Penne alla vodka

Penne alla vodka is a pasta dish made primarily with vodka and penne (or similar shapes such as rigatoni), usually accompanied with heavy cream, crushed tomatoes or tomato sauce, onions, and sometimes small meats and vegetables such as sausage, pancetta or peas. The alcohol is said to intensify and accentuate flavors in the dish.

The recipe became very popular in Italy and in the United States around the 1980s, when it was offered to discothèque customers. The recipe thus became an icon of the fashionable cuisine of the time, which preferred the use of cream in first courses. Penne alla vodka remains popular in Italian-American cuisine.

Origins
The exact origins of penne alla vodka are unclear, and to some extent the subject of urban legend and folklore.

The first use of vodka in a pasta dish recorded in a cookbook is attested to 1974, when the Italian actor Ugo Tognazzi published the cookbook L'Abbuffone (means 'the bouffe-men', named after Tognazzi's movie La Grande Bouffe), which included his recipe of pasta all'infuriata (lit. 'furious pasta'), described as a sort of pasta all'arrabbiata, made with ½ kg of penne, ½ kg of fresh peeled tomatoes, a shot of vodka, chili pepper, oil, garlic, and bay leaves. Tognazzi suggested also that, if using a Polish vodka with chilli ("formidable, tremendous, very strong, very hot, deadly"), the fresh chilli pepper can be omitted.

A common claim is that the modern penne alla vodka was invented by Luigi Franzese at Orsini Restaurant in New York City sometime in the 1970s; Franzese reportedly used vodka to thin out a tomato and heavy cream sauce and called it "Penne alla Russia".

There have been multiple, often conflicting, claims to the invention and history of the dish; one author claims that it was invented at Dante, a restaurant in Bologna. One cookbook claims that it was invented in the 1980s by a Roman chef for a vodka company that wanted to popularize its product in Italy. The dish may have been common in Italy before becoming popular in America in the early 1980s.



In the 1980s, another recipe based on penne and vodka, called penne alla moscovita (penne on Moscow style), but made with smoked salmon, cream and caviar (or variant with cream and shrimp), became very popular. Because of the particularity and novelty of the recipe compared to traditional Italian cuisine, it was widespread in the discos of the Emilia-Romagna Riviera with the generic name of "penne alla vodka".

On October 25, 2016, the Italian Association of Confectionery and Pasta Industries named it the symbolic dish of the 18th World Pasta Day organized in Moscow, as symbol of friendship between Italy and Russia. Barilla later found penne alla vodka was the second most sought-after dish of pasta in search engines, behind only pasta alla bolognese.

Composition
Along with the penne pasta, this dish generally contains cream sauce mixed with marinara sauce or tomato paste, which are a combination unusual in Italian cooking because the acidity of the tomatoes tends to make the oil in the cream separate.

The ethanol of the vodka enhances and balances the flavors of the tomato and cream.

In media
Disco Sauce: The True Story of Penne Alla Vodka was released in 2022 by director Roberto Serrini. The documentary examines the history, composition, and variations of penne alla vodka. The film features chef Pasquale Cozzolino, chef Gaetano Arnone, chef Jae Lee, chef JJ Johnson, chef Jeremy Spector, and molecular gastronomist Hervé This. Disco Sauce is a platinum Viddy, Platinum MarCom and Taste Award winner.

The May 4th, 2024, episode of Saturday Night Live featured a sketch about penne alla vodka in which it was depicted as a tolerated, but not particularly good, dish often served at events such as weddings, funerals and anniversaries.