Sauce on top, the Italian-American way

[stephen129]

I was wondering how Italian-Americans came to sauce pasta the way they do, i.e put cooked pasta on the plate and then dump sauce on top. Whereas in Italy they would mix the sauce and the pasta with a bit of starchy pasta water.

I have travelled all around Italy and have never been given a plate of pasta with sauce on top, it's always mixed. So my question is, how did this tradition come about in New York and other places that Italians emigrated to in the United States? Surely they would have just done what they did back in Italy and combine the sauce with the pasta.

 

[ian]

Laziness? It’s a lot easier. If you’re not a food person, that’s what you do. Seems pretty understandable to me, if unfortunate.

 

[rickbern]

I think it’s because cheap meat in the US changed sauces into tomato based meat stews that were not so conducive to tossing.

lots of web results, this one has pretty pictures

https://firstwefeast.com/features/illustrated-history-of-italian-american-food

 

[spaceconvoy]

No clue really, but I'm happy to throw out my half-baked ideas. I can confirm this is how my grandmother did it, but I never understood why. Maybe it was growing up during the great depression? Instead of letting the pasta soak up all that sauce, adding it later could stretch out a smaller amount. Probably a minimal difference tho... Another thought - culture cuts both ways. My grandparents' mother-tongue was Italian, but they only spoke English in the house on purpose so my mom's generation would be more assimilated. Maybe saucing a plate of cooked pasta seemed more American to them, in a good way?

edit: @ian definitely not laziness, in my family at least. My grandmother was obsessed with food and would spend a half-day making her special eggplant parmesan recipe. Multiple-course Sunday dinners after church every week, seven fish on Christmas eve, which included soaking the baccala in the bathtub overnight, etc, etc... She had a reason for everything, and sauced pasta like this on purpose. Never got a chance to ask her why though.

 

[ian]

.

 

[Runner_up]

I grew up in an "italian-american" household and we never, ever, put sauce on plain pasta. I always figured this was simply done by folks who don't know any better (most americans when it comes to cooking).

 

[marc4pt0]

It’s how my wife likes it, and how my 2 girls are starting to want it. But I ignore it and still toss pasta in whatever sauce I’m making.
I think the idea of kids being fed plain or buttered pasta from the early ages ruins life. The kids grow up with this instilled comfort of plain pasta and the ability to choose when to touch said pasta to the sauce. It’s terrible.

 

[ian]

It’s how my wife likes it, and how my 2 girls are starting to want it. But I ignore it and still toss pasta in whatever sauce I’m making.
I think the idea of kids being fed plain or buttered pasta from the early ages ruins life. The kids grow up with this instilled comfort of plain pasta and the ability to choose when to touch said pasta to the sauce. It’s terrible.

This is a perpetual argument in my house. My 5 yr old will eat basically nothing but plain starches and fruit. On my own, I’d just serve him whatever for dinner (within reason) and let him deal with it. My wife is all about no-conflict meals, though, so we don’t do that...

 

[Xenif]

This has been a constant point of argument between my mother and I for as long as I can remember. My mother dumps huge amount of sauce on top with a healthy squirt of ketchup, while I always do it with pasta in sauce, control sauce with pasta water. 30 years and I dont think either of us will yield anytime soon

 

[erickso1]

I grew up with the sauce on top. Never knew any better. Watched Sopranos and started mixing the sauce into the noodles with some pasta water. Now, me and my boys get our sauce and noodles mixed, and my partner gets her noodles with sauce on the top on the side.

 

[boomchakabowwow]

i do a hybrid. i "dress"the pasta with a few scoops of sauce. i try to get just juice, and not so much meat. it does two things. keeps the pasta greased up with flavor and it wont stick together. like a primer. then i plate the pasta with a twirl of the noodles and then put scooped sauce on top...in the nest of noodles. this is long noodles.

short noodles? everyone in the pool! (makes for a way better food photo anyways)

 

[spaceconvoy]

remembering a few details.. if she made ravioli or gnocchi, my grandma would add a little sauce before serving, but you'd still add most of the sauce to your plate. Regular boxed pasta was served plain from a big bowl mixed with a splash of olive oil. Tomato sauce was poured from a gravy boat on the side. For some reason she never made spaghetti or other long thin noodles.

I think the logic was, if you start with antipasti and don't immediately eat the pasta, pre-saucing makes it soggy. But some pastas, like wide flat ravioli or soft homemade gnocchi, need a bit of sauce for lubrication or they'll stick together.

 

[M1k3]

This is a perpetual argument in my house. My 5 yr old will eat basically nothing but plain starches and fruit. On my own, I’d just serve him whatever for dinner (within reason) and let him deal with it. My wife is all about no-conflict meals, though, so we don’t do that...

 

[ptolemy]

I don't know but I never did it nor will I do it. I see same with rice... I never do that nor would want to. Plain, it's just starch

 

[TSF415]

I’m a first generation Italian American and I am extremely offended by this post. I didn’t even read the replies before rushing to the bottom to post that I think you deserve to get whooped with a wooden spoon.

 

[esoo]

My finacee considers the way I eat spaghetti offensive: I sauce on top, put parm on top, I *cut* my pasta so the sauce/spaghetti mix, add more parm and eat. Sometimes on top of garlic bread to make a pasta sandwich. Apparently I'm a monster.

 

[WildBoar]

I grew up with tomato-sauce-on-top, and both sides of my family are eyetalian. The first time I had pasta tossed in/ finished cooking in sauce while on a trip to Italy I thought the sauce dried out because we arrived late and the pasta had been sitting. In my family, not only did we put the tomato sauce on top of the bowl of pasta, we also served additional tomato sauce on the side so it could be poured overtop your plate of spaghetti at the table. I don't think the traditional Italian-American 'spaghetti with tomato sauce' suffers much from this because you can easily mix it up on your plate (plus the spaghetti was usually rinsed off so it would not stick together), but it does not work well for most other types of sauces. But there were no other kinds of sauces beside tomato sauce when I was growing up.

Three out of my 4 grandparents were born in southern or central Italy. They all seemed fine with this.

 

[gregfisk]

This is slightly off topic because it’s a question but how do chefs make pomodoro so the dry sauce sticks to the noodles?

I grew up with sauce on top as well but now I much prefer mixing it in. I’ve been trying for a few years to get pomodoro to be like the good Italian restaurants do it but it just never turns out right.

 

[M1k3]

This is slightly off topic because it’s a question but how do chefs make pomodoro so the dry sauce sticks to the noodles?

I grew up with sauce on top as well but now I much prefer mixing it in. I’ve been trying for a few years to get pomodoro to be like the good Italian restaurants do it but it just never turns out right.

Put the noodles in the sauce, slightly underdone to where you want them, finish cooking noodles in the sauce in the pan with a splash of the starchy pasta water.

 

[YumYumSauce]

Not Italian. Grew up with the sauce on top and oiling the pasta after boiling. As I got more into cooking I learned tossing it in sauce helps incorporate everything together. I always toss the pasta in sauce and noodle water before serving now. We've always stored them seperatly. I always found it strange when others would make a big batch and just mixing everything together all at once.
I feel like the reasons for some things just got lost or forgotten in the trip across the ocean. I'm sure I do plently of things "wrong" from my background which I try to learn and understand.

 

[gregfisk]

Put the noodles in the sauce, slightly underdone to where you want them, finish cooking noodles in the sauce in the pan with a splash of the starchy pasta water.

Okay, thanks for the information. It always seems too wet to me though. It’s dry at the restaurants. Maybe my sauce is too wet?

 

[valgard]

Some stuff I mix in the sauce before serving but when I make a big batch of ragu or something that will yield more than one meal I am lazy and don't use an extra container just to mix the current batch of pasta with a portion of the sauce, instead just put on top and we mix it on our own plates. Doesn't answer the question but it could be one explanation of how it came to be.

 

[btbyrd]

It should also be remembered that not every person who came to this country from Italy had significant culinary knowledge or food experiences. I think it was Bourdain who noted that many Italian grandmothers truly suck at cooking, and suggested that it was folly to romanticize the old country (or old people of Italian descent) as uniform repositories of fantastic foodways.

 

[ian]

Okay, thanks for the information. It always seems too wet to me though. It’s dry at the restaurants. Maybe my sauce is too wet?

Yes, or take the pasta out earlier and let it absorb more of the sauce’s moisture. Make sure you’re adding a good sized splash of pasta water, though, since the starch in that is what thickens the sauce and makes it stick to the noodles. I have no idea, maybe 1/4 cup per person? I never measure, so maybe that’s totally off, and usually I transfer the pasta straight to the sauce pot with tongs so that automatically transfers a bunch of pasta water with it. And account for the fact that you’ll add pasta water when you consider the thickness of the sauce.

 

[TSF415]

Okay, thanks for the information. It always seems too wet to me though. It’s dry at the restaurants. Maybe my sauce is too wet?

Similar to what Ian said. If the you like the texture of your pasta after it being cooked for 8 mins, than I would cook 6min in water and two mins in sauce. The starch from the should make the sauce stick to the pasta. Also if you add cheese, that's a good time to do so.

 

[WildBoar]

It should also be remembered that not every person who came to this country from Italy had significant culinary knowledge or food experiences. I think it was Bourdain who noted that many Italian grandmothers truly suck at cooking, and suggested that it was folly to romanticize the old country (or old people of Italian descent) as uniform repositories of fantastic foodways.

Agreed. I think any/ most had a few solid items in their arsenal, but they were no chefs by any means. And forget about ever trying to add more flavor/ improve something they knew how to make -- it would never be a possibility. On a side note, my wife has a pretty broad range of dishes she makes that are good. But any thought of improving upon them is met with a brick wall. She will not -- ever -- veer from whatever recipe her mom recited to her over the phone while pulling quantities, etc. out of here buttocks region (it's not like the mother had this stuff down as set recipes... She does her best to guess when asked to relay a recipe with very little advanced notice)

To me nothing is sacred, as whatever we consider 'classic' evolved to that recipe over time. It was never a constant. But at some point it peaked based on what ingredients were available locally, etc. But any/ everything can be improved upon. The tomato sauce I make is a moving target, as I like to play around with adding other flavors, etc. compared to what my grandparents and my mother traditionally made. And almost universally the ones I make are better then the simpler/ planer sauces they would make/ serve. And I know neither of my grandmothers would be upset about me making the sauce different if they
thought it tasted better (sadly they both died before I reached the point in life where I started playing around with the 'traditional' stuff).

 

[M1k3]

Okay, thanks for the information. It always seems too wet to me though. It’s dry at the restaurants. Maybe my sauce is too wet?

Get your sauce consistency just about "there" before adding pasta and the water.

 

[gregfisk]

Similar to what Ian said. If the you like the texture of your pasta after it being cooked for 8 mins, than I would cook 6min in water and two mins in sauce. The starch from the should make the sauce stick to the pasta. Also if you add cheese, that's a good time to do so.

Thanks guys, I really appreciate you helping me out with this. I do a fair amount of cooking and the pomodoro issue has been bugging me for a long time.

I didn’t have pasta any way but sauce on top until I started going to good restaurants in my early 20s. My Mom and stepmom were pretty lousy cooks. My Mom did the Betty Crocker thing, yah, yuck and my stepmom cooked everything into the dirt big pot style. I don’t think it matters where you came from, some people are just better cooks than others. My sister who was 2 years younger than me would follow any recipe to the T. It didn’t matter that the roast was smoking and turning black in our too hot oven. If the recipe said cook it for 3 hours by God don’t take it out until then, no matter what it looks like.

 

[rickbern]

Marcella hazan was not a big proponent of using pasta cooking water to thicken the sauce, she disdainfully called it “pasta roux”. One of the few pieces advice from her that I’ve chosen to ignore.

She is originally from emiglia Romano and she was always a proponent of a butter based tomato sauce with a whisper of onion.

Worth giving it a try

https://www.marilenaskitchen.com/20...ns-pasta-with-simple-tomato-and-butter-sauce/

 

[ian]

I have dreams to this day about the tomato pastas I would make myself as a postdoc 10 years ago. I was living alone, dating lots, hitting up all the amazing New Haven, CT clubs (this is half tongue in cheek, but only half), and during the summer I’d bike down to the quite excellent farmers market, drop like $60 on these awesome tomatoes, and treat myself (and perhaps my companion of the moment) to dried spaghetti with the best, simplest pasta with tomato sauce ever. I can’t remember exactly how I cooked it nowadays, since I have lost the technique in a fog of romance, from which it can never be fully extracted. However, I imagine it was something more or less like this:

Get amazing tomatoes (I was using whatever big luscious ones they had at the farmers market. Think brandywines or green zebras or whatever instead of romas.)
Peel them (or don’t, depending on the tomato),
Coarsely dice and salt them, put them in a strainer over a bowl.
Boil some water, salt it.
Put a pan on medium low heat or whatever.
throw the pasta into the water.
put some olive oil in the warming pan and throw in some minced garlic. Let it cook gently for a couple minutes, and don’t let it color.
throw the tomatoes in the pan (reserve the juice for now)
cook the tomatoes for just a couple minutes till they break down a bit, which shouldn’t take long if they’ve been salted and peeled, and if they’re fancy soft heirloom ****ers.
take the pasta out of the water with tongs and throw into the pan. There should hopefully be enough starch clinging to the noodles to thicken the sauce slightly. But don’t overdo it. The sauce should already be somewhat thick because you strained out the excess juice. Add some juice if it’s too thick.
throw in a knob of butter and a bunch of herbs. I like thyme, basil, oregano and such. use, like, a lot of herbs. Perhaps 1 or 2 ****tons, to taste.
stir rapidly with the tongs. add a little cheese if you like (don’t add a really strong tasting parmesan. If you have a milder one, that’s good, or pecorino or something)
put it on a plate
add more cheese
eat, and drink wine
take your companion(s) to bed
wake up in the morning before they get up, and make them breakfast potatoes.
repeat