The True History of Pasta all'Amatriciana: From the Shepherds of the Apennines to One of Italy's Greatest Pasta Dishes

The True History of Pasta all'Amatriciana: From the Shepherds of the Apennines to One of Italy's Greatest Pasta Dishes

Story of the Dish

Few Italian recipes have generated as much debate as Pasta all'Amatriciana. Mention the dish anywhere in Italy and, within minutes, someone will insist that the onion is forbidden, another will argue that garlic belongs in the sauce, someone else will claim that only bucatini are acceptable, while another will swear that spaghetti are the only authentic choice.

The reality is that Amatriciana is far older, more complex, and far more fascinating than the simplified version often repeated on social media.

Like many of Italy's greatest recipes, Amatriciana was never invented overnight by one cook. It evolved over centuries through geography, necessity, migration, and the availability of ingredients. To understand the dish, we must travel back to the mountains of central Italy, long before tomatoes became part of Italian cuisine.

The Land Where Amatriciana Was Born

Amatriciana takes its name from Amatrice, a mountain town located nearly 1,000 meters (3,280 feet) above sea level in the central Apennines.

Today Amatrice belongs to the Lazio region, but for most of its history it did not.

Until 1927, Amatrice was part of the Province of L'Aquila in Abruzzo. Only after the administrative reorganization carried out during the Fascist period was the town incorporated into the newly created Province of Rieti in Lazio.

This historical detail is often overlooked, yet it is fundamental.

The roots of Amatriciana are therefore not originally Roman. They belong to the pastoral culture of the central Apennines, a territory shared historically by Abruzzo, Lazio and the mountains that connected these regions.

Rome would later make the dish famous, but it was not where the recipe was born.

The Shepherds and the Tradition of Transhumance

For centuries, the economy of Amatrice revolved around sheep farming.

Every year, thousands of shepherds followed an ancient seasonal migration known as transhumance.

During spring and summer, flocks grazed in the cool mountain pastures of the Apennines.

When winter arrived, shepherds traveled hundreds of kilometers south toward the warmer plains of what is now Molise and Puglia.

This migration lasted for centuries and became one of the defining traditions of central Italian rural life. It was so culturally significant that UNESCO has recognized transhumance as part of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

Life during these journeys was extremely practical.

Every ingredient carried by a shepherd had to satisfy three conditions:

it had to keep for weeks or even months;

it had to provide substantial calories;

it had to survive travel without refrigeration.

Fresh vegetables spoiled quickly.

Fresh meat was impossible to preserve.

Cream and butter had a very short shelf life.

Instead, shepherds relied on ingredients that modern Italians still associate with central mountain cuisine.

Guanciale could be salted and cured for months.

Pecorino cheese became harder, richer and more flavorful with age.

Dried pasta could be transported without difficulty.

Black pepper and dried chili peppers required no preservation.

These simple foods formed the basis of countless meals prepared over open fires in the mountains.

Before Amatriciana There Was Gricia

Contrary to popular belief, the first ancestor of Amatriciana was not a tomato sauce.

It was a white pasta dish known today as Gricia.

Many historians describe Gricia as "Amatriciana without tomatoes," although the relationship is actually the opposite.

Amatriciana is an evolution of Gricia.

The classic preparation combined only a handful of ingredients:

guanciale

Pecorino Romano

black pepper

pasta

pasta cooking water

The rendered fat from the guanciale created the sauce, while Pecorino and starchy pasta water formed a creamy emulsion.

No cream.

No butter.

No olive oil was even necessary.

Only technique.

It remains one of the purest demonstrations of Italian cooking philosophy: transforming a few humble ingredients into something extraordinary.

Exactly when Gricia was first prepared is impossible to determine.

Recipes of popular rural dishes were rarely written down.

Families cooked from memory, passing techniques from one generation to the next.

For this reason, historians cannot identify a precise "birth date" for Gricia or Amatriciana.

What we can say with confidence is that preparations based on cured pork, sheep's cheese and dried pasta existed in the pastoral communities around Amatrice long before tomatoes became common in Italian kitchens.

The Arrival of the Tomato Changed Italian Cuisine Forever

One of the greatest misconceptions about Italian food is the belief that tomatoes have always been part of it.

They have not.

Tomatoes originated in the Americas.

Following the voyages that connected Europe and the New World at the end of the fifteenth century, Spanish explorers introduced tomato plants to Europe during the sixteenth century.

For a long time, however, Italians did not eat them regularly.

Many Europeans believed tomatoes were ornamental plants or even poisonous because they belonged to the nightshade family.

Their widespread culinary use developed slowly between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, particularly in southern Italy.

Only after tomatoes became an established ingredient could Gricia gradually evolve into what we now recognize as Amatriciana.

This point is crucial.

Any story claiming that medieval shepherds prepared red Amatriciana centuries before tomatoes reached Europe is historically impossible.

The red sauce belongs to a later chapter of Italian culinary history.

When Did Gricia Become Amatriciana?

Unfortunately, no surviving historical document records the exact day someone first added tomatoes to Gricia.

History rarely works that way.

Recipes evolve gradually.

One cook adds an ingredient.

A neighboring village copies the idea.

Families adapt it.

Years become decades.

Eventually, the new version replaces the older one.

Most food historians therefore agree that Amatriciana emerged progressively between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, after tomatoes had become firmly established in central Italian cooking.

The transformation was remarkably simple.

Everything that made Gricia exceptional remained untouched.

The guanciale.

The Pecorino.

The pepper.

The cooking technique.

Only one ingredient changed the identity of the dish forever:

the tomato.

From the Mountains to Rome

Although Amatriciana was born in the mountains surrounding Amatrice, it was Rome that transformed it into one of the most famous pasta dishes in the world.

For centuries, shepherds, merchants, butchers, and innkeepers traveled regularly between Amatrice and Rome. Many families from Amatrice eventually settled in the capital, opening taverns and trattorias where they served the food they had grown up eating.

During the nineteenth century, Rome experienced rapid population growth. Thousands of workers, craftsmen, and merchants arrived from neighboring regions, bringing their culinary traditions with them. Among those traditions was the pasta from Amatrice.

Little by little, the dish became part of Roman cuisine.

This explains why today many people think Amatriciana is originally Roman.

It is more accurate to say that Amatriciana was born in Amatrice and became famous in Rome.

Both places are essential to its identity.

The First Recipes in Print

One of the greatest difficulties in studying Italian culinary history is that recipes often existed for generations before anyone wrote them down.

Families did not cook from books.

They cooked from memory.

Professional cooks learned by watching older cooks.

Only later did publishers begin collecting these recipes into cookbooks.

For this reason, the first printed recipe is not necessarily the first time the dish existed.

It is simply the first surviving written evidence.

One of the earliest known printed versions resembling modern Amatriciana appears in Amedeo Pettini's cookbook published in 1914.

Interestingly, Pettini's recipe does not include onion.

Instead, it relies on cured pork, tomato, cheese and pepper, showing that even at the beginning of the twentieth century different versions already coexisted.

This is an important historical point.

The absence of onion in Pettini's recipe does not prove that onion was never used.

It simply proves that one documented version omitted it.

Italian regional cooking has never been frozen in time.

Different families prepared the same dish differently, often only a few miles apart.

Ada Boni and the Amatriciana That Shaped Modern Italian Cooking

If one person influenced twentieth-century Italian home cooking more than almost anyone else, it was Ada Boni.

Her famous cookbook, Il Talismano della Felicità, published in 1927, became one of the most influential culinary books ever written in Italy.

Millions of Italians learned to cook from its pages.

Unlike Pettini's earlier version, Ada Boni's Amatriciana includes onion.

The onion is finely chopped together with the guanciale before cooking, allowing it to slowly melt into the rendered pork fat and become part of the sauce rather than remaining as visible slices.

For decades, this book was considered almost a culinary bible in Italian households.

Its influence cannot be overstated.

This single fact alone demonstrates that one of Italy's most respected culinary authorities considered onion perfectly acceptable in Amatriciana.

The Onion Debate: What the Historical Evidence Actually Says

Today, one of the most common statements heard online is:

"Real Amatriciana has never contained onion."

It is a confident statement.

It is also historically inaccurate.

Modern research comparing historical recipes tells a very different story.

Food historian Luca Cesari examined 30 published Amatriciana recipes spanning much of the twentieth century.

The results surprised many cooks.

Twenty-three of the thirty recipes include onion.

Among those recipes:

several use only onion;

some use both onion and garlic;

a few describe onion as optional;

only a minority omit it entirely.

Perhaps even more interesting is the timeline.

Until roughly the 1960s, recipes containing onion were actually the majority.

Only in the second half of the twentieth century did the simplified version without onion gradually become dominant.

This completely changes the conversation.

The evidence does not prove that the very first Amatriciana contained onion.

There is no historical document capable of proving that.

What the evidence does prove is something equally important:

For a large part of the documented history of Amatriciana, onion was a normal, accepted and widely published ingredient.

Therefore, saying that onion "never belonged" in Amatriciana is not supported by the historical record.

A more accurate statement would be:

The modern official version excludes onion, but many historical recipes included it.

Those two ideas are not contradictory.

They simply belong to different periods of the dish's evolution.

How Was the Onion Cut?

This question generates almost as much discussion as whether the onion should be used at all.

After examining the historical sources, one conclusion becomes clear.

The classic cookbooks that include onion generally describe it as being finely chopped rather than cut into long julienne strips.

The goal was not to see pieces of onion in the finished dish.

Instead, the onion slowly cooked in the rendered guanciale fat until soft and sweet, becoming part of the sauce itself.

As it cooked, its natural sugars balanced the acidity of the tomatoes while adding depth without overpowering the pork.

This technique reflects the philosophy of traditional Italian cooking.

The onion is not meant to dominate the dish.

It is meant to disappear into it.

Today, however, many chefs have their own preferred knife cut.

Some choose an extremely fine dice.

Others prefer a very thin julienne that almost dissolves during cooking.

Both approaches can produce excellent results when cooked gently over low heat.

What matters most is not the exact shape of the onion, but the balance achieved in the finished sauce.

The greatest mistake is not using onion.

The greatest mistake is burning it.

Traditional Pasta all'Amatriciana

Serves: 4Preparation Time: 15 minutesCooking Time: 20 minutes

Recipe Information

Servings: 4. Prep Time: about 30 minutes. Cook Time: about 25 minutes. Total Time: about 55 minutes.

Ingredients

14 oz (14.11 oz) spaghetti or bucatini

7 oz (7.05 oz) guanciale, cut into strips about ¼ inch (6 mm) thick

14 oz (14.11 oz) whole peeled San Marzano tomatoes, crushed by hand

½ small yellow onion, very finely chopped (optional from a historical perspective, but documented in many twentieth-century recipes)

1½ cups (5.29 oz) freshly grated Pecorino Romano DOP

1 small dried chili pepper or a pinch of crushed red pepper flakes

Freshly ground black pepper

Salt, for the pasta water

Preparation

Bring a large pot of well-salted water to a boil.

Place the guanciale in a cold sauté pan, then turn the heat to medium-low. Starting from a cold pan allows the fat to render slowly without burning the meat. Cook for 8–10 minutes until the guanciale is golden on the outside while remaining slightly tender inside.

If using onion, add it only after the guanciale has released its fat. Cook gently over low heat until soft and translucent. The onion should never brown. Its purpose is to dissolve into the rendered fat, adding sweetness and balance without becoming the dominant flavor.

Add the crushed tomatoes and the chili pepper. Simmer gently for about 10 minutes, just long enough for the tomatoes to lose their raw taste while preserving their freshness.

Meanwhile, cook the pasta until it is about 2 minutes short of al dente.

Transfer the pasta directly into the sauce together with a generous ladle of pasta cooking water.

Finish cooking the pasta in the pan, stirring constantly. This traditional Italian technique, known as mantecatura or risottare la pasta, allows the starch released by the pasta to emulsify with the rendered guanciale fat and tomato sauce, creating a silky, naturally creamy texture without butter or cream.

Turn off the heat.

Add the Pecorino Romano gradually while tossing continuously. If necessary, add another splash of hot pasta water until the sauce becomes smooth, glossy and perfectly coats every strand of pasta.

Finish with freshly ground black pepper and serve immediately.

Professional Technique

Salt the cooking water correctly, reserve starchy pasta water, and finish the pasta in the sauce whenever the recipe allows. Fresh pasta requires gentler handling and much shorter cooking than dried pasta. The sauce should coat the pasta rather than pool beneath it, and final seasoning should be adjusted only after cheese, cured meat, or other salty components are incorporated.

Chef Tips

One of the greatest mistakes people make is believing there has only ever been one "true" Amatriciana.

History tells a more interesting story.

The earliest documented recipes are not all identical. Some include onion, others do not. Over time, the version without onion became the official modern standard, but historical cookbooks demonstrate that onion was part of many respected recipes throughout much of the twentieth century.

During my culinary training in Italy, the version I studied included onion, cooked slowly and gently so that it melted into the guanciale fat rather than standing out as a separate ingredient. That experience shaped my understanding of the dish.

If you choose to use onion, remember that it should support the guanciale—not compete with it. Cook it slowly over low heat until it becomes sweet and almost disappears into the sauce. The goal is elegance and balance, never a pronounced onion flavor.

The quality of the guanciale matters far more than the debate over onion. Buy authentic guanciale with a good ratio of fat to lean meat, render it patiently from a cold pan, and never rush the process.

Finally, never add cream, butter or garlic to compensate for poor technique. The creaminess of a great Amatriciana comes naturally from the emulsion created by rendered guanciale fat, Pecorino Romano and starchy pasta water.

That is the true secret behind one of Italy's greatest pasta dishes.

— Chef Gianluca

Servings and Timing

Servings: 4. Prep Time: about 30 minutes. Cook Time: about 25 minutes. Total Time: about 55 minutes.

Chef Tips

For the best result, prioritize ingredient quality and execute the basic technique cleanly before adding decorative touches. The finished recipe should taste balanced first; presentation comes second. Make the final adjustment for salt, acidity, sweetness, or texture immediately before service, then serve without unnecessary delay.

Wine Pairing

Amatriciana is a rich, savory pasta built on cured pork, aged sheep's cheese and tomato. It pairs best with medium-bodied Italian red wines that offer vibrant acidity and moderate tannins.

Montepulciano d'Abruzzo is perhaps the most natural choice. Its dark fruit, gentle tannins and bright acidity complement both the guanciale and the Pecorino while respecting the dish's pastoral origins.

A young Cesanese del Piglio from Lazio is another outstanding pairing, offering spice and freshness without overpowering the sauce.

If you prefer a northern Italian option, a youthful Rosso di Montalcino provides enough structure while maintaining elegance.

Avoid heavily oaked Cabernet Sauvignon or wines with excessive alcohol, as they tend to overwhelm the balance of the dish.

Chef Gianluca