Carbonara, the golden recipe: “It’s worth a billion dollars in turnover”

LONDON – Who created the first carbonara? It depends on who tells us about it, but the more we discuss it, the better, because we make us want to eat it more. This is how we can summarize the last chapter of the controversy launched last year by Alberto Grandi, food historian and professor at the University of Parma, in an interview with the Financial Times. According to most, this world-famous recipe is a typical dish of the Italian gastronomic tradition. For Professor Grandi, on the contrary, it is an invention of the American soldiers who landed in Italy during the Second World War, who mixed their military rations based on eggs and bacon with our spaghetti.

Another specialist in the subject is now speaking on his thesis, which has sparked a wave of protests in Italy, Marco Ginanneschi, researcher in Future Finance and expert in strategies, trend analysis and business prospects, specialized in food and tourism, member of the Georgofili Academy, with a paper presented at the Dublin Gastronomy Symposium, an international conference organized by the capital’s university Irish on the theme “Food and memory: traces, trauma and tradition”. Recalling that carbonara is “a recipe with a billion euros in annual turnover”, Ginanneschi argues that the animosity over this famous pasta sauce could have deeper roots than the recent controversy over who was the first to cook it suggests .

For Ginanneschi, in fact, the debate on carbonara it is a typical example of the race to conquer the memory of consumers. “There are three different approaches to how to prepare carbonara: glocal, regional and creative,” he says in his paper at the Dublin conference. “They reflect different schools of thought regarding food in Italian society, whose respective supporters, orthodox, revisionist or innovator, compete to influence and rewrite the past.” Paradoxically, however, the conflict between these different opinions, which he defines as “the golden triangle of recipes”, contributes to the ever-widening popularity of the recipe. The memory of the “perfect carbonara” pushes us to want to continue tasting it at every opportunity, he observes. And it is precisely the rival narratives about its origins and the right recipe that contribute to its success on a global scale, transforming it into a “mega food”, an Italian super food known at every latitude, “like pizza and tiramisu”.

Therefore, concludes Ginanneschi, it is useless to argue or complain: the turbulent debate on carbonara should rather be seen as “a sign of the vitality of Italian culinary culture”. A bit like pineapple pizza, in short, as long as you talk about it and as long as you eat it in all sauces, everything is fine.

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