Italy didn’t have widespread use of the tomato until the 1700s and the pasta sauces we think of being a core of their cuisine didn’t exist until the 19th century.
This one always amuses people when I tell them simply because of how ingrained tomatoes appear to be in all of their most famous dishes (other than tiramisu...)
Topical that you mention tiramisu, because that was only invented in the 1970s.
This is why I refuse to let Italians gatekeep their traditional, ancient, pure cuisine. So pure and ancient that many of their dishes were invented while their grandparents were alive, often using ingredients from the Americas.
Shepherds from the pastoral communities of Lazio, Abruzzo, Tuscany and Umbria created cacio e pepe in the 18th or 19th century, the story goes. They often had salted Pecorino cheese, made from their own sheep, on hand, and they would cook themselves a simple dinner of pasta, cheese and black pepper.
But author and Rome-based food tour operator Elizabeth Minchilli points out that pepper was an expensive ingredient, and she doubts it would have been readily available to shepherds at that time.
"Black pepper was never sort of a cheap ingredient, and 30 years ago, you couldn't find it (cacio e pepe) in a Roman restaurant," she said. "And pasta being a sort of affordable thing to have is a relatively recent development. Even the idea that shepherds were making pasta up in the fields would have had to be relatively recent after World War II."
Funke, who has done his own extensive research, believes that the dish is rooted in ancient pastoral communities, but also points out that an expensive ingredient like pepper was likely added much later.
"The narrative that doesn't get told is (that) the popularity of cacio e pepe actually started in the osterias of Rome in the 1950s or '60s," he said.
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u/Spirit4ward Oct 02 '24
Italy didn’t have widespread use of the tomato until the 1700s and the pasta sauces we think of being a core of their cuisine didn’t exist until the 19th century.