"Carbonara is the most American pasta dish. We can pretty much say that is an American invention.
I mean, you can pick my Italian accent. I'm very much Italian. I'm not going crazy. I'm just saying the truth. Let me break it down for you.
So, we got to go back in Italy, in the 1940s during World War II. Cuz before 1940, nobody ever heard or wrote about this dish. The most widely accepted theory is that carbonara was born by the combination of US military rations and pasta. Those ration usually included powdered eggs and dried bacon.
The US soldier used to ask Italian cooks around the country to prepare some pasta with their rations. And that's how carbonara was unofficially born.
Talking official, the very first written recipe was in Chicago in 1952. The very first Italian recipe was just two years later in 1954 on La Cucina Italiana. Gruyere and curdled eggs. Yes, you heard me right. Groviera e uova rapprese.
But it gets even worse. In 1986, Gualtiero Marchesi, the greatest Italian chef ever, wrote his official recipe about carbonara, saying it, that it cannot be made with scrambled eggs. Carbonara needs to be a creamy sauce. That's why according to Gualtiero, cream is not just required, it's essential for the best result.
So how? We arrived to nowadays where Italians think that there is just one holy carbonara recipe which cannot be changed. Absolutely no cream, absolutely yes, guanciale, no bacon.
Well, I don't know. I don't know how we arrived to that. I know that I was born and raised in Italy for 24 years of my life. I used to believe that the carbonara was that and cannot be changed. It was holy. But you know, now opening my mind, studying a little bit more, I found out that it's not true.
A lot of things actually about what Italians believe about their cuisine, it's, are not correct. Now, I'm not saying that Italian cuisine is bullshit and it's not good. The nowadays recipe of carbonara is amazing. It's probably the best one. I don't know if just because I'm used to it, but it's incredible."
Related:
"There is no widely accepted story about the origin of carbonara but there's a widely accepted recipe and that one does not contain cream or garlic."
"Ironically, the oldest published Italian recipe for Carbonara... had garlic in it. No cream, but it did have a creamy sauce made with eggs.
There is no one 'correct' way to make Carbonara, unlike what modern Italian purists like to say. These are some of the oldest published recipes for it in Italy:
The first ever Italian recipe came out in 1954, which... used pancetta, along with spaghetti, eggs, Gruyère and garlic, printed in the magazine La Cucina Italiana. A year later it was published in the cookery book 'La Signora in Cucina', again with pancetta, and this time with Parmesan instead of Gruyère.
In 1960 we finally get to see guanciale, which most modern Italian food purists say is unchangeable, in 'La Grande Cucina', in a recipe that also includes CREAM.
My point with this is, unlike what Italian food purists claim, there is no singular 'correct' or 'traditional' recipe."
"In the 1970s and 80s, cream was a common ingredient in carbonara. As an example, the most famous Italian chef of that time, Gualtiero Marchesi, used cream in his recipe, but plenty of other people were...
cream was a common ingredient.
see eg https://www.repubblica.it/il-gusto/2022/04/06/news/carbonara_la_ricetta_tom_cruise_gwyneth_paltrow_jamie_oliver-344223973/
where they describe a celebrity "Masterchef" of the 1960s, where a Roman actor, Renato Rascel, uses pancetta and cream rather than guanciale (and wins the silver medal) - gold going to a risotto dish.
Ugo Tognazzi (another actor, and famous gourmet)) instead shows off his amazing carbonara recipe served in New York in 1964:,,
mezzo chilo di pasta, per la precisione spaghettini. E poi, 6 uova (3 intere, 3 solo tuorli), pecorino (ma appena 30 grammi) e parmigiano (100 g). Poi un etto e mezzo di bacon (proprio così, bacon), un etto di prosciutto crudo, grasso e magro, 50 g di burro, un bicchiere di panna, e poi peperoncino, cognac o brandy. In quanto alla preparazione: sbattere uova, formaggi, panna, sale e pepe in una terrina, mentre in padella si soffrigge il bacon al quale poi viene aggiunto il prosciutto. Gli spaghettini, al dente, vanno conditi con il burro e poi con la salsa, il soffritto e, tocco finale, con il Cognac."
"then why do you think the resistance to not having cream in carbonara today come from"
"ts a general pushback to 80s italian cuisine, which had cream in everything.
the idea is that its cheating to get the creaminess from cream rather than egg, and it dilutes the flavour
similarly, modern italian risotto aims to achieve 'creaminess' with a minimum of butter, by emulsifying(?) the risotto with a shaking motion"
"It's a crystallization that happened in response to the internet, where italians discovered that another group of people claiming to be italian started to make " traditional " recipes"
