Sugo all'amatriciana
Encyclopedia
Sugo all'amatriciana or alla matriciana (in Romanesco
) is a traditional Italian
pasta
sauce
based on guanciale
(dried pork
cheek), pecorino
cheese and tomato
. Originating from the town of Amatrice
(in the mountainous Province of Rieti
of Lazio region), the Amatriciana is one of the most well-known pasta sauces in Roman
and Italian cuisine
. The sauce has been declared as Lazio's Prodotto agroalimentare tradizionale
.
of Accumoli
, near Amatrice. This was (and still is) prepared with guanciale
(cured
pork
cheek) and grated pecorino
. According to the matching hypothesis, ingredients reflect local products available either by a simple grocer Store or to commonfolk who practised herding
in the mountainous area. At some point, a little olive oil
was added to the recipe too.
The invention of the first tomato sauces (and then the possible introduction of tomato in the gricia, creating the Amatriciana) dates back from the late 18th century: the first written record of pasta with tomato sauce can be found in the 1790 cookbook L'Apicio Moderno by Roman
chef
Francesco Leonardi
.
The recipe became increasingly famous in Rome over the 19th century and early 20th century, due to the strong contacts—already pluricentennial—between Rome and Amatrice. The recipe was extremely well received and rapidly went on to be considered a "classic" of the Roman Cuisine
, even if it originated elsewhere. The name of the dish in the Romanesco
dialect became matriciana due to the apheresis typical of this dialect.
While tomato-less gricia is still prepared in central Italy
, it is the tomato-enriched amatriciana that is more well-known all over Italy
and has been exported everywhere. While in Amatrice the dish is prepared with spaghetti
, the use of bucatini
has become extremely common after the recipe became popular in Rome, and is now prevalent. Other types of dry pasta (particularly rigatoni
) are also in use, whereas fresh pasta is generally avoided.
is disliked in Amatrice, but it is used in the classical handbooks of Roman cuisine. As frying grease, olive oil is mostly used, but strutto (canned pork lard
) is attested too.
The addition of garlic
sauted in olive oil ("soffritto") before adding guanciale is also possible , while as cheese either pecorino romano
or Amatrice's pecorino
(from the Monti Sibillini or Monti della Laga
areas) can be used. The addition of black pepper
or chili pepper
is also possible.
Romanesco
Romanesco or Romanesque is a regional language or sociolect subsumed within the Italian language spoken in Rome. It is part of the Central Italian dialects and is thus genetically closer to the Tuscan dialect and Standard Italian....
) is a traditional Italian
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
pasta
Pasta
Pasta is a staple food of traditional Italian cuisine, now of worldwide renown. It takes the form of unleavened dough, made in Italy, mostly of durum wheat , water and sometimes eggs. Pasta comes in a variety of different shapes that serve for both decoration and to act as a carrier for the...
sauce
Sauce
In cooking, a sauce is liquid, creaming or semi-solid food served on or used in preparing other foods. Sauces are not normally consumed by themselves; they add flavor, moisture, and visual appeal to another dish. Sauce is a French word taken from the Latin salsus, meaning salted...
based on guanciale
Guanciale
Guanciale is an unsmoked Italian bacon prepared with pig's jowl or cheeks. Its name is derived from guancia, Italian for cheek. Guanciale is similar to the jowl bacon of the United States....
(dried pork
Pork
Pork is the culinary name for meat from the domestic pig , which is eaten in many countries. It is one of the most commonly consumed meats worldwide, with evidence of pig husbandry dating back to 5000 BC....
cheek), pecorino
Pecorino
Pecorino is the name of a family of hard Italian cheeses made from ewe's milk. The word derives from pecora meaning ‘sheep’, also from the Latin pecora meaning livestock....
cheese and tomato
Tomato
The word "tomato" may refer to the plant or the edible, typically red, fruit which it bears. Originating in South America, the tomato was spread around the world following the Spanish colonization of the Americas, and its many varieties are now widely grown, often in greenhouses in cooler...
. Originating from the town of Amatrice
Amatrice
Amatrice is a town and comune in the province of Rieti, in northern Lazio . The city is seat of the food-agricultural base of "Gran Sasso e Monti della Laga National Park".-History:...
(in the mountainous Province of Rieti
Province of Rieti
The Province of Rieti is a province in the Lazio region of Italy. Its capital is the city of Rieti.It has an area of 2,749 km², and a total population of 153,258 . There are 73 comuni in the province, see Comuni of the Province of Rieti.It was founded in 1927.-External links:*...
of Lazio region), the Amatriciana is one of the most well-known pasta sauces in Roman
Roman cuisine
Ancient Roman cuisine changed over the long duration of this ancient civilization. Dietary habits were affected by the influence of Greek culture, the political changes from kingdom to republic to empire, and empire's enormous expansion, which exposed Romans to many new, provincial culinary habits...
and Italian cuisine
Italian cuisine
Italian cuisine has developed through centuries of social and political changes, with roots as far back as the 4th century BCE. Italian cuisine in itself takes heavy influences, including Etruscan, ancient Greek, ancient Roman, Byzantine, Jewish and Arab cuisines...
. The sauce has been declared as Lazio's Prodotto agroalimentare tradizionale
Prodotto agroalimentare tradizionale
Prodotto agroalimentare tradizionale , in Italy, is a list of traditional regional food products similar to the Protected Geographical Status...
.
Development
The ancestor of the Amatriciana was the recipe named gricia .Grici were called in Rome the sellers of bread and comestibles. They were called so because a group of them came from the Swiss canton of Grisons. According to another hypothesis, the name originates from the village of Grisciano, in the comuneComune
In Italy, the comune is the basic administrative division, and may be properly approximated in casual speech by the English word township or municipality.-Importance and function:...
of Accumoli
Accumoli
Accumoli is a comune in the Province of Rieti in the Italian region Latium, located about 110 km northeast of Rome and about 45 km northeast of Rieti...
, near Amatrice. This was (and still is) prepared with guanciale
Guanciale
Guanciale is an unsmoked Italian bacon prepared with pig's jowl or cheeks. Its name is derived from guancia, Italian for cheek. Guanciale is similar to the jowl bacon of the United States....
(cured
Curing (food preservation)
Curing refers to various food preservation and flavoring processes, especially of meat or fish, by the addition of a combination of salt, nitrates, nitrite or sugar. Many curing processes also involve smoking, the process of flavoring, or cooking...
pork
Pork
Pork is the culinary name for meat from the domestic pig , which is eaten in many countries. It is one of the most commonly consumed meats worldwide, with evidence of pig husbandry dating back to 5000 BC....
cheek) and grated pecorino
Pecorino
Pecorino is the name of a family of hard Italian cheeses made from ewe's milk. The word derives from pecora meaning ‘sheep’, also from the Latin pecora meaning livestock....
. According to the matching hypothesis, ingredients reflect local products available either by a simple grocer Store or to commonfolk who practised herding
Herding
Herding is the act of bringing individual animals together into a group , maintaining the group and moving the group from place to place—or any combination of those. While the layperson uses the term "herding", most individuals involved in the process term it mustering, "working stock" or...
in the mountainous area. At some point, a little olive oil
Olive oil
Olive oil is an oil obtained from the olive , a traditional tree crop of the Mediterranean Basin. It is commonly used in cooking, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, and soaps and as a fuel for traditional oil lamps...
was added to the recipe too.
The invention of the first tomato sauces (and then the possible introduction of tomato in the gricia, creating the Amatriciana) dates back from the late 18th century: the first written record of pasta with tomato sauce can be found in the 1790 cookbook L'Apicio Moderno by Roman
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
chef
Chef
A chef is a person who cooks professionally for other people. Although over time the term has come to describe any person who cooks for a living, traditionally it refers to a highly skilled professional who is proficient in all aspects of food preparation.-Etymology:The word "chef" is borrowed ...
Francesco Leonardi
Francesco Leonardi (chef)
Francesco Leonardiwas an Italian chef. Born in Rome, active in the 18th century in several European countries, he concluded his career as chef of Empress Catherine II of Russia. Back to Rome, he wrote the cookbook L'Apicio moderno, in six volumes, first edited in 1790...
.
The recipe became increasingly famous in Rome over the 19th century and early 20th century, due to the strong contacts—already pluricentennial—between Rome and Amatrice. The recipe was extremely well received and rapidly went on to be considered a "classic" of the Roman Cuisine
Roman cuisine
Ancient Roman cuisine changed over the long duration of this ancient civilization. Dietary habits were affected by the influence of Greek culture, the political changes from kingdom to republic to empire, and empire's enormous expansion, which exposed Romans to many new, provincial culinary habits...
, even if it originated elsewhere. The name of the dish in the Romanesco
Romanesco
Romanesco or Romanesque is a regional language or sociolect subsumed within the Italian language spoken in Rome. It is part of the Central Italian dialects and is thus genetically closer to the Tuscan dialect and Standard Italian....
dialect became matriciana due to the apheresis typical of this dialect.
While tomato-less gricia is still prepared in central Italy
Central Italy
Central Italy is one of the five official statistical regions of Italy used by the National Institute of Statistics , a first level NUTS region and a European Parliament constituency...
, it is the tomato-enriched amatriciana that is more well-known all over Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
and has been exported everywhere. While in Amatrice the dish is prepared with spaghetti
Spaghetti
Spaghetti is a long, thin, cylindrical pasta of Italian origin. Spaghetti is made of semolina or flour and water. Italian dried spaghetti is made from durum wheat semolina, but outside of Italy it may be made with other kinds of flour...
, the use of bucatini
Bucatini
Bucatini is a thick spaghetti-like pasta with a hole running through the center. The name comes from , meaning "hole", while bucato means "pierced"....
has become extremely common after the recipe became popular in Rome, and is now prevalent. Other types of dry pasta (particularly rigatoni
Rigatoni
Rigatoni is a form of tube-shaped pasta of varying lengths and diameters. It is larger than penne and ziti and sometimes slightly curved. Rigatoni is usually ridged, and the tube's end is square-cut like ziti, not diagonal like penne....
) are also in use, whereas fresh pasta is generally avoided.
Variants
The recipe is known in several variants, depending also on local availability of certain ingredients. While each one seems to agree about the usage of guanciale and tomato, onionOnion
The onion , also known as the bulb onion, common onion and garden onion, is the most widely cultivated species of the genus Allium. The genus Allium also contains a number of other species variously referred to as onions and cultivated for food, such as the Japanese bunching onion The onion...
is disliked in Amatrice, but it is used in the classical handbooks of Roman cuisine. As frying grease, olive oil is mostly used, but strutto (canned pork lard
Lard
Lard is pig fat in both its rendered and unrendered forms. Lard was commonly used in many cuisines as a cooking fat or shortening, or as a spread similar to butter. Its use in contemporary cuisine has diminished because of health concerns posed by its saturated-fat content and its often negative...
) is attested too.
The addition of garlic
Garlic
Allium sativum, commonly known as garlic, is a species in the onion genus, Allium. Its close relatives include the onion, shallot, leek, chive, and rakkyo. Dating back over 6,000 years, garlic is native to central Asia, and has long been a staple in the Mediterranean region, as well as a frequent...
sauted in olive oil ("soffritto") before adding guanciale is also possible , while as cheese either pecorino romano
Pecorino Romano
Pecorino Romano is a hard, salty Italian cheese, suitable primarily for grating, made out of sheep milk . Pecorino Romano was produced in Latium up to 1884 when, due to the prohibition issued by the city council of salting the cheese inside their shops in Rome, many producers moved to the island of...
or Amatrice's pecorino
Pecorino
Pecorino is the name of a family of hard Italian cheeses made from ewe's milk. The word derives from pecora meaning ‘sheep’, also from the Latin pecora meaning livestock....
(from the Monti Sibillini or Monti della Laga
Monti della Laga
Monti della Laga is a mountain range in the central Apennines, Italy. Their ruggedness and inaccessibility makes them one of the lesser known areas of the Italian peninsula.-Geography:...
areas) can be used. The addition of black pepper
Black pepper
Black pepper is a flowering vine in the family Piperaceae, cultivated for its fruit, which is usually dried and used as a spice and seasoning. The fruit, known as a peppercorn when dried, is approximately in diameter, dark red when fully mature, and, like all drupes, contains a single seed...
or chili pepper
Chili pepper
Chili pepper is the fruit of plants from the genus Capsicum, members of the nightshade family, Solanaceae. The term in British English and in Australia, New Zealand, India, Malaysia and other Asian countries is just chilli without pepper.Chili peppers originated in the Americas...
is also possible.
External links
- The first site on the Amatriciana recipe www.amatriciana.org
- Amatriciana recipe from matriciana.com
- Recipe of Spaghetti all'amatriciana from Amatrice's municipality website in Italian and English
- Ingredients and recipe in Italian
- Ingredients and recipe in English (same source as above)
- Emeril Lagasse's recipe in English
- NY Times article on different recipes for sugo all'amatriciana and on guanciale
- Recipe for Pasta alla Gricia