47 Fun Facts About Italian Food

Which pasta shape's name translates as 'butterflies'?

Farfalle means 'butterflies' in Italian (farfalla is a butterfly); English speakers usually call the pinched rectangles bow ties.

Orecchiette, the small domed pasta of Apulia, takes its name from which body part?

Orecchiette means 'little ears', from orecchia (ear); the thumb-pressed domes of Puglia are classically served with cime di rapa (turnip tops).

Tortellini are said to be modelled on which body part of the goddess Venus?

Legend says an innkeeper at Castelfranco Emilia glimpsed Venus through a keyhole and shaped tortellini on her navel, which is why the pasta is nicknamed ombelico di Venere.

What does the pasta name 'vermicelli' literally mean?

Vermicelli means 'little worms', from verme (worm); Italian vermicelli is cut slightly thicker than spaghetti, while the American version is thinner.

Pappardelle, the wide Tuscan ribbons, are thought to take their name from a verb meaning what?

Pappardelle is thought to come from pappare, 'to pig out' or gobble up, a verb built on pappa, a Latin children's word for food; the ribbons are traditionally served with game ragù such as wild boar.

Under Italian law, dry pasta (pasta secca) may be made only from which grain?

Italian law allows dry pasta (pasta secca) to be made only from durum wheat semolina and water; soft wheat flour may be used in fresh egg pasta.

Which explorer is wrongly credited in popular legend with introducing pasta to Italy?

Marco Polo did not bring pasta home from China: a geography written in 1154, a century before he was born, already describes dried pasta being made in Sicily and shipped abroad.

Which dish of paper-thin raw beef is named after a Venetian Renaissance painter?

Carpaccio was first served at Harry's Bar in Venice, where Giuseppe Cipriani named it after the painter Vittore Carpaccio because the raw beef recalled the deep reds of his canvases.

Which coffee drink is named after the brown robes of an order of friars?

Cappuccino is Italian for Capuchin: the milky coffee matched the brown of the friars' hooded habits, and the name first belonged to the Viennese Kapuziner before it reached Italian coffee bars.

Which cured pork product is the traditional meat in a Roman carbonara?

Guanciale is cured pig's cheek; pancetta is the usual stand-in abroad, and cream is not part of most Italian recipes.

One of the earliest printed carbonara recipes appeared in a 1952 restaurant guide to which Midwestern US city?

Chicago: Patricia Bronté's 1952 guide to the Near North Side printed a carbonara recipe, and when the magazine La Cucina Italiana ran its first one in 1954 it called for garlic and Gruyère.

Cacio e pepe is made from pasta, black pepper and which cheese?

Cacio is the central-Italian word for cheese, here aged Pecorino romano, a salty sheep's-milk cheese; a team that worked out how to stop the sauce clumping won an Ig Nobel Prize in physics.

Amatriciana sauce is named after Amatrice, a town in which Italian region?

Amatrice lies in the province of Rieti in Lazio (it belonged to Abruzzo until 1927); the sauce evolved from pasta alla gricia, the same dish without tomato.

Which veal dish topped with prosciutto and sage has a name meaning 'jumps in the mouth'?

Saltimbocca is 'salta in bocca', a bite so tempting it jumps into the mouth by itself; it is known today as a Roman speciality, yet it may have begun far to the north, in Brescia.

In Bologna, ragù alla bolognese is traditionally served with which pasta?

Bologna pairs its ragù with fresh egg tagliatelle, not spaghetti, a habit that grew up abroad; in 1982 the Italian Academy of Cuisine deposited an official ragù recipe with the city's Chamber of Commerce.

Besides ragù, which sauce is layered into lasagne alla bolognese?

Béchamel, besciamella in Italian, goes between the ragù and the egg-pasta sheets in Bologna; Naples builds its Carnival lasagne quite differently, with small meatballs, sausage and hard-boiled eggs.

Which nut is pounded into a traditional Genoese pesto?

Pine nuts join basil, garlic, cheese and Ligurian oil in the mortar; pesto means 'pounded', and a 19th-century Genoese cookbook lets cooks swap in marjoram and parsley when basil is out of season.

Whom did Raffaele Esposito reputedly honour with his 1889 tomato, mozzarella and basil pizza?

Esposito of Pizzeria Brandi reputedly served the pizza to Queen Margherita of Savoy in June 1889, but later research found no contemporary newspaper mention and traced the story's promotion to the 1930s and 40s.

How long does a true Neapolitan pizza bake in its wood-fired oven under the AVPN's rules?

60-90 seconds is all the rules allow, because the oven runs at well over 400 C; the dough is flour, water, salt and yeast only, and must be opened by hand, never with a rolling pin.

Despite its seafaring name, which classic Neapolitan pizza has no seafood, just tomato, garlic, oregano and oil?

Marinara means 'sailor-style': tradition says poor sailors ordered it, or baked it at sea, because garlic, oregano and oil keep without spoiling.

Which strong, high-protein flour do Italian bakers blend into long-fermented pizza doughs?

Manitoba flour, named for the Canadian prairie province where its strong, cold-hardy wheat first grew, has enough gluten for long-fermented doughs to hold their structure; bakers use it to 'cut' weaker flours.

Which Italian bread, created only in 1982, has a name meaning 'slipper'?

Ciabatta was devised by a baker in the Veneto as Italy's answer to the French baguettes that were taking over the sandwich trade; the flat, stretched loaf looked like a worn slipper.

Which cocktail of gin, vermouth and Campari is said to be named after a Florentine count?

Negroni: the story goes that in 1919 Count Camillo Negroni asked a Florence bartender to strengthen his Americano with gin in place of the soda water, and the drink kept his name.

Parmigiano Reggiano graders called battitori check each wheel for internal cracks using what?

The battitore taps each wheel all over with a small hammer and listens for the dull notes that betray internal cracks; wheels that fail are stripped of their rind markings.

Which crunchy Italian almond cookies have a name that means 'twice cooked'?

Biscotti are baked twice, which leaves them dry and hard enough to keep for a long time; Tuscans, who call them cantucci, traditionally soften them by dunking in Vin Santo wine.

Which symbol is branded onto a leg of prosciutto di Parma once it has passed inspection?

A ducal crown is fire-branded onto each leg that passes; the only ingredients are pork and sea salt, and inspectors judge the ham by pushing in a horse-bone needle and smelling it.

Campania's PDO mozzarella is made from the milk of which animal?

Mozzarella di bufala campana is made from the rich milk of the Mediterranean water buffalo; cow's-milk mozzarella is called fior di latte, and the name comes from mozzare, 'to cut off'.

Traditional balsamic vinegar, aged at least 12 years in wooden barrels, comes from Reggio Emilia and which other city?

Modena shares the protected 'tradizionale' name with Reggio Emilia: it is made only from cooked grape must aged at least 12 years, unlike the cheap, lightly protected supermarket kind.

Which spice gives risotto alla milanese its yellow colour?

Saffron threads steeped in broth turn the rice gold; legend traces the dish to the glassworkers of the city's Duomo, who used saffron as a pigment and in 1574 slipped it into the rice at a wedding feast.

Ossobuco, the Milanese braised veal shank, has a name meaning what?

Osso buco means 'bone with a hole', the marrow in the hollow shank bone being the prize; the braise is finished with a parsley-and-garlic gremolata.

Before maize reached Italy, polenta was made from grains such as farro, millet and which flour?

Chestnut flour, farro and millet all made polenta before maize arrived from the Americas; the corn version then became so much of the diet of the northern poor that it brought them pellagra, a vitamin deficiency.

Gorgonzola takes its name from a town near which city?

Gorgonzola is a town just east of Milan, in Lombardy; the blue veins are encouraged by piercing the wheels with metal rods so air reaches the mould, and it comes in mild dolce and sharp piccante styles.

Bistecca alla fiorentina is traditionally cut from which breed of Tuscan cattle?

Chianina, the giant white cattle of the Val di Chiana, supply the T-bone, which is cut three or four fingers thick, weighs around a kilo and is grilled rare over embers.

Sicilian arancini are traditionally eaten on 13 December for the feast of which saint?

Saint Lucy's feast on 13 December is when Palermo traditionally shuns bread and pasta and eats rice-based arancine instead; the name means 'little oranges', and in Catania they are shaped like cones in honour of Mount Etna.

Cannoli are filled with a sweet cream based on which cheese?

Ricotta, sweetened and often flecked with chocolate, fills the fried shell; cannoli began as a Carnival-only treat around Palermo and Messina and only later became an everyday pastry.

What does the name tiramisu mean in Italian?

Tiramisù means 'pick me up' (tira mi sù), a nod to its jolt of coffee and sugar; for all its classic status the dessert is young, first made around the end of the 1960s.

Obituaries for Ado Campeol credited the invention of tiramisu to his restaurant Le Beccherie in which city?

Treviso's Le Beccherie, run by the Campeol family, is the usual birthplace, with pastry chef Roberto Linguanotto at the stove around 1970, though Friuli-Venezia Giulia also claims the dessert.

Which Italian Christmas bread got its tall dome when baker Angelo Motta let the dough rise three times?

Panettone took its tall, airy modern shape in 1919, when Angelo Motta's triple rising stretched the proving to nearly 20 hours; rival Gioacchino Alemagna adopted the method a few years later.

Which frozen dessert's Italian name is simply the word for 'frozen'?

Gelato is the past participle of gelare, 'to freeze', a cousin of the English word gelatin; in Italy the word covers every kind of ice cream, not one special style.

What was the Prosecco grape officially renamed in Italy in 2009 to protect the wine's name?

Renaming the grape Glera let 'Prosecco' become a protected place name for the wine from the Veneto and Friuli, so no one elsewhere can call their fizz Prosecco.

Which orange bitter liqueur, created by the Barbieri brothers in Padua in 1919, is the base of the classic spritz?

Aperol took the Barbieri brothers seven years of experiments; at 11% alcohol it is less than half as strong as Campari, and it only became widely popular after the Second World War.

Limoncello is made by steeping which part of the lemon in spirit?

The zest, the yellow outer peel without the white pith, is all that is steeped in the spirit; the traditional fruit is the Sorrento lemon, and the oil it releases is what gives the liqueur its cloudy look.

Which chain's arrival near Rome's Spanish Steps prompted Carlo Petrini to found Slow Food in 1986?

The 1986 opening of a McDonald's by the Spanish Steps spurred Petrini's movement; Slow Food was born in Bra, Piedmont, took a snail as its logo and signed its manifesto in Paris in 1989.

Which town in Piedmont, famous for hazelnuts, is the home of Ferrero and the birthplace of Nutella?

Alba, in the Langhe hills, is where Pietro Ferrero stretched scarce post-war cocoa with local hazelnuts: his 1946 Giandujot loaf evolved into Nutella in 1964.

In a full Italian meal, which course comes immediately after the antipasto?

The primo, usually pasta, risotto or soup, follows the antipasto, whose name means 'before the meal' (pasto) and has nothing to do with pasta; meat or fish comes later as the secondo.

Which folded, oven-baked pizza has a name meaning 'trouser leg' in Italian?

Calzone means 'trouser leg', from calza, a stocking: the folded parcel is sold at lunch counters and street stalls because it is easy to eat while standing or walking.

Who wrote the 1891 book The Science of Cooking and the Art of Eating Well?

Pellegrino Artusi, a Forlimpopoli-born businessman living in Florence, could not find a publisher for La scienza in cucina e l'arte di mangiar bene in 1891, so he paid to print the first edition himself.