The real carbonara was a dish for children without teeth. Here is the original recipe from 1980: no guanciale or pecorino cheese

A tablespoon of Parmesan cheese, 50 grams of fat-free cooked ham, an egg, salt and 60 grams of spaghetti, “or any other type of pasta that you think is easy for a child with few teeth to eat”: these are the ingredients for “Spaghettini alla carbonara”, a perfect dish for every 'little gourmand' from 12 months upwards, published in the 1980 “Nuovissimo libro della cucina italiana”.

Carbonara for kids

This unusual recipe for carbonara for children has been dusted off the social networks: a user, Fabio Manzoni, shared it on the Facebook profile of Luca Cesari, who has been under attack for days by gastropurists with insults and death threats for having made a video, published by Gambero Rosso, in which he prepares carbonara following the 1954 recipe, with bacon, garlic and gruyere.

The 1980 recipe has different ingredients, which promise to unleash new hordes of indignation: cooked ham and parmesan cheese, to be added to an egg, salt and spaghetti, or any type of pasta suitable for the teeth of a child who has just turned one.

The procedure

While cooking the spaghetti in boiling salted water, the 'Nuovissimo libro della cucina italiana' suggests beating the whole egg with the Parmesan cheese and cooked ham, fat removed and finely chopped. Once cooked, the sauce should be immediately mixed with the boiling pasta “so that the egg congeals with the heat”. The dish is now ready to be served to the child. “Of course,” the recipe concludes, “this constitutes a complete dish and only the fruit is needed to finish the meal”.

One wonders how many of the gastropurists who today rage about Luca Cesari's 1954 carbonara recipe were once “little gluttons” who grew up with carbonara with parmesan cheese and well-fattened cooked ham.

by Giulia Argenti