Pasta "alla marinara"

[ghostrider]

Forgive me if there's already a topic devoted to this, I spent some time with Google and could not find one.

I was intrigued by the statement below, posted by SobaAddict70 in this eGullet thread in General Food Topics:

From Lorenza's Pasta (1996, Lorenza de'Medici; Random House)

"Travelling outside of Italy I have more than once come across a pasta dish dressed with tomato sauce listed on menus as alla marinara, or sailor's style, which is incorrect.  In Italy, a marinara sauce is made with garlic and olive oil and sometimes chili pepper, but no tomatoes are added.  In the days when that sauce was invented, sailors did not have tomatoes aboard ship...."

Is there any truth to this, that what I know as pasta "con aglio e olio" is, or once was, known as "marinara"?

I haven't been to Italy in ten years and don't recall now in what contexts I may have seen "marinara" there. I do recall specifically seeing "spaghetti con aglio e olio" on several menus because it's one of my favorite dishes (I ordered it a couple of times). Is this terminology simply a concession to contemporary usage?

In examining the Google search results, I found several comments to the effect that "alla marinara" originally denoted a seafood sauce with no tomatoes, but no citations to support that idea.

I am simply curious about this, since I make pasta "con aglio e olio," or "alla marinara," as the case may be, several times a week at home, and I'd really like to know its proper name! Thanks.

[Andrew Fenton]

You know, I don't remember ever seeing pasta alla marinara on a menu anywhere I've been in Italy. Oil and garlic, sure, but it's never called "marinara". Similarly, tomato sauce is common, but it's just called tomato sauce, not "marinara". I suspect your source is right and that this is an example of something that has taken on a life of its own outside of Italy. Sorta like "bruschetta".

Now, I have seen pizza alla marinara, with tomatoes, olive oil and fresh basil. Same sort of deal as a pizza Margherita, only without the mozzarella. And since the origins of pizza are firmly datable to the post-tomato world, there's no problem with ascribing the origins of pizza alla marinara to the preferences of (notoriously lactose-intolerant) sailors.

So here's a hypothesis (completely unencumbered by actual evidence): non-Italians looking for a name for a fresh tomato sauce, something "authentic" and without the stain of red-gravy Italian, remembered the pizza they had in Italy and transferred the name over. Because hey, "marinara" sounds all classy and stuff and you can charge an extra buck or two per plate.

[BigboyDan]

Generally an Anglo marinara sauce is a spaghetti dish made in the pan, sauteed with fresh tomatos; not a sauce that is stewed for a great length of time in a pot. Ingredients vary, but it is normally made with fresh white fish and mussels, if it's not with vegetables only.

[FoodMan]

Interesting, usually when you see "marinara" here in the US it simply means red tomato sauce. I've never seen it any other way.

[Pizza Napoletana]

Again, I am puzzled by another bad piece of writing on traditional Italian cuisine for the English speaking public.

Well if it had something to do with cooking on a ship, it would have consisted only of fish...

Anyway, another researcher and writer, which I consider so far to have done the best job at writing about Neapolitan food Ms Francesconi (only in Italian), suggested that the sauce made with tomatoes, garlic, oil and oregano (the same ingredient that topped the Pizza Marinara), was once known as Marinara and has later become to be known as "Pizzaiola" sauce.

Edited June 5, 2006 by Pizza Napoletana (log)

[docsconz]

marinara sauce in the US at least was not a product of non-Italian Anglos. While it may be an Italian-American invention, the origens are definitely southern Italian. In my Sicilian-Neapolitan family it denoted spaghetti with a simple pan-fried tomatoe, garlic and basil sauce made essentially "a la minute" and not a long-simmered "gravy".

[russ parsons]

if francesconi says it, it's good enough for me. but just to be sure, i looked it up in the "Grande Enciclopedia" and (excuse any sloppy translation) it defines alla marinara thusly: it is a generic term that indicates only the presence in a recipe of tomato sals and aromatic herbs from the mediterranean such as basil and oregano, or olives, capers or salted anchovies ..."

but you know, the tuscans know everything about italian food ...

[Pontormo]

Again, I am puzzled by another bad piece of writing on traditional Italian cuisine for the English speaking public.

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For a while in college, I belonged to a rather elaborate dining co-op—or did we call ourselves a collective? I forget. At any rate, we consulted charts to see where we were supposed to eat that night and once every ten days or so, we were in charge of cooking ourselves for a group of five others.

One of the worst blizzards ever hit right around a time when there was one deadline after another and it was my turn to cook. I wasn't about to hike a mile or two to the supermarket as the snow was coming down thick. There was a small grocery store close to campus, run by one of the many families from Sicily who fled to this particular spot in New England. There was meat, there were cans of tomatoes, there was spaghetti and there were boxes of frozen broccoli. I was in love with a guy from Brooklyn who made a mean sausage sauce and I thought I knew a thing or two by that point myself.

What I hadn't counted on was Michael. Michael had perfect hair and he was from Long Island. A Good Family. He walked into the room, smelled the dried oregano in the air and froze. I don't think he said a word during dinner, but when our paths crossed again on campus, I got to hear about his grandmother rolling out her sheets of dough and real Italian food. It was not about red sauce. It was not about dried or frozen ingredients and it was not about bulbous, fatty sausage. I don't remember what he was wearing while this conversation took place, but I picture him in a beige cashmere sweater and myself in a fuchsia velour pullover, on route to my work-study job.

It's been a long time since I've thought about that day. What a reminder.

* * *

As far as marinara sauce is concerned, there are no references to it in any of the Italian cookbooks I own, although Lidia M Bastianich includes a tomato sauce that she calls Marinara in her Italian-American Kitchen. (She probably knew that word before "tomato;" ditto for Marcella.) It seems to be very much a North American thing, derived largely from Southern Italian food. Since Italians got tomatoes from this part of the world and took centuries to adapt them into sauces for pastas, it only makes sense that as more centuries go by, Italian culinary terms and traditions are freely transformed over here, often by children of an Italian Diaspora who learned how to speak English before they learned how to cook. Call it Hegelian dialectic, reciprocity, symbiosis. Food sometimes alters when it alteration finds.

In Gastronomy of Italy, Anna Del Conte provides a brief entry on the word, calling "marinara" a cooking style (sailor's) as opposed to any particular dish. She provides examples, including spaghetti with oil, garlic and chili or rice with seafood. Pizza marinara, according to this Northern Italian who married a Brit, is the original Neapolitan pizza, topped with tomatoes, oregano and garlic and nothing else. What is implied is something you appear to assume yourself: that this became the source for the all-purpose Italian-American sauce, one supposedly cooked for a briefer period of time without adding meat or allowing the tomatoes to dissolve.

In The Food of Southern Italy (1987; foreword by Angelo Pellegrini), Carlo Middione writes of marinara without any sort of cultural or historical self-consciousness. A Sicilian himself, he calls marinara one of the mother sauces of Italy. His recipe calls for an entire onion, generous amount of garlic, oregano, basil and tomatoes. Cook for 15 minutes. Add crushed red chili flakes or use it as the base of a fish stew. This publication is an anomoly, as far as I can tell, though my public library has many pre-Hazan/Del Conte cookbooks by authors of Sicilian heritage.

I have just started to read a translation of Italian Cuisine. A Culinary History by Alberto Capatti & Massimo Montanari. They refer to mss. dear to you, of course, but gloss over the development of tomato sauces rather quickly in the sections I've scanned so far. No marinara. No sailors.

I think the thread that ghostrider quotes is worth reading. Credit is due to Henry Lo for bumping it up and bringing it to our attention.

Edited June 6, 2006 by Pontormo (log)

[SuzySushi]

According to epicurious.com, "marinara sauce" is

A highly seasoned Italian tomato sauce made with onions, garlic and oregano.

Marinière, the French equivalent of "mariner's style"

refers to the preparation of SHELLFISH with white wine and herbs. It can also refer to a fish dish garnished with mussels. 2. Marinière  sauce  is a mussel stock-based BERCY sauce enriched with butter or egg yolks.

Lending credence to the theory that tomato-based marinara sauce is an Italian-American invention, in The Dictionary of American Food & Drink, John Mariani calls marinara

A spicy cooked pasta sauce of Italian origins but far more popular in American restaurants featuring southern Italian cuisines than in most of Italy.

He says the first printed American reference was in 1948, and provides a recipe using olive oil, garlic, canned tomatoes, oregano, and parsley--the latter presumably dried since the recipe calls for only 1/4 teaspoon.

[Edited for typo]

Edited June 6, 2006 by SuzySushi (log)

[russ parsons]

i think we've pretty well established that this is not an italian-american invention, though some derivation of it may be more popular here than it is in italy. in my experience, marinara sauces in the us tend to be long-cooked tomato sauces while in italy they are very fresh and quickly cooked. the etymology i'd always heard was that it was a sauce prepared by the fisherman's wife, who could begin it when she saw her husband's boat in the harbor (for modern sensibilities, of course, you can imagine a husband preparing it when he saw his wife hauling in her nets).

[Pontormo]

i think we've pretty well established that this is not an italian-american invention...

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Sauce or usage of the word "marinara"?

While a quick tomato sauce sounds quite Italian, Anna Del Conte's reference book seems to support the citation that launched this thread even if it is neither the last word nor a direct acknowledgment that some people call tomato sauces "marinara".

[slkinsey]

i think we've pretty well established that this is not an italian-american invention, though some derivation of it may be more popular here than it is in italy. in my experience, marinara sauces in the us tend to be long-cooked tomato sauces while in italy they are very fresh and quickly cooked.

I don't think I've ever seen a tomato-based "alla marinara" sauce in Italy. Not saying that they don't exist, but I've never seen one.

There are two things that seem clear...

1. The concept of calling something "alla marinara" is not an Italian-American invention. Italians have been calling things "alla _____" forever. Two things should be pointed out here: First is that they traditionally end with an "a" to signify that it's the wife who is doing the cooking. Second is that the reason something is associated with a certain mood, person, place or profession may not be as obvious as one might think. This is to say that a dish "alla marinara" doesn't have to include any fish. After all, dishes that are cooked "alla cacciatora" don't necessarily use ingredients that are hunted. Sometimes the association can be purely poetic (e.g., large flakes of black pepper possibly symbolizing ashes in spaghetti alla carbonara), and sometimes no one seems to be able to agree.

2. The concept of a spicy, garlicy, tomato and oregano sauce is not an Italian-American invention.

Whether or not it is clear that a spicy, garlicy, tomato and oregano sauce called "alla marinara" is not an Italian-American invention... I'm not convinced it's clear. Francesconi offers a plausible conjecture.

What also seems clear is that "marinara sauce" occupies a much larger share of Italian-American culinary mindspace than it does Italian. Interestingly, it has never seemed that there is such a thing as a definitive "marinara sauce" in the States. Everyone seems to agree that it's not a meat sauce, but other than that I don't see that there is a great uniformity. I've come to believe that many Italian-Americans grew up calling whatever their non-meat tomato-based sauce may have been "marinara." It's certainly not the case that you can walk into any Italian-American restaurant, order "spaghetti with marinara sauce" and get anywhere near the commonality you would get with, say, "veal parmesan."

[Kouign Aman]

how does 'pomodoro' sauce fit into this?

does it exist in Italy, or is it another american adaptation?

[slkinsey]

Pomodoro is simply Italian for "tomato." There are plenty of tomato-based sauces in Italy.

[Pizza Napoletana]

First is that they traditionally end with an "a" to signify that it's the wife who is doing the cooking. 

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The "a" at the end (and this is Italian Grammar) is because of the sauce (salsa) or Pizza or Pasta ends with "a" and doesn't mean that was cooked by a woman, although I agree that the meaning is not easily found in the ingredients but more often in other associations. In fact, many researchers have suggested that the Pizza Marinara was so called because was the favourite of the fishermen coming back into the Port of Naples after a night of fishing. (It was not the first pizza and there are strong documented evidence of that too).

With regards to the sauce, there are written documents were the sauce now known as "Puttanesca" (olive oil, Tomatoes, garlic, chilli pepper, olives and cappers) was called "Marinara", more then a century ago.

Again a true south Italian, born and raised, with a good comand of English, should write the ultimate book on Southern Italian cousine for the English speaking word. So far I have only seen the results of poor, often few weeks long, research.

A book that has really impressed me, even by finding some misinterpretation, is the "The Food Lover's Companion to Naples and the Campania" by Carla Capalbo

Edited June 6, 2006 by Pizza Napoletana (log)

[Kouign Aman]

Pomodoro sauce, when I've been served it (always in US), has been a very fresh lightly cooked sauce - almost like crushed sieved fresh tomatos, with some seasoning.

As others have noted above, in the US, marinara is a longer-cooked version.

Clearly, I shall be forced to go to Italy and travel the length and breadth of it, seeking sauces by name.

[slkinsey]

First is that they traditionally end with an "a" to signify that it's the wife who is doing the cooking.

The "a" at the end (and this is Italian Grammar) is because of the sauce (salsa) or Pizza or Pasta ends with "a" and doesn't mean that was cooked by a woman, although I agree that the meaning is not easily found in the ingredients but more often in other associations.

I don't think you are correct here. For example, were you correct, a dish made of chicken topped with tomato and mozzarella would be called pollo alla pizzaiolo so that the "o" of pollo and the "o" of pizzaiolo would correspond. It's a reasonable idea, but it doesn't work out that way. The correct name of the dish would be pollo alla pizzaiola, with an "o" on pollo and an "a" on pizzaiola. For similar reasons, it is pollo alla cacciatora and not pollo alla cacciatore (although this dish is most often given by Italian-Americans as "chicken cacciatore" in an interesting gender switch).

Ask yourself what you're saying when you say, "spaghetti alla marinara" (note that the vowel ends do not correspond). You're not saying, "sailor spaghetti." You're saying, "spaghetti in the style of..." or "as it would be made by..." the sailor's wife.

When the name of the dish is shortened from spaghetti alla marinara to simply spaghetti marinara, the sense of "in the style of, or as it would be made by the sailor's wife" still remains. Else, according to your grammatical model, the dish would properly be named "spaghetti marinari" -- right?

[Pontormo]

"Marinara" is feminine form for "of the sea" (il mare, masc.) and not "of the sailor" (marinaio) or even "fisherman" (pescatore) let alone female sailors, fishers or their wives (pescivendola/e based on the assumption that they sell what their men bring in).

Since the phrase modifies the dish, it seems to act as an adjective modifying a noun, perhaps, with the word "salsa" understood? However, I don't think this is a correct explanation (see below). I understand the source of confusion and do not know the answer.

For what it is worth, a sailor's collar on a blouse or shirt is a "collo alla marinara" so someone with more linguisitic expertise might be able to fill us in.

[slkinsey]

Marinaro means "seafaring" according to my dictionary. And thus, un marinaro would be "a seafarer" -- or perhaps "seaman" would be more apt. ("Of the sea," I think, is generally marino, as in sale marino.)

FWIW, I didn't pull the "wives" thing out of my ass. It's what I was told by a person with some expertise in Italian etymology.

[Pontormo]

In fact, the Dizionario dell'Opera lists "una marinara" as one of the roles in the eighteenth-century libretto for Rameau's Hippolyte et Aricie.

The word "un marinaro" used for seafarers seems to enjoy currency even though in recent usage "una marinara" has come to signify a type of pizza or style of preparation in Italy as described by Anna Del Conte among others. The puzzle of the use of "marinara" for an all-purpose vegetarian tomato sauce in N. America--and according to at least one Sicilian writing in English--in Italy remains. Lack of any reference to this usage in the first edition of her reference book may be tied to the fact that the Northern Italian was living in the UK when she wrote.

The term "collo alla marinara" also suggests that "alla marinara" can mean "of the sea" as a feminine form following a masculine noun.

I think I am going to make a salad with arugula now.

(Edited to add content & correct typo.)

Edited June 6, 2006 by Pontormo (log)

[slkinsey]

Lo Zingarelli has marinaro as an old form of marinaio (sailor). It says further that alla marinara speaks of culinary preparations which bring into relief fish, crustaceans and mollusks. How this might relate to the tomato sauce most Italian-Americans know as "marinara" -- I have no idea. Perhaps Southern Italians tended to be stereotyped by the use of a spicy, garlicy tomato-based sauce with these ingredients? There are a lot of preparations that change meaning even from one region of Italy to another (e.g., something known in Milano as "alla Genovese" may be completely unknown in Genova), never mind from one country/culture/continent to another.

[docsconz]

It is funny that there can be such disagreement on this topic. I would have thought before reading it that it was really a cut and dried situation. In my familial experience, the sauce, a staple, came from Italy with my grandparents and was a fast cooked whole tomato sauce with olive oil, garlic and basil. Shrimp or other seafood could be added to make, for example, "shrimp marinara", but were not necessary. One thing it clearly was not in my family at least was a slow and long-cooked sauce. Nor did it contain oregano.

FWIW, the derivation I am used to is the same one that Sam mentioned that it was the fisherman's wife who made this quick sauce upon seeing the fishing boats return. That there should be some confusion with puttanesca should not really be a surprise as that is another quickly cooked sauce traditionally. The story behind that one is that it was a sauce made by wives who were too busy doing other things to make a complex, slow sauce. In some respects these sauces were the original "fast foods".

[Pontormo]

FWIW, the derivation I am used to is the same one that Sam mentioned that it was the fisherman's wife who made this quick sauce upon seeing the fishing boats return. That there should be some confusion with puttanesca should not really be a surprise as that is another quickly cooked sauce traditionally. The story behind that one is that it was a sauce made by wives who were too busy doing other things to make a complex, slow sauce. In some respects these sauces were the original "fast foods".

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1) Carlo Middione (turns out he's USA born & raised, the son of a Sicilian father) provides the same story about marinara, although he has the sailors do the cooking.

2) Puttanesca: the women are prostitutes between tricks, not wives.

[Pizza Napoletana]

First is that they traditionally end with an "a" to signify that it's the wife who is doing the cooking.

The "a" at the end (and this is Italian Grammar) is because of the sauce (salsa) or Pizza or Pasta ends with "a" and doesn't mean that was cooked by a woman, although I agree that the meaning is not easily found in the ingredients but more often in other associations.

I don't think you are correct here. For example, were you correct, a dish made of chicken topped with tomato and mozzarella would be called pollo alla pizzaiolo so that the "o" of pollo and the "o" of pizzaiolo would correspond. It's a reasonable idea, but it doesn't work out that way. The correct name of the dish would be pollo alla pizzaiola, with an "o" on pollo and an "a" on pizzaiola. For similar reasons, it is pollo alla cacciatora and not pollo alla cacciatore (although this dish is most often given by Italian-Americans as "chicken cacciatore" in an interesting gender switch).

Ask yourself what you're saying when you say, "spaghetti alla marinara" (note that the vowel ends do not correspond). You're not saying, "sailor spaghetti." You're saying, "spaghetti in the style of..." or "as it would be made by..." the sailor's wife.

When the name of the dish is shortened from spaghetti alla marinara to simply spaghetti marinara, the sense of "in the style of, or as it would be made by the sailor's wife" still remains. Else, according to your grammatical model, the dish would properly be named "spaghetti marinari" -- right?

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Sorry, but Italian is my mother tongue and at School we do study grammar a lot...

The reason why Pollo alla pizzaiola stays with an "a" at the end is because it should be "Pollo alla salsa pizzaiola" where salsa is dropped, and this happen quite a lot in Italian. Actually, this particular way of writing still make me do few mistake when writing in english .

Again it is Spaghetti alla salsa marinara, where salsa drop! Everytime you need to ask what the adjective is referring to, which in these cases refer to the salsa (sauce).

Ciao

[Pontormo]

Since the phrase [alla marinara] modifies the dish, it seems to act as an adjective modifying a noun, perhaps, with the word "salsa" understood?  However, I don't think this is a correct explanation (see below).  I understand the source of confusion and do not know the answer.

For what it is worth, a sailor's collar on a blouse or shirt is a "collo alla marinara" so someone with more linguisitic expertise might be able to fill us in.

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Pizza, that is what I suggested earlier. We know your native tongue is Italian. Help us out with the sailor's collar, please.