discovery” was published, the historian faced a wave of mockery on the Internet. He defended himself by saying that he had simply remade the 1954 carbonara, the first presented in the magazine ‘Cucina Italiana’. And that it wasn’t his fault that it was the original carbonara recipe.
According to him, over the years a series of different recipes for carbonara emerged, including those with raw ham in the fifties. In the United States, there are even versions with clams or mushrooms. Alberto Grandi, another food historian who has been criticized for questioning Italy’s established culinary traditions, had to come to Cesari’s defense.
Because we don’t joke with cuisine in Italy. Other examples of what Italians consider culinary heresies include pairing pasta with ketchup sauce, or adding pineapple on pizza, as well as a de facto ban on ordering a cappuccino after dinner. lunch.
But the Italian historian does not let this perturb him and is ready to stir up more culinary controversies. And has already announced his next historical research. But this time it’s not about pasta. He is in fact preparing a new video on the traditional Neapolitan pizza from 1800 with clams.