Fettuccine Alfredo (Italian:[fettut'tʃiːnealˈfreːdo]) is an Italian-style pasta dish that originated in Rome in the 1920s, which is now a well known staple of Italian-American cuisine. In its original form, it is made with fettuccine, butter, and Parmesan cheese. As the cheese is mixed with freshly cooked, warm fettuccine and ample butter, it melts and emulsifies to form a smooth, rich cheese sauce coating the noodles.[1] Cream is commonly added to Italian-American versions, which are often served as a main course with chicken, shrimp, salmon or other ingredients on top or on the side.[2][3]
The dish is named for Alfredo Di Lelio, a Roman restauranteur who is credited with its invention and popularisation in the early to mid-20th century.[2] His elaborate tableside service was an integral part of the dish.[4] Fettuccine Alfredo is based on a traditional Italian preparations such as fettuccine al burro (lit.'fettuccine with butter'), pasta burro e parmigiano (lit.'pasta with butter and Parmesan'), or simply pasta in bianco (lit.'plain white pasta').[5][6] These Italian recipes do not include cream and are not topped with other ingredients, nor is the dish generally called "Alfredo" in Italy.[7]
History
Roman origins
In Italy, the combination of pasta with butter and cheese dates to at least the 15th-century, when it was mentioned by Martino da Como, a northern Italian cook active in Rome;[8] this recipe for "Roman macaroni" (Italian: maccaroni romaneschi) calls for cooking pasta in broth or water and adding butter, "good cheese" (the variety is not specified) and "sweet spices".[9]
Modern fettuccine Alfredo was invented by Alfredo Di Lelio in Rome. According to family lore, in 1892 Alfredo began to work in a restaurant located in piazza Rosa that was run by his mother Angelina. He cooked his first "fettuccine with triple butter" (Italian: fettuccine al triplo burro – later called fettuccine all'Alfredo, and eventually "fettuccine Alfredo")[1] in 1907 or 1908 in an effort to entice his convalescent wife, Ines, to eat after giving birth to their first child Armando.[10][11][12] After piazza Rosa was condemned to make way for the construction of the Galleria Colonna[13] and the restaurant was forced to close (c. 1910), Di Lelio opened his own restaurant called "Alfredo" on the via della Scrofa (c. 1914).[14]
This act of mixing the butter and cheese through the noodles becomes quite a ceremony when performed by Alfredo in his tiny restaurant in Rome. As busy as Alfredo is with other duties, he manages to be at each table when the waiter arrives with the platter of fettuccine to be mixed by him. As a violinist plays inspiring music, Alfredo performs the sacred ceremony with a fork and spoon of solid gold. Alfredo does not cook noodles. He does not make noodles. He achieves them.
In the late 1920s and early 1930s, the American food writer and restaurateur George Rector wrote about "Alfredo's noodles", describing in detail the restaurateur's elaborate tableside preparation ceremony; he did not give the dish a specific name.[16] In a later account, Rector mentions the addition of accompanying violin music and golden tableware[15] (which bear the inscription "To Alfredo the King of the noodles" and are said to have been a gift of the American actors Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks – who was known as "The King of Hollywood"[17] – in gratitude for Alfredo's hospitality).[18][19][1][7] When exactly the "Fettuccine Alfredo" appellation came about is unclear, however, a 1927 article by Alice Rohe mentions "Noodles Alfredo". The same piece also mentions that the actual King of Italy knighted Di Lelio, making him a Cavaliere dell'Ordine della Corona d'Italia.[20][21][16] As war rationing made it increasingly difficult to obtain flour, eggs, and butter, Di Lelio sold the restaurant to two of his waiters in 1943.[22][23]
Both the original restaurant (now called Alfredo alla Scrofa), and the post-war iteration (know as Il vero Alfredo and still run by the Di Lelio family) serve "Fettuccine Alfredo" and are said to compete vigorously, with escalating puffery (e.g., "the king of fettuccine", "the real king of fettuccine", "the magician of fettuccine", "the emperor of fettuccine", "the real Alfredo", etc.).[22] Writing in the New York Times in 1981, Paul Hoffman reported that there were about 50 restaurants in Rome selling similar fettucine dishes, mostly billed as "fettuccine alla Romana", which Hoffmann called "one of the most tempting and at the same time simplest pasta specialties".[27]
Fettuccine Alfredo is not widely known in Italy, despite its worldwide renown.[7]
In American culture
The dish has long been popular with Americans, who, when in Rome, have often sought out its historical origins.[2][28]
Alfredo's noodles have been extolled in US newspapers, magazines, cookbooks and guidebooks since as early as the 1920s and 1930s.[21][29][19] In one of her popular travel guides, So You’re Going to Rome!, Clara Laughlin writes, "Most travellers would blush to admit they had been in Rome and had not eaten Alfredo’s fettucine al burro".[30]Sinclair Lewis's 1922 novel Babbitt makes reference to "a little trattoria on the Via della Scrofa where you get the best fettuccine in the world".[31]
Throughout this period and beyond, restaurant reviews, advertisements, and recipes for "Noodles Alfredo" (1927 and 1929), "Alfredo’s Spaghetti" (1939), "fettuccine al Alfredo" (1956), and eventually "Fettuccine Alfredo" (1957 and 1964)[32][33] began to crop up in various publications. In 1966, the Pennsylvania Dutch Noodle Company started marketing their dried "fettuccine egg noodles" with an "Alfredo" recipe on the package. This version included Swiss cheese and cream – as well as the traditional Parmesan cheese and butter.[34][35]
In 1977, Armando Di Lelio (Alfredo's son) and a partner opened a restaurant called "Alfredo's" near Rockefeller Center in New York, as well as another in Epcot at Disney World – both of which have since closed.[36] (There are also a branches of Il vero Alfredo in Mexico and Saudi Arabia.)[37][38]
The two largest full-service Italian-American restaurant chains, Olive Garden and Carrabba's, both serve and advertise the dish widely.[39] A smaller chain, Il Fornaio, which says that its goal is, to "provide our guests with the most authentic Italian experience outside of Italy", does not serve Fettucine Alfredo.[40]
The dish has its enthusiasts among restaurant reviewers. Writing in the New York Times in 2018, Pete Wells said of a specific version, "The Alfredo sauce, sweetly dripping from the fettuccine like rain from a leaf, hit me like a prescription opiate that had been specifically engineered for my opiate receptors. It’s been a long time since I’d had fettuccine Alfredo."[41]
Some American food writers for prestigious food publications continue to recommend that home cooks do their best to try to duplicate the original 1920's Roman version. For example, writing in Bon Appétit, Carla Lalli Music wrote, "American cooks added heavy cream or half-and-half to thicken and enrich the sauce. To each their own, but no authentic fettuccine Alfredo recipe should include cream (because it dulls the flavor of the cheese)."[42]
Alfredo sauce
In the United States, brands such as Ragú, Trader Joe's, Whole Foods Market, Bertolli, Kroger, Classico, Prego, Rao's, Newman's Own, Signature Select and Saclà sell shelf stable Alfredo sauces in glass jars for home cooks. Giovanni Rana and Buitoni sell fresh Alfredo sauces in plastic tubs that must be refrigerated. The Alaska Seasoning Company makes a spice mix called "Alfredo Sauce Powder" to which, according to the company, one "simply [adds] cream [to] make a restaurant style Alfredo Sauce".[43] These sauces are marketed at various price points and quality levels, and are often reviewed in food related publications.[44][45][46]
The British retailer ASDA sells a version called "New York Creamy Chicken Alfredo Sauce."[47]
In 2020, the Alfredo alla Scrofa restaurant began offering its own bottled version of "Salsa Alfredo", promoted as using only the highest quality ingredients.[48] It contains Parmigiano Reggiano (43%), water, butter, rice flour, and sunflower seed oil – but no cream.[49]
Traditional preparation
The fame of the dish, called on Alfredo's menus maestosissime fettuccine all'Alfredo (lit.'most majestic Alfredo-style fettuccine'), comes largely from the "spectacle reminiscent of grand opera" of its preparation at table at his restaurant in Rome,[5] as described in 1967:
[The fettuccine] are seasoned with plenty of butter and fat Parmesan, not aged, so that, in a ritual of extraordinary theatricality, the owner mixes the pasta and lifts it high to serve it, the white threads of cheese gilded with butter and the bright yellow of the ribbons of egg pasta offering an eyeful for the customer; at the end of the ceremony, the guest of honor is presented the golden cutlery and the serving dish, where the blond fettuccine roll around in the pale gold of the seasonings. It's worth seeing the whole ceremony. The owner, son of old Alfredo and looking exactly like him, ... bends over the great skein of fettuccine, fixes it intensely, his eyes half-closed, and dives into mixing it, waving the golden cutlery with grand gestures, like an orchestra conductor, with his sinister upwards-pointing twirled moustache dancing up and down, pinkies in the air, a rapt gaze, flailing elbows.[22]
Recipes attributed to Di Lelio only include three ingredients: fettuccine, young Parmesan cheese and butter.[16][19][22] Yet there are various legends about the "secret" of the original Alfredo recipe: some say oil is added to the pasta dough, others that the noodles are cooked in milk.[50]
Fettuccine Alfredo, minus the spectacle, has now become ubiquitous in Italian-style restaurants outside Italy, although in Italy this dish is usually called simply "fettuccine al burro".[6][51]
^ abRector, George (1933). a la Rector: Unveiling the Culinary Mysteries of the World Famous George Rector. The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company. p. 39. ASINB000NLMFOA. This act of mixing the butter and cheese through the noodles becomes quite a ceremony when performed by Alfredo in his tiny restaurant in Rome. As busy as Alfredo is with other duties, he manages to be at each table when the waiter arrives with the platter of fettuccine to be mixed by him. As a violinist plays inspiring music, Alfredo performs the sacred ceremony with a fork and spoon of solid gold. Alfredo does not cook noodles. He does not make noodles. He achieves them.
^ abcGeorge Rector, "A Cook's Tour", Saturday Evening Post, November 19, 1927, p. 14, 52, 54, 56, 58 snippet
^The First King of Hollywood: The Life of Douglas Fairbanks. Chicago Review Press. 2015. ISBN978-1613734049.
Pelli, Maurizio (2012). Fettuccine Alfredo, Spaghetti Bolognaise & Caesar Salad. The Triumph of the World's False Italian Cuisine. Pittsburgh, PA: Dorrance. ISBN9781434917829.
