Cuisines today, Italian as well as the others, are commixtures that are the result of centuries of travels and trade. And even those recipes that are apparently more traditional are the product of a combination of international ingredients, and this long before globalization.
I would like to dedicate these considerations, this time gastronomic, to all those who hold strong convictions regarding the alleged traditions behind various recipes, as if nothing has changed over hundreds of years and those that did occur were something to be considered, in any case, as negative and questionable.
There are, of course, recipes that are even 100 years old, but there is no doubt that what the ancient Romans ate and drank would be unbearable for our tastes today. It is even ridiculous to think that a dish created more or less in 1944, like the carbonara, would not be “authentic”, in other words a fake, unless pork jowl was used. This is because it is hardly ever cited among the ingredients listed in the earliest recipes, as pointed out by Eleonora Cozzella in her excellent book La Carbonara perfetta, which was the product of in-depth and documented research and not ideology or questions of pride.
Perhaps even sillier is the example of pizza. There is no doubt that pizza saw its definitive evolution in Naples thanks to the skill and a flair of Neapolitan pizza makers. However, there are many in the United States who are convinced that the Americans invented the recipe. Once in New York, a gentleman who considered himself a gourmet asked me in total sincerity: “how do you call pizza in Italy”.
Although the Pizza Margherita was invented in 1889 by the pizza maker Raffaele Esposito, in honor of the visit to Naples of Queen Margherita di Savoia, the term “pizza” is probably, at least according to Professor Alessandro Barbero, the Lombard pronunciation of the word “pita”, which is of Greek origin. Added to this, the ingredient basil originated in India and tomatoes came from America and so only mozzarella can be considered truly local. Thus this dish is a result of travels and trade made even more frequent starting at the beginning of the 18th century. Before then, tomatoes were considered to be an ornamental plant, which some even thought was poisonous. This was not the case in Italy where it is called pomodoro, from pomo d’oro which in turn is from the French pomme d’amour, because it was considered an aphrodisiac. And so pizza is, in fact, the product of an unintentional fusion.
For this reason, it seems very improbable that anyone can harbor any serious doubts otherwise, even if doubts will always remain over the concept of a fundamental truth. Nevertheless, as historians know more than I, everything needs to be backed up by concrete and documented facts and not more or less on emotional convictions and this, in my view, is true for many other aspects of life and knowledge.
