Is carbonara pasta actually Italian?

Pasta alla carbonara is a widely beloved and enjoyed dish all over. Usually paired with spaghetti, carbonara is a rich sauce that’s made from hard cheese (usually parmesan), eggs, guanciale or other cured pork and black pepper. It’s a relatively simple recipe that can be slightly personalized in a few different ways (adding garlic or cream, usually). But this comfort food staple is rooted in mystery.

Recently, an Italian academic made waves by making some claims about carbonara that have rocked the culinary world. Alberto Grandi, a professor of food history at the University of Parma, has said that carbonara is more of an American dish.

In a recent interview with the Financial Times, Grandi said, “Maybe once a year we ate amatriciana [a tomato-based recipe with bacon], when we could afford to kill a pig. But I’d never heard of carbonara before the war.”

What are this dish’s actual origins, though?

“On the basis of imaginative reconstructions, the most deeply rooted national culinary traditions are disputed,” said Coldiretti, Italy’s biggest farmers’ association. “In essence, [Grandi claims] the Americans have invented carbonara, and panettone and tiramisu are recent commercial products. Above all, [the interview] goes so far as to hypothesize about parmesan and the one produced in Wisconsin in the US – the homeland of fake ‘made in Italy’ cheeses.”

According to Italy Magazine, carbonara is usually associated with the Rome region of Italy, but its exact historical origins are a little hazy. But, apparently, there weren’t any written recipes for the dish before around 1940. It’s clear, though, that there were definitely carbonara relatives in the books before then. Egg and pasta combinations date back to the 18th century. By then, pasta made with cheese was already popular in most of Italy. One recipe dating back to 1881 describes maccheroni made with cheese and eggs. But adding guanciale to pasta is definitely a later invention, probably because it was expensive and kind of hard to come by.

We don’t really know where carbonara comes from, but we do know that it’s not going anywhere anytime soon.