Carbonara

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Italian pasta dish

title: "Carbonara" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["cuisine-of-lazio", "spaghetti-dishes", "italian-sauces"] description: "Italian pasta dish" topic_path: "geography/italy" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbonara" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary Italian pasta dish ::

::data[format=table title="Infobox food"]

FieldValue
nameCarbonara
imageEspaguetis carbonara.jpg
image_size250px
captionSpaghetti alla carbonara
alternate_namePasta alla carbonara
countryItaly
regionLazio
coursePrimo (Italian course)
main_ingredientPasta (usually spaghetti), guanciale (alternatively pancetta), pecorino romano, eggs, black pepper
::

::callout[type=note] the pasta dish ::

| name = Carbonara | image = Espaguetis carbonara.jpg | image_size = 250px | caption = Spaghetti alla carbonara | alternate_name = Pasta alla carbonara | country = Italy | region = Lazio | creator = | course = Primo (Italian course) | type = | served = | main_ingredient = Pasta (usually spaghetti), guanciale (alternatively pancetta), pecorino romano, eggs, black pepper | variations =

Carbonara () is a pasta dish made with fatty cured pork, hard cheese, eggs, salt, and black pepper.{{cite web |url=https://www.barilla.com/it-it/ricette/tutte/spaghetti-alla-carbonara |title=Spaghetti alla Carbonara |publisher=Barilla |access-date=18 June 2024}}{{cite web |url=https://www.lacucinaitaliana.com/recipe/pasta/classic-carbonara |title=Classic Carbonara |publisher=La Cucina Italiana |access-date=18 June 2024}}{{cite web |url=https://www.lacucinaitaliana.com/italian-food/how-to-cook/how-to-make-original-carbonara |title=Classic Carbonara Recipe |publisher=La Cucina Italiana |access-date=18 June 2024}}{{cite web |url=https://www.lacucinaitaliana.it/news/cucina/carbonara-original-italian-recipe/ |title=Carbonara: the original Italian recipe |publisher=La Cucina Italiana |access-date=18 June 2024}} It is typical of the Lazio region of Italy. The dish took its modern form and name in the middle of the 20th century.

The cheese used is usually pecorino romano. Some variations use Parmesan, Grana Padano, or a combination of cheeses. Spaghetti is the most common pasta, but bucatini or rigatoni are also used. While guanciale, a cured pork jowl, is traditional, some variations use pancetta, and lardons of smoked bacon are a common substitute outside Italy.

Origin and history

As with many recipes, the origins of the dish and its name are obscure; most sources trace its origin to the region of Lazio.{{cite web |url=https://www.lacucinaitaliana.com/italian-food/italian-dishes/carbonara-origins-and-anecdotes-of-the-beloved-italian-pasta-dish |title=Carbonara: Origins and Anecdotes of the Beloved Italian Pasta Dish |first=Francine |last=Segan|date=5 April 2022 |publisher=La Cucina Italiana

The names pasta alla carbonara and spaghetti alla carbonara are unrecorded before the Second World War; notably, it is absent from Ada Boni's 1930 La cucina romana (). The 1931 edition of the Guide of Italy of the TCI describes a pasta (strascinati) dish from Cascia and Monteleone di Spoleto, in Umbria, whose sauce contains whipped eggs, sausage, pork fat and lean, cheese and pepper, which could be considered as a precursor of carbonara.

The name carbonara first appears in print in 1950, when the Italian newspaper La Stampa described it as a Roman dish sought out by American officers after the Allied liberation of Rome in 1944. The first attested recipe is in an illustrated cookbook published in Chicago in 1952 by Patricia Bronté. It should also be noted that a major Italian cookbook published in 1950, Il cucchiaio d'argento, has no mention of this dish.

In 1954, the first recipe for carbonara published in Italy appeared in La Cucina Italiana magazine, although the recipe featured pancetta, garlic, and Gruyère cheese. The same year, carbonara was included in Elizabeth David's Italian Food, an English-language cookbook published in Great Britain.

Etymology

There are many theories for the origin of the name carbonara, which is probably more recent than the dish itself. There is no good evidence for any of them:

  • Since the name is derived from carbonaro, some people believe the dish was first made as a hearty meal for Italian charcoal workers. In parts of the United States, this etymology gave rise to the term coal miner's spaghetti.
  • John F. Mariani writes that some people believe it was created as a tribute to the Carbonari () secret society prominent in the early, repressed stages of Italian unification (Risorgimento) in the early 19th century.

Pre-WW2 theory of origin

The dish forms part of a family of dishes consisting of pasta with cured pork, cheese, and pepper, one of which is pasta alla gricia. It is very similar to pasta cacio e uova, a dish dressed with melted lard and a mixture of eggs and cheese, but not meat or pepper. Cacio e uova is documented as far back as 1839 and, according to some researchers, anecdotal evidence indicates that some Italians born before World War II associate that name with the dish now known as "carbonara".

Gillian Riley comments that carbonara is likely an "urban dish" from Rome.

WWII theory of origin

A review of the history of carbonara's appearance in cookbooks and other forms of media (see above) supports a post-World War II origin of this dish after the Allied liberation of Rome in 1944. This is the opinion of Food writer Alan Davidson, food blogger and historian Luca Cesari, and historian Eleonora Cozzella. Multiple sources support that Allied personnel enjoyed the dish and played a role in its genesis by providing abundant ingredients such as bacon and cheese.

According to one particular narrative, a young Italian Army cook named Renato Gualandi created the dish in 1944, with other Italian cooks, as part of a dinner for the U.S. Army, because the Americans "had fabulous bacon, very good cream, some cheese and powdered egg yolks".

According to the interviews and research into historical documents by Eleonora Cozzella, the dish was born out of a dish called "spaghetti breakfast" that would be requested by Allied personnel when they visit Italian cookeries: a kind of bacon and eggs served on top of spaghetti.

Evolution after creation

As mentioned above, carbonara was first described in a 1952 cookbook about food being made in Chicago. Cesari writes that the recipe was probably brought to the United States by an American serviceman who had passed through Rome during the Italian campaign or by an Italian American who had encountered it in Rome,

The version of the dish found in the 1954 La Cucina Italiana slowly evolved into the "canonical" carbonara of today. Pecorino and guanciale slowly made their way into carbonara recipes in the late 1950s and the 1960s. Recipes from that time still featured cream: in fact, the widespread removal of cream only happened in the 1990s. Grandi and Cesari comment that the removal of ingredients appear to be motivated by a wish to have the dish fit better with the "idyllic Italian stereotype of the rustic kitchen".

Preparation

::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c1/Spaghetti_alla_Carbonara_(cropped).jpg" caption="Spaghetti alla carbonara}}"] ::

The pasta is cooked in boiling water salted only moderately, due to the saltiness of the cured meat and the hard cheese. The meat is briefly fried in a pan in its own fat. A mixture of raw eggs (or yolks), grated cheese, and a liberal amount of ground black pepper is combined with the hot pasta either in the pasta pot or in a serving dish or bain-marie, but away from direct heat, to avoid curdling the egg. The fried meat is then added and the mixture is tossed, creating a rich, creamy sauce with bits of meat spread throughout. Various shapes of pasta can be used, almost always dried durum wheat pasta.

Variations

Guanciale is the most commonly used meat for the dish in Italy, but pancetta and pancetta affumicata ('smoked pancetta') are also used and, in English-speaking countries, bacon is often used as a substitute. The usual cheese is pecorino romano; occasionally Parmesan, Grana Padano, or a combination of hard cheeses are used. Recipes differ as to which part of the egg is used—some use the whole egg, some others only the yolk, and still others a mixture. The amount of eggs used also vary, but the intended result is a creamy sauce from mild heating. For vegetarians or those observing Jewish kosher laws, there are also recipes that use mushrooms and vegetables instead of meat.

Some preparations have more sauce and therefore use tubular pasta, such as penne, which is better suited to holding sauce. Cream is not used in most Italian recipes, with some notable exceptions from the 20th century. However, it is often employed in other countries, as adding cream makes the dish more stable. Similarly, garlic is found in some recipes, but mostly outside Italy. Outside Italy, variations on carbonara may include green peas, broccoli, tenderstem broccoli, leeks, onions, other vegetables or mushrooms, and may substitute a meat such as ham or coppa for the fattier guanciale or pancetta.

Sauce

A product described as carbonara sauce is sold as a ready-to-eat convenience food in grocery stores in many countries. Unlike the original preparation, which is inseparable from its dish as its creamy texture is created on the pasta itself, the ultra-processed versions of carbonara are prepared sauces to be applied onto separately cooked pasta. They may be thickened with cream and sometimes food starch, and often use bacon or cubed pancetta slices instead of guanciale.

References

References

  1. (1975). "Roma in Cucina". Giunti Martello.
  2. (1984). "Guida all'Italia gastronomica". Touring Club Italiano.
  3. "La ricetta della Carbonara raccontata da chi l'ha trasformata in arte". Agi.
  4. Anconitano, Veruska. (8 May 2020). "Authentic Spaghetti Carbonara Recipe from Rome". The Foodellers.
  5. Luca Cesari. (6 April 2023). "Carbonara day: altro che americana, la ricetta è nata in Umbria".
  6. (26 July 1950). "Il papa ha "passato ponte"". La Stampa.
  7. Patricia Bronté. (1952). "Vittles and Vice: An Extraordinary Guide to What's Cooking on Chicago's Near North Side". H. Regnery Company.
  8. Luca Cesari. (12 March 2018). "La storia della carbonara – Capitolo 2. Gli esordi 1951-1960".
  9. Dario Bressanini. (3 December 2012). "L'origine della Carbonara. Il commissario Rebaudengo indaga".
  10. (16 May 2020}}). "Eleonora Cozzella presenta "La carbonara perfetta"".
  11. (5 April 2022). "Carbonara: How We Made It in the 1950s". Condé Nast.
  12. David, Elizabeth. (1954). "Italian Food". Macdonald.
  13. Jordan, Michele Anna. "Spaghetti Carbonara: Coal Miner's Spaghetti". Michele Anna Jordan.
  14. (2000). "The Italian-American Cookbook: A Feast of Food From a Great American Cooking Tradition". Harvard Common.
  15. "Myths" in Gillian Riley, ''The Oxford Companion to Italian Food'', 2007, {{ISBN
  16. "Le origini della carbonara. L'invenzione di Gualandi avvenne a Roma: la scoperta di Igles Corelli".
  17. (2022). "A brief history of pasta: the Italian food that shaped the world". Profile Books.
  18. Luca Cesari. (12 March 2018). "La storia della carbonara – Capitolo 1. I precedenti".
  19. Davidson, Alan. (1999). "[[Oxford Companion to Food]]". Oxford UP.
  20. Giuffrida, Angela. (27 March 2023). "Italian academic cooks up controversy with claim carbonara is US dish". The Guardian.
  21. (8 May 2025). "Everything you know about Italian food is (maybe) false!".
  22. Buccini, Antony F.. (2007). "Eggs in Cookery: Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium of Food and Cookery 2006". Oxford Symposium.
  23. Gosetti della Salda, Anna. (1967). "Le Ricette Regionali Italiane". Solares.
  24. "Ricettario Nazionale delle Cucine Regionali Italiane". Accademia Italiana della Cucina.
  25. Gustiblog. (2020-03-27). "On Serious Eats: a Pasta Rant".
  26. (1977). "La cucina Rustica Regionale". Rizzoli.
  27. Buonassisi, Vincenzo. (1985). "Il Nuovo Codice della Pasta". Rizzoli.
  28. Contaldo, Gennaro. (2015). "Jamie's Food Tube: The Pasta Book". Penguin UK.
  29. Antonio, Carluccio. (2011). "100 Pasta Recipes (My Kitchen Table)". BBC Books.
  30. "Spaghetti Carbonara Recipe". ItalianPastaRecipes.it.
  31. Music, Carla Lalli. (2020-04-27). "Vegetarian Carbonara".
  32. (22 March 2019). "Mushroom Carbonara". Condé Nast.
  33. Benedetta Jasmine Guetta. (2022). "Cooking alla Giudia: A Celebration of the Jewish Food of Italy". Artisan.
  34. (2006). "The Food I Love: Beautiful, Simple Food to Cook at Home". Simon and Schuster.
  35. "Spaghetti alla Carbonara (all'uso di Roma)".
  36. Marchesi, Gualtiero. (2015). "La cucina italiana. Il grande ricettario". De Agostini.
  37. (2007). "The New [[Food Lover's Companion]]". Barron's Educational Series..
  38. (2003). "On Cooking, Third Edition: Techniques from expert chefs". Pearson Education, Inc..
  39. "Why You Shouldn't Be Adding Cream To Your Carbonara".
  40. Louis Thomas. "Dear Dairy: Who Put Cream in Carbonara?".
  41. Oliver, Jamie. (2016). "Gennaro's classic spaghetti carbonara".
  42. Beltramme, Ilaria. ''Magna Roma - 110 ricette per cucinare a casa i piatti della tradizione romana'', Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, Milano, 2011, p. 73. {{ISBN. 978-88-04-60723-6.
  43. (2013). "Sauces & Shapes: Pasta the Italian Way". W. W. Norton & Company.
  44. "Cooking Sauce Carbonara, 15 oz. Jar (Directions For Me)".

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