

Soon, Alfredo’s restaurant became the place in Rome for international movie stars and directors. It then went on to take the United States by storm. To express their gratitude, the couple sent him a set of golden silverware engraved with the words “To Alfredo, the King of the Noodles.”Īs soon as they got back to Hollywood, they spread the word of the delicious pasta.

After tasting the dish and falling in love with its simplicity, they asked di Lelio for the recipe, which he gave them. In the 1920s, Hollywood stars Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford came to Rome on their honeymoon. Soon, it made an appearance on the menu at the family restaurant.īut how did fettuccine Alfredo gain the international spotlight? Legend says that his wife had lost her appetite after giving birth, so he came up with this simple but delicious pasta recipe. So why do we call it “Alfredo” pasta? Simple: a man named Alfredo di Lelio invented it.ĭi Lelio came up with this famous dish right here in Rome in 1908. The ingredients and shape of fettuccine noodles make them an ideal pairing for creamy sauces.
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READ MORE : The Survival Guide to Pasta Shapes in Italy: How to Order Like You Know What You’re Doing And this type of pasta tastes best when made with fettuccine, an ideal pasta shape for capturing the creaminess of the sauce. You’ll find neither heavy cream nor parsley in the original recipe. The only ingredients are butter, Parmesan cheese and pepper. The real Alfredo sauce is delicious because of its simplicity. So what is the real fettuccine Alfredo, anyway-and how did it become so drastically different abroad? The original fettuccine Alfredo

Parsley!Īs Allison ate her Americanized Alfredo, I thought to myself: “You can call that pasta whatever you want, but that’s not Alfredo’s pasta.” There were pieces of cheese that weren’t Parmesan, and the worst part is that there was parsley. The pasta was drenched in a white sauce (heavy cream, most likely)-lots and lots of it. When Allison’s Alfredo arrived at the table, it looked nothing like the original recipe I had tasted in Rome. Too bad its Americanized version would make Alfredo himself turn over in his grave. It’s so popular outside Italy that when I lived in Houston as a child, my 9-year-old friend Allison ordered it at a restaurant.Īpparently, lots of people loved Alfredo pasta in the States. Fettuccine Alfredo-the real thing, anyway-is served at just two restaurants in Italy, but its popularity has exploded abroad.Įveryone has heard of fettuccine Alfredo, sometimes called “Alfredo pasta” abroad. This blog post was originally posted on Septemand was updated on January 29, 2021.
