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What even is food authenticity? Why we guard carbonara, and flatten chicken rice

iza.ac

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Re: What even is food authenticity? Why we guard carbonara, and flatten chicken rice

#91

Post by asveikau »

epolanski wrote: post #87
asveikau wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically Italians criticize Americans for non-authentic "Alfredo sauce" but that has its origins in Rome in roughly the same early 20th century time period.

Do they? I don't think anybody cares about fettuccine Alfredo in Italy, it's not something you will find on restaurant menus or that people cook at home. In 40 years I've never had it, and I'm a Rome citizen. I'm quite confident most Italians don't even know what's in the recipe besides maybe hearing there's butter. I did try a month ago to go to the original Alfredo restaurant near via del corso, but the queue and p…

Yes, this is what I mean. They deny that Alfredo is Italian. But it's from Rome. It's just no longer popular with Romans.

Re: What even is food authenticity? Why we guard carbonara, and flatten chicken rice

#92

Post by grebc »

goosejuice wrote: post #90
grebc wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sausage on bread is what it’s called, we’d never call that a hotdog. And fairy bread is just fairy bread, you’re not putting two slices together.

I think that makes sense. I suspect you probably wouldn't call a bacon butty/bap/roll a burger either. Same for pani ca meusa, torta, and cemita. Basically the Aussies picked up burger as from American influence, changed the meaning, then decided that the yanks defined it wrong. Meanwhile all the other bun based sandwiches get to keep the meaning. That said... the international chains haven't helped the matter.

Probably call a bacon butty a bacon roll(from breadroll - what it’s put on).

I’m not claiming anyone’s wrong, it’s just what society you grow up in deem it to be.

Re: What even is food authenticity? Why we guard carbonara, and flatten chicken rice

#93

Post by red-iron-pine »

MeetingsBrowser wrote: post #19
foolfoolz wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i think there’s another component to this that most food sucked. your daily food was probably bad because it had few seasonings. it was likely starch (rice/bread), and stew. you don’t need a recipe for soup, it’s boil water and throw in whatever vegetables you have on hand. maybe meat if you had it

Recipes go back millennia, and seasonings were also common, but varied by region. It’s easy to grow your own herbs a, or even forage for some things. I don’t think it’s true that most food sucked at any point, except for people in exceptional circumstances.

up until maybe 200 years ago famines were a genuine and consistent threat even to places like Europe.

food wouldn't just have sucked, in many cases all you could eat would be some dried grain boiled to porridge, or the handful of semi-mouldy veggies that made it through winter months -- and many would often be lucky to even have that

Re: What even is food authenticity? Why we guard carbonara, and flatten chicken rice

#94

Post by IAmBroom »

grebc wrote: post #67
retrac wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I have read the diet of people in classical antiquity was only terrible for the very poor. Most people in ancient Rome got to, at least rarely, eat honey cakes and fresh fruit and dried fish and maybe once a year at festivals even a small chunk of meat. They grew chives, dill, garlic, asparagus, radish, parsley, thyme, mustard, cumin and many other spices. And they made vinegar and olive oil and garum (ferm…

The very poor far outnumber the wealthy.

False dichotomy. There exist the somewhat-poor through middle class.

Re: What even is food authenticity? Why we guard carbonara, and flatten chicken rice

#95

Post by IAmBroom »

bobthepanda wrote: post #68
retrac wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I have read the diet of people in classical antiquity was only terrible for the very poor. Most people in ancient Rome got to, at least rarely, eat honey cakes and fresh fruit and dried fish and maybe once a year at festivals even a small chunk of meat. They grew chives, dill, garlic, asparagus, radish, parsley, thyme, mustard, cumin and many other spices. And they made vinegar and olive oil and garum (ferm…

one thing to note is that while they may have consumed it they probably weren't making it. Particularly for urban dwellers, kitchens were very rudimentary if you even had one.

Pretty much every castle, house, and hovel had a firesource, and cooking was centered around it.

Re: What even is food authenticity? Why we guard carbonara, and flatten chicken rice

#96

Post by IAmBroom »

foolfoolz wrote: post #13
bobthepanda wrote: post #6

I think what is so interesting is also, if you peel back the curtain, most recipes have standardized at a fairly recent point in their national mythos, depending on how long that is. Recipes are a snapshot of economic and technological advances of the time, and whole classes of recipe are not available until certain technological watersheds, like * precise temperature controls for ovens and stoves in the early 20th c…

i think there’s another component to this that most food sucked. your daily food was probably bad because it had few seasonings. it was likely starch (rice/bread), and stew. you don’t need a recipe for soup, it’s boil water and throw in whatever vegetables you have on hand. maybe meat if you had it

You're buying into the "everyone else was drab misery" image of the past.

Even the poor wore colored clothing, not the uniform drab depicted in movies. Dyeing cloth with common weeds is a worldwide custom.

All but the truly poor lived indoors with a fire, either in a fireplace or centrally located beneath a peak smoke hole in the roof.

In all but the leanest times, chickens were easily raised by most people. Hogs were also common - there are even laws about raising them inside cities! That being said, its possible many meals were meatless, but the prevalence of meatless fasting rules suggest most people had access to meat - you can't "prove your faith through deprivation" if you're always deprived. Furthermore, serfs had access to the low-grade meats from butchering, and could keep it fresh with fat preservation, salting, or smoking.

Re: What even is food authenticity? Why we guard carbonara, and flatten chicken rice

#97

Post by IAmBroom »

mjhay wrote: post #38
MeetingsBrowser wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recipes go back millennia, and seasonings were also common, but varied by region. It’s easy to grow your own herbs a, or even forage for some things. I don’t think it’s true that most food sucked at any point, except for people in exceptional circumstances.

Recipes were the province of the wealthy. The average person would have had a very repetitive, bland, and potentially malnourishing diet. They might have had some herbs or even foraged like you say, that still is very bland and boring compared to what we’re used to.

Citation required.

Medieval Europeans had several times as many sorts of herbs and vegetables as we do. I can forage 20-100 species on my block alone in the city; none of those species are in our markets.

Our supermarkets specialize in those that provide maximum bang-for-buck, including transport costs. That really thins the selection.

Re: What even is food authenticity? Why we guard carbonara, and flatten chicken rice

#98

Post by bobthepanda »

IAmBroom wrote: post #95
bobthepanda wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

one thing to note is that while they may have consumed it they probably weren't making it. Particularly for urban dwellers, kitchens were very rudimentary if you even had one.

Pretty much every castle, house, and hovel had a firesource, and cooking was centered around it.

Ancient poor Romans did not have kitchens, both for space reasons (Ancient Rome had a million people in it in a fairly tight spot) and for fire risk. https://liisaeyerly.com/2025/10/22/poor-vs-wealthy-dining-in...

Similarly, poor people in Victorian England often ate out or ate cold meals, either because they did not have the means to cook, or because they could not afford to; pots were not really cheap, nor was cooking fuel. https://victorianweb.org/science/health/health8.html

Certain types of implements, like ovens, were not super practical or cheap for a lot of people to have dedicated to their own house. https://food52.com/story/17568-the-centuries-old-form-of-pub...

Re: What even is food authenticity? Why we guard carbonara, and flatten chicken rice

#99

Post by IAmBroom »

shermantanktop wrote: post #71

I feel like we’re ignoring the fact that Italians bomb the comment section of every online recipe for an Italian with gatekeeping comments. Carbonara, sure, but Kenji did cacio e pepe and got crucified — I don’t know if even the Pasta Grannies are safe. I have seen this behavior from others as well, from all over the world, but Italian cuisine seems to trigger a special protective reaction from the hometown crowd. Pe…

They also gatekeep coffee heavily - but maybe that's just a corollary.

I think it's something peculiar to their society, for some reason.

Re: What even is food authenticity? Why we guard carbonara, and flatten chicken rice

#100

Post by ciupicri »

fluoridation wrote: post #63
ciupicri wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because not all cheese is the same.

Your point being?

The cheese you'll find in a typical French store or village will probably not be the kind required to make carbonara.
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