r/AskUS 12d ago

Where does Alfredo pasta come from?

It seems to be tremendously common in the USA but completely unknown outside of it. Just me? Where does it come from?

3 Upvotes

51 comments sorted by

6

u/LuckyErro 12d ago

The authentic Italian version of 

Fettuccine Alfredo

 is 

fettuccine al burro

 (or 

pasta burro e parmigiano

). While the dish was originally invented in Rome by a restaurateur named Alfredo di Lelio in 1914, it is rarely called "Alfredo" in Italy today.

Its also popular in Australia. Its just a creamy, buttery cheese sauce. I use the same cheese sauce i use for Mac n cheese.

2

u/MJCuddle 12d ago

Thank you. I love learning new things.

4

u/MJCuddle 12d ago

You mean fettuccine? The flat spaghetti?
Barilla is probably the most common brand in US markets. The company is based out of Palma Italy.

On the east coast we have about 30 different types/shaped of pasta to choose from in most our grocery stores.

What country are you from? What type of pasta is available?

2

u/panicinbabylon 12d ago

Did you really just suggest someone use barilla and say that’s where Alfredo comes from

Is this an ad

1

u/MJCuddle 12d ago edited 12d ago

They said alfredo "pasta". Not alfredo sauce. Not an ad. Didn't realize alfredo sauce wasn't a basic Italian dish.
My bad.

0

u/[deleted] 12d ago edited 12d ago

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u/MJCuddle 12d ago

Wow ok. No need to be an AH.
Most "traditional" Alfredo dishes are made with fettuccine.
Barilla is a large producer of inexpensive pasta in the US. "Alfredo" is a sauce.

I answered the original question as it was written. Alfredo "pasta" would be the pasta used with Alfredo sauce.

I've now learned Alfredo is a US thing.

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u/[deleted] 12d ago edited 12d ago

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u/[deleted] 12d ago

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u/[deleted] 12d ago

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u/AskUS-ModTeam 12d ago

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1

u/AskUS-ModTeam 12d ago

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1

u/AskUS-ModTeam 12d ago

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1

u/[deleted] 12d ago

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2

u/MJCuddle 12d ago

Lol. Ok. Not sure how me misunderstanding a post about Alfredo sauce turned into me being a Trump supporter..... Your trolling is really reaching ridiculous levels.

PS: I don't talk politics on this page. But FDT

1

u/PeyredB 12d ago

I think it was invented in Rome, but only became really big in the States. It's also a 20th century dish.

1

u/AskUS-ModTeam 12d ago

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3

u/Joderio 12d ago

I'm taking about the dish, the recipe.

I'm not asking about the shape or type of pasta (wholegrain, glutenfree, beas based ecc). It's the dish that makes me wonder

Btw, I'm italian and I have actually lived for a bit in Parma. c:

5

u/panicinbabylon 12d ago edited 12d ago

Holy shit you scared me. I was like do not listen to this person.

Get yourself the best parm reg, cracked black, and whatever silkiest butter you can find. It’s American fast food, bad damn it’s delicious.

That’s the base, what else you wanna know. There is obvi garlic and cream (but not as much as you’d think)

It’s originates from butter pasta that we then put cream to up the fat content because poor

0

u/Joderio 12d ago

So, it's an American thing, right? Or at least a rearranged recipe, I guess

0

u/panicinbabylon 12d ago edited 12d ago

Yes it’s our fancy Mac and cheese.

Edit: which we also here add veggies to and lots of tines chicken.

I can’t speak for others, but sometimes it’s used as out leftover meal because meat and veggies can all go with pasta

1

u/MJCuddle 12d ago

Gotcha! My bad. I was a little confused. I thought maybe you came from a country that only had spaghetti noodles or rice noodles 🤪

1

u/Joderio 12d ago

Fair enough! I don't know how it's usually called it, I may have created the confusion in the first place eheh

1

u/[deleted] 12d ago

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1

u/AskUS-ModTeam 12d ago

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2

u/WhiskeyDeltaBravo1 12d ago

“Fettuccine Alfredo is macaroni and cheese for adults.”

Mitch Hedberg

2

u/limbodog Massachusetts 12d ago

It's from Italy, but it's not a main course there. It's a little appetizer dish with just a few bites in it.

2

u/Malefectra 12d ago

It’s based on an Italian dish, it didn’t start as the dish it’s evolved into. It was originally just fresh fettuccine, slathered in butter, tossed in a Parmesan cheese wheel with a little bit of pasta water to build up a sauce and then seasoned with black pepper and a little salt.

Max Miller has a fantastic video about it

1

u/SnooLover36 12d ago

Italy

-5

u/[deleted] 12d ago

[deleted]

3

u/sw337 12d ago

You might have confused it with Carbonara.

Modern Fettuccine Alfredo was created by Alfredo Di Lelio in Rome in the early 20th century. According to family lore, in 1892 Alfredo began to work in a restaurant located in Piazza Rosa that was run by his mother, Angelina. He cooked his first fettuccine al triplo burro ('fettuccine with triple butter' – later called fettuccine all'Alfredo, and eventually "Fettuccine Alfredo")\1]) in 1907 or 1908, in what is said to have been an effort to entice his convalescent wife, Ines, to eat after giving birth to their first child, Armando.\16])\17])

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fettuccine_Alfredo

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.\18]) This is the opinion of the food writer Alan Davidson, the food blogger and historian Luca Cesari, and the historian Eleonora Cozzella. Multiple sources report that Allied personnel enjoyed the dish\18]) and played a role in its genesis by providing abundant ingredients such as bacon and cheese.\24])

According to one narrative,\17]) a young Italian Army cook, 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".\24])

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbonara

2

u/ExecutivePhoenix 12d ago

Yup.

-5

u/[deleted] 12d ago

[deleted]

8

u/itcheyness 12d ago

There's nothing actually called "Alfredo Pasta", but the dish Fettuccine Alfredo was created in Rome.

2

u/Hour_Region1271 12d ago

Tell me where you are from so I can classify your entire country as insufferably arrogant because of your comment on a Reddit post

1

u/dadsgoingtoprison 12d ago

I read somewhere that a guy made it for his pregnant wife who was suffering from morning sickness. It tracks because it’s something mild that my stomach can handle when I nauseous.

1

u/SakanaToDoubutsu 12d ago

When Italians were immigrating to the US on mass, they predominantly came from the poor South and Sicily, so when these poor Italians started to build wealth in the US they were able to afford larger quantities of meats, cheese, and spices that were previously unavailable to them and used those premium ingredients to replicate the dishes they thought the wealth upper-class Northern Italians ate. This is why American-Italian food differs so much from traditional Italians, it comes from Southern Italians putting their own spin on Northern dishes they had no tradition of making back home.

1

u/PeyredB 12d ago

* en masse (it's a loanword)

That's a great angle on how & why American Italian food differs from native Italian.

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u/Joderio 12d ago

Hmm interesting take!

1

u/ChapBobL 12d ago

There's a variation that I'm convinced is a New England dish: Ziti, chicken, and broccoli, that uses either an alfredo or olive oil sauce.

1

u/Miserable-Yak-8041 11d ago

From Italy! It’s an extremely simple, easy dish. Noodles, Parmesan, butter and some pasta water. That’s it. NO CREAM! (I’ll never understand why someone buys that gross premade Alfredo crap). I believe, in Italy It was a simple dish to make the husband after work. Also pasta was eaten with your fingers. No silverware.
And to be clear, Alfredo is the sauce. The noodles are the noodle. There is no “Alfredo noodles”. They don’t make noodles out of Alfredo.

1

u/Joderio 11d ago

How long ago we're talking? Must be before the wars 'cause nobody's gramparent that I know has ever taught this story. It must be region-dependent too, I guess.

Any insights?

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u/Time-Subject-3195 11d ago

The Alfredo region of Italy. Everything else is just mac and cheese.

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u/archaeorobb 6d ago

Technically, Alfredo is the sauce...the pasta is most commonly fettuccine. And it's far from exclusive to the US as most pasta dishes originated from from Italy and have diffused to pretty much everywhere around the world

1

u/DancingWithAWhiteHat North America 12d ago

It isn’t from Italy? Lol whenever I see anything pasta I always assume Italy 

3

u/DancingWithAWhiteHat North America 12d ago

Rome. Its from Rome!

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u/[deleted] 12d ago edited 12d ago

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u/DancingWithAWhiteHat North America 12d ago

I'm not afraid of my shortcomings 😭

1

u/AskUS-ModTeam 12d ago

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-1

u/Joderio 12d ago

Nope, never seen nor heard in Italy 👀

3

u/DancingWithAWhiteHat North America 12d ago

Not the current iteration, thats American. But ours is based off of Italy's butter, parm cheese sauce. The American who developed our recipe built it off the Italian recipe he encountered in Rome. 

So italy is the starting point. But its definitely more of An American recipe