ANAHEIM HS Culinary Arts Online

the world of alfredo sauce

what is alfredo sauce?

Alfredo sauce is made by melting butter, heavy cream, and parmesan cheese together. Unlike other pasta sauces that use tomatoes as a base, alfredo omits vegetables altogether and uses dairy products to achieve its mouth-watering flavor.

a brief history of alfredo sauce

A history of Italian pasta can only start here, with the legendary fettuccine Alfredo. A very simple dish, with just three ingredients, that has been wildly successful: it turns up in over 800 American cookbooks published from 1933 to the present. So why will your Italian friends tell you they’ve never heard of the stuff?

It’s not their fault. Alfredo is by no means a household name in our country, which is why those of us who have heard of it put it in the same category as spaghetti and meatballs—which we’ve only ever seen in Lady and the Tramp—or carbonara with bacon, garlic, mushrooms and cream: some shoddy imitation of an Italian dish, seemingly unrelated to our traditional cuisine.

This goes to show that fame has a way of ruining old friendships. Because although the average Italian may not know it, the “original” fettuccine Alfredo goes back centuries, and is actually the most ancient pasta dish in our tradition. But I’ll get to that later.

At first glance, this seems like a classic example of a carefully constructed, Italian-sounding fake, a dish that has reached the height of popularity in the US (and other countries) without ever setting foot in the Bel Paese. A marketing ploy by some cunning multinational corporation intent on pleasing palates used to creamy, mouth-filling sauces, with no link to real Italian cuisine.

And it’s true enough that at some point, that’s more or less the direction the dish took. Yet its early history is surprising, because it takes us to the heart of Italy at the dawn of the twentieth century, when a cook discovered—or rather, rediscovered—a fabulous dish that uses a few simple ingredients to magical effect. Believe it or not, in those days Rome had not yet developed the pasta recipes we all know and love. Amatriciana was just starting to appear in a few eateries; cacio e pepe was not yet considered a local speciality; and carbonara and gricia had yet to be invented. Back then, the most famous pasta dish in the Eternal City was—you guessed it—fettuccine Alfredo.

alfredo di lelio

Alfredo di Lelio, inventor of the fettuccine that bears his name, was born in Rome in 1883 and got his start at the family restaurant in Piazza Rosa, which later vanished to make room for the shopping arcade now known as Galleria Sordi. He was still a child when he began helping out at the family business run by his mother, Angelina.

The establishment was rather anonymous, one of the many restaurants dotting the capital, and that’s how it would have stayed had it not been for the arrival of Armando, Alfredo’s eldest son. This was in 1908. After giving birth, the mother, Ines, was so weak that Alfredo strove to come up with a food that would be nourishing yet easy to digest, to help get his wife back on her feet.

So here’s what he did: “he personally prepared some fettuccine, using a semolina dough, and mixed it with very fresh butter and parmesan cheese. Then he said a prayer to St Anne (patron saint of new mothers) and served it to Ines, saying, ‘if it’s not to your taste, I’ll eat it!’” It was to her taste, all right.

So much so that she suggested putting the dish straight on the menu of their little trattoria. A simple recipe, with butter and parmesan perfectly blended to create a velvety sauce enveloping the fettuccine. What was so special about it, as opposed to just dumping butter on noodles? The quality and freshness of the ingredients, of course, but above all the method of emulsification used by Alfredo, whose skilled hands imparted an extraordinary texture to the sauce.

Two years later, his parents’ restaurant, where fettuccine Alfredo first saw the light of day, disappeared as the city underwent all kinds of transformations. But in 1914 Alfredo managed to open a new restaurant—also in Rome, but this time in the very central Via della Scrofa—which he named after himself. Just how the fame of his dish travelled so far outside the Italian capital and rippled across the Atlantic is still a mystery. To be sure, some part was played by the fact that foreigners were enthralled by the histrionics of the owner, and that his fettuccine perfectly suited American tastes in pasta.

Original Fettuccine Alfredo in Rome

Fettuccine Alfredo has quite an amazing history, originating from a variety of similar pastas in Rome. And so while many people think it’s a pasta that’s not really Italian - it’s actually 100% Italian and invented in Rome, Italy.

Carla Makes BA's Best Fettuccine Alfredo | From the Test Kitchen | Bon Appétit

Real alfredo should never (never!) include cream; the silky sauce is the result of an emulsion between the grated cheese, melted butter, and starchy pasta water. This is part of BA's Best, a collection of our essential recipes.

The Pasta Dish That's Named After A Real Person - Fettuccine Alfredo | Tasty Legacies Ep. 2

In our new series "Tasty Legacies" our reporter and food expert Felicitas Then goes in search of clues about why and where famous European dishes got their name from. Her second journey takes her to Rome, where the world-famous "Fettuccine Alfredo" were invented. Join our reporter as she traces back which Alfredo this dish is named after, learns about the role love played in its creation, and lets you in on the original recipe.

in conclusion

Alfredo's fettuccine has long been popular with Americans. By 1922, it was already being reported on by American travelers. Multiple magazine articles and guidebooks in the 1920s and 1930s extolled Alfredo's noodles. In 1927, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks supposedly dined at Alfredo's and gave him the famous gold fork and spoon. Also in 1927, the American restaurateur and writer George Rector wrote up Alfredo's fettuccine and described the ceremony of its tableside preparation, accompanied by violin music, in detail; he did not give it a specific name, nor mention golden tableware.

In the 1950s, Di Lelio promoted the dish and his restaurant by creating a photo gallery of visiting celebrities with his noodles, including Jimmy Stewart, Bob Hope, Anthony Quinn, Bing Crosby, Gary Cooper, Jack Lemmon, Ava Gardner, Tyrone Power, Sophia Loren, Cantinflas and many others.

In 1966, the Pennsylvania Dutch Noodle Company started marketing their dried "Fettuccine Egg Noodles", which included a recipe on the package for an Alfredo sauce including cream and Swiss cheese as well as Parmesan and butter.

The American restaurant casual dining chain Olive Garden has popularized its versions of fettuccine Alfredo, which may be combined with chicken, shrimp or other foods to make main courses called "chicken Alfredo", "seafood Alfredo", etc. Given the strict separation of pasta and meat dishes in the usual Italian restaurant cuisine, this was never done by Di Lelio. Olive Garden's recipe also includes cream and garlic.

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