Italian Cuisine and other myths
Food is not just sustenance in Italy — it’s language, lineage, theatre, conviviality, and the essential ingredient in the national identity. When people say Italian cuisine — often with that reverent little pause — they usually mean the familiar trinity of pizza, pasta, and meatballs. The images it conjures are cinematic: nonnas in flour-dusted aprons, stirring bubbling pots of sauce, rolling-pins in hand, sheets of golden pasta spread thin as silk, ready for the knife. Recipes, like family heirlooms, passed down in whispers, gestures, and grease-stained hand-written recipe books. Each region, each village, its own constellation of flavours, proudly defended, local specialties that spark rivalries and festivals — the edible folklore of a nation.
And nothing gets Italians more fired up than food. Especially when someone gets it wrong. Minor crimes against food — and the strongly held traditions and beliefs which accompany it — include putting pineapple on pizza, or serving spaghetti with ragu alla bolognese instead of the more proper tagliatelle. Blasphemy!
But the rot goes to the very top. Recent diplomatic crises include adding butter to a Cacio e Pepe pasta, or cream to the Carbonara recipe — utter sins! And this is not just regular people messing in the kitchen, we’re talking about celebrity chefs with huge online following such as Jamie Oliver and Nigella Lawson, no less! Heinz took a look at the commercial success of the industrial Fettuccine Alfredo sauce, and took it a step, or better, a can, further. A Roman may have just died reading this.
To such offensive profanities, Italians tend to react as only they know how — that is to say, with maximum drama. The online outrage verges on theatre. Food normativity in Italy is strong.
But what if all of these sacred rules and traditions were just great origin tales we tell ourselves? What if they were all made up, with little to no historical evidence? When an Italian food historian and professor of economic history, Alberto Grandi, claimed that many of what we consider Italian “classics” are in fact recent inventions, dating to the last 50-70 years, Italians boiled over. The controversy exacerbated when he went so far as to say that there is no such thing as Italian cuisine. Cue more drama — collective, enduring, nation-wide and salty.
His aim? To debunk the concept of a centuries-old, never-changing monolithic food culture. By his argument, the idea that there are recipes that survive the passing of history, utterly unchanged, is pure myth.
He also argues that what we currently think of as “Italian cuisine” is the fruit of immigration and cultural exchange between Italy and the US, shaped by industrialization and food processing. An example? Pizza became red (with tomato sauce) in the US, while back in the old country, until after WW2, it was basically a focaccia topped with tomato slices. Pasta alla Carbonara? Forget Pecorino cheese and guanciale (pork jowl) — enter powdered egg yolks and bacon from the US Army provisions.
So where does this obsession with tradition — or gastro-nationalism — come from? Grandi points to the economic boom after WW2 as having a seismic effect on the culinary landscape in the country, coupled with the role of the media — namely TV — in shaping the new tastes and habits of Italians. (I guess some things never change…).
When the economic miracle showed signs of stagnation in the 1970s, Italy started selling a palatable image, marketing the idea of a grand gastronomic past, far from the actual reality, in which our ancestors were basically trying to survive famine, for the most part. Instead, it started promoting small producers and niche regional foods, protected by labels certifying authentic origin and manufacturing, a sort of mark of approval from above — the seed of the Made in Italy was born.
So are Italians actually perpetrating the old stereotype of Italy as the land of “pizza, pasta, and mandolin”, with their stubborn and irrational defence of an orthodox monoculture in food-making?
When we look at centuries past, it is undeniable that we have managed to successfully incorporate into the local, regional recipes different ingredients, coming from every corner of the world — corn and tomatoes from the Americas (sure, initially with suspicion), spices from Asia, sugar and macaroni from the Arabs…and then countless contributions from Spain, Occitane, Germany, India, Greece… If anything, something emerges clear out of the fumes of the dispute: Italian cuisine is one of the most cosmopolitan and chameleonic elements in Italian culture — adaptive, absorbing, alive, stretching over. Pretty much like pizza dough.
Luisa finds that a well-stirred ragù pairs beautifully with a little controversy. If you agree, and like the idea of spicing up your trip with a dash of myth-busting pepper, get in touch here.
