Carbonara: origin and perfect wine pairing

Carbonara, nowadays is one of the most representative plate of the roman tradition but its story, apparently, is not so obvious.

Proceeding chronologically is important to notice that in 1930 the writer Ada Boni, wrote a “bible” about the roman traditional recipes and Carbonara was not known yet. However, during that period, there is evidence in Abruzzo that coal workers, “carbonari” in Italian, used to bring at work eggs with cheese as an easy and energetic lunch.

Within the same certainty can be stated that, just after the liberation of Rome, in 1944, bacon came up for the first time, thanks to the americans. Then about who and how conceived carbonara there are different hypothesis but the most truthful seems to be the one regarding the chef Renato Gualandi. He was a young cook from Bologna and, in 1944, was hired to prepare a lunch in Riccione for the English and American armies. In that important occasion the chef Renato Gualandi, to impress the guests, decided to make a pasta with the best ingredients available in that period: bacon, double cream, cheese and eggs.
The idea of the chef was well appreciated by the armies who found in that recipe a delicious version of their classic breakfast which includes the same ingredients.

After that experiment, between 1944 and 1945, the chef Renato Gualandi was called to work as a cook for the army in Rome and, during that period, Carbonara, apparently, spread successfully through the capital.