A dish whose principal ingredients are eggs and bacon was always going to be a shoo-in for the British palate: certainly spaghetti carbonara was a regular in my dad's repertoire when pesto was only a glint in a supermarket buyer's eye. As with so many Italian foodstuffs, it has a disputed history, although most people accept that carbonara probably originated in, or near Rome.
It's apparently named after the carbonai, or charcoal burners, allegedly because it was a favourite of these grimy men who spent months deep in the Apennines, relying on foodstuffs that could be easily transported, stored and then prepared over a fire. Sophia Loren claims to have happened upon a group of these lucky fellows while filming Two Women in the mountains in the late fifties – who obligingly cooked her a slap-up carbonara lunch.
Loth as I'd be to contradict the legendary Loren, there are people who believe that the whole carbonaio thing is simply a romantic legend, suggesting instead that the dish was created by local cooks for American GIs who took their rations of bacon and eggs to them to prepare over streetside charcoal braziers. More mature Romans dispute this however, claiming they remember enjoying carbonara while said GIs were still eating milk and cookies at their mother's knees.
Most plausibly of all, in my opinion, is the theory that the name simply refers to the copious amounts of black pepper customarily added to the dish: so much, in fact, that it's almost as if it's been seasoned with charcoal. It's one of those things which people will no doubt still be squabbling over as the earth implodes: far more important, in my opinion, is working out how to make a really good one. Which is where I come in.
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