The surprising history of carbonara, a classic Roman pasta dish

I was about to tuck into a bowl of golden carbonara—spaghetti slathered in gooey egg yolks, dotted with morsels of guanciale, dusted with ground pepper, and topped with pale pecorino sprinkled like freshly fallen snowflakes—when my dining companion asked about the dish’s origins.

We were in Testaccio, a historically working-class neighborhood in Rome that’s known for its erstwhile slaughterhouse and the many legendary restaurants that sprang up here in the late 19th century, including this one, Checchino dal 1887.

“Well,” I said, clearing my throat. “There are a handful of theories. Some people believe the dish was invented in the 19th century by the carbonari, guys who lived outside of Rome and spent long hours making coal. But oddly, one of the first times carbonara appeared as a recipe in Italy was in 1954 in the magazine La Cucina Italiana.”

“Fake news!” someone suddenly interjected. Before I could even see where the booming voice had come from, the speaker repeated his assertion. “This is fake news. Do not listen to this man.”

The voice, it turned out, belonged to Simone Mina, whose family has owned Checchino since it first fired up its pasta-boiling burners in 1887. Mina launched into a rambling soliloquy and promoted an oft-repeated theory that, centuries ago, shepherds in the Roman countryside created something resembling the dish. Clearly, carbonara’s history is complicated. And controversial.

I could understand. About a decade ago, I lived in the Eternal City for a couple of years and became obsessed with carbonara, a classic Roman pasta dish. I loved how the eggs and cheese conspired to create a creamy texture; how the unctuous and fatty pork cheek added saltiness; and how the ground pepper tickled my palate. The dish, made with spaghetti or rigatoni, inevitably set off the most delicious umami bomb in my mouth.

A twist in the case

The aggrieved included Francesco Panella, a TV host and co-owner of the century-old Roman restaurant Antica Pesa, which also has an outlet in Brooklyn, New York. As I dug into a plate of carbonara at his restaurant in Rome’s Trastevere neighborhood shortly after I arrived in Italy, he wandered over to my table and scoffed at the idea that the dish was American.

“I would like to know how many kids in America have a memory of carbonara from their childhood,” he said. “In Italian culture, we try to protect our identity. Respect what your mother cooked, what your grandmother cooked.”

Panella wasn’t sure about the dish’s origins, but he added: “If carbonara were American, wouldn’t it have things like bacon and cream in it? When foreign chefs deviate from an Italian recipe … if you add garlic or cream to carbonara, it’s because you’re not rooted in this kind of ancestral connection that is inherent in Italy.”

I liked his reasoning, yet when I started researching some of the earliest carbonara recipes online, I made an odd discovery.

Instead of seeing pecorino Romano listed, I saw Gruyère or Parmigiano. Instead of guanciale, I saw bacon or pancetta. I even saw—gasp!—cream. In fact, the most respected cookbook authors in Italy included cream in their recipes until the 1990s. Then cream mysteriously disappeared from the dish. Why? Could that be a clue to carbonara’s origins? In search of answers, I tracked down another carbonara pro.

Tying up loose ends

Clearly, carbonara’s provenance was more complicated than I’d imagined. I could feel my insistence on some sort of carbonara purity starting to wane. Still, I wondered: How and when did so many of us become so inflexible about the ingredients? What was that all about?

I recalled reading once about “the invention of tradition,” historian Eric Hobsbawm’s theory that after a nation or community endures a traumatic event, an identity crisis often follows. It’s not uncommon, he maintained, for a society to create a tradition, something mythical that harks back to the “good old days,” thus bridging the gap between a tragedy’s aftermath and a seemingly more idyllic time.

Hobsbawm didn’t refer to carbonara specifically, but the dish fits into his theory. After suffering the trauma of World War II, Italy emerged dirt poor. People were starving. On the streets of Rome, a black market had emerged for once-ubiquitous products.

When Italy’s economy improved in the late 1950s and ’60s, Italians looked to the past to regain a sense of identity and shared history. That’s when many people, especially in Rome, latched on to the idea that carbonara had been a part of Rome’s culinary landscape all along.

That would help explain why many Italians believed carbonara dated back centuries. But why was the dish’s origin still so controversial today? I put the question to chef Nicolò Trecastelli of Trecca, a restaurant in Rome’s Garbatella neighborhood. “The problem,” he said matter-of-factly, “is that we’re currently obsessed with ‘authenticity.’ ”

He was right. And I could understand why. We’re living through a period of dizzying change. The digital revolution has given us Photoshop and artificial intelligence, and it’s getting harder to tell what’s real and what isn’t. You can understand authenticity’s appeal.

It’s not a coincidence, I thought, that many people are looking inward and backward. Young people are starting knitting circles. Music lovers are snapping up vinyl records like it’s 1972. And many people care—deeply—about where their food comes from. Terms like “farm to table,” “locavore,” and “slow food” have become essential to the culinary lexicon. Imagining that carbonara came from a simpler era feels good.

As my time in Rome wound down, I found myself buying the theory that American GIs had a role in carbonara’s origins, but I wanted one more expert opinion. On my penultimate day in Rome, I went to Pecorino, a restaurant located around the corner from Checchino dal 1887. There, I feasted on carbonara with Roman food historian Emilio Ferracci and asked him about the dish’s origins.

“It’s a fact,” he said, “that U.S. soldiers in Rome were eating something called ‘spaghetti breakfast’ that mixed bacon and eggs. It’s also true that the Americans stationed in Rome had powdered eggs and packets of dried bacon as rations.”

Ferracci took a bite and held up a finger to punctuate the point he was about to make: “I believe that a Roman chef discovered rations of powdered egg and dried bacon at a black market and decided to mix them with some pasta and serve this ‘spaghetti breakfast,’ knowing that Americans eat bacon and eggs for breakfast.”

Then came the part that brought it all together. “Over time,” he said, “Romans began eating it too, but we localized it. We swapped out the bacon for guanciale, the Parmigiano or Gruyère with pecorino, and began using real eggs. And that’s how carbonara was born.

Where to eat carbonara in Rome

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