Talk:Spaghetti alla puttanesca

Myths and Sources
1. It's easy to quickly read up on the origin of the name, find the exact restaurant where it was invented etc. So we don't need new UFO theories here.

2. A reliance on sources from the US has already contaminated this article. It's good pasta but a silly article.

Merging
I merged "Spaghetti alla Puttanesca" into this page; quite redundant. Since neither were very active I decided to forgo a Vote for Merger. JD79 02:13, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Puttana

 * Puttana means "lady of the night" (i.e. a prostitute), 

Why "lady of the night", why not simply say "prostitute"? It's not like it's an etymological derivation in Italian. bogdan 22:29, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
 * I guess so, but Lady of the night is a literal translation, or so I recall--XenoN e on (converse) 19:25, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Moved from article
The following edit posted by user.201.243.73.174 was moved here from the article: As a postscript to this report let me add the following: I ordered "Pasta Puttanesca" once with my wife (thank God) in Naples and,at that time ignorant of its varied history and being very cooking oriented, noted that the sauce was very fresh, the tomatoes were hardly cooked, the olives were Kalamatas and there was a pungency I latter came to associate with anchovies. Subsequently I came across the recipe in an Italian recipe book that supplied an interesting prologue to the cooking instructions. This book claimed that Puttanesca, based on non-fatty ingredients such as olive oil, anchovies, capers, Kalamata olives and tomatoes was equally palatable cold (let's say, ambient temperature in Naples, a busy sea port) as hot, and therefore the Neapolitan workng girls could abandon their meal to service a customer and return to their lunch satisfied that it was satisfyingly palatable though no longer steaming hot. This allowed the working ladies to return to their meal. . . a little while later, without suffering the scourge of a coagulated grease on cold pasta. The Puttanesa I regularly and often make has no chilis, no butter (to harden, should it cool), uses a generous amount of the best olive oil I can find (in Venezuela at this writing) as much garlic as I feel like peeling, and requires no extra ingredients beyond a generous amount of olive oil, anchovies - at least 5 filets - tomatoes, canned or fresh, capers (I usually slosh in a bit of the brine) and a handfull of chopped parsley. Cook it as long as you want especially if you're using canned tomatoes. Since the base of the sauce is olive oil, garlic and the pungently fishy anchovy I do not serve Parmesan cheese. In my small circle of friends this dish is in high demand.

"In Media" section removal
Please check WP:Trivia page before adding that sort of crap about "Trivia", "In media" etc. stuff. --Attilios 14:59, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
 * I disagree with your unilateral removal of the "in media" section. The WP:Trivia page you cite _specifically_ states that such sections should not be deleted but rather categorized more appropriately.  You have rendered this article less useful than before.69.242.85.126 (talk) 23:41, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Yet another theory...
I heard the theory of Puttanesca this way: A lot of johns try to kiss the whores, so in order to dissuade them, the whores would eat pungent, smelly ingredients to ward off the gentleman customer. Consequently, any dish with a lot of pepper, garlic, anchovies, and olives can be called puttanesca.72.78.11.48 14:08, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

The name is fantasy
If "alla Buona Donna" would be a popular italian sauce it would be found by google.it (combined with pasta, spaghetti or sugo) for sites in italian or of italian descend: just a few (20-60) without references to cooking. And none(0!) for "pasta alla Buona Donna", "spaghetti alla Buona Donna" or "sugo alla Buona Donna". So it is quite unlikly that there is a (popular, traditional) italian dish "alla Buona Donna". And so it is unlikely, too, that someone has transfered the name "alla Buona Donna" into "alla Puttanesca" for what nasty purpose ever. "Spaghetti alla Buona Donna" is mainly found at english and a few northern european sites, so maybe the cited book is the source of that rumour.

The story of the brothel seams to be fiction, too, because the specified recipe can't be cooked with the left overs of the week. The ingrediences are a list of stuff, which a stranger figures to be typical italian and not of the larder of someone, who hasn't got time to buy his food conscientiously. And second, if the specified recipe had left the brothels of Napels, an italian housewife of the 60's never would have served to her family a dish named "alla Puttanesca", especially not if it really comes from the whores. So there are just three theories left:
 * The dish itself but definitly the name is an invention of that novelist, who has obviously mentioned it the first time. That novelists do so is not unusual.
 * Or it is a completely unitalian invention, maybe english: spiced or tarted up tomato sauce, where tart can also mean slut or whore, which is "la puttana" in italian. In Germany we have also some "italian style" absolutly german dishes like Pizza Hawaii (with ham, pineapple and dutch cheese, disgusting).
 * A german explaination is, "alla Puttanesca" means "whore style" in the sense of "untidy", "unreliable", "quick and dirty", "irregular", "without a rule/concept/recipe" or "it works just by chance". But this is a literal translation of a similar german expression (schlampig means literaly sluty, like a slut) with that further meanings, which I don't know from Italy. So "Pasta alla Puttanesca" can also be a german fake invertion with the same unreliability like the english descend.

By the way: just unexperieced italian housewifes and chefs would combine spaghetti with a sauce with solid parts like olive and tomato chunks, capers and cubed onions. Spaghetti or linguini use to come with oil (e.g. aglio e olio) and a hard cheese or sticky sauces of cream or cheese. More solid sauces come as spoonfood with short pasta types. Spaghetti Bolognese (with minced meat) is a typical northern european dish where Italy is identified with spaghetti plus tomato. In Bologna a similar sauce (with cubed, cooked or smoked meat, speck and ham) is used for lasagne (only). "Spaghetti alla Carbonara" should not come with Spaghetti but smaller noodles like fusili or farfalle!

One more indicator, that "Spaghetti alla Puttanesca" is not traditional italian, is the number of hits for that expression by google. Just an indicator no proof! "Spaghetti alla Puttanesca" has 10000 entries on english sites, most in UK, 3500 in Germany and just double as much in Italy. But "yorkshire pudding", which is as dish absolutly unpopular and unknown in Germany and Italy, gets 340000 hits in english, 50000 in Germany and still 2000 in Italy. If "alla Puttanesca" would be a popular, traditional italian dish google.it should find at least 100000 hits in Italy, too. CBa--80.137.70.208 (talk) 13:09, 9 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Nobody knows the true etymology of this recipe's name. Whoever added the etymology to this article offered it as a theory, not hard fact. Moby-Dick3000 (talk) 13:26, 10 April 2009 (UTC)
 * What a stupid comment. The author completely disqualifies himself by not knowing tagliatelle al ragù. I never heard of a sugo alla buona donna, so he's most likely right about that. I guess it's a puritan evangelical invention to avoid the allusion to whores. But spaghetti alla puttanesca a German invention? Seriously? Just look up the Italian wikipedia, it's there, of course, and it says nothing about German influence. 2001:8E0:21BE:8E00:C8FF:9133:A12D:4F2F (talk) 09:47, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

New Info on Origin
I did a considerable amount of copy editing. Also, I found what seems like a convincing newspaper article in Italian about this dish's origin written by Italian journalist, Annarita Cuomo. It makes Diane Seed's theory look like folk etymology. Moby-Dick3000 (talk) 22:04, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

Jeremy Parzen 23:05, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Jeremy Parzen here. I'd kindly ask that the author and editors of this entry include a reference to my blog post on the origins of the dish's name, since they have clearly drawn from my research. Thank you in advance.

The link:

http://dobianchi.com/2008/01/13/the-origins-of-sugo-alla-puttanesca/

(January 2008)

Sincerely, Jeremy Parzen (DoBianchi.com)

Jeremy Parzen 23:04, 5 November 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jparzen (talk • contribs)
 * Yes, Jeremy, quite clearly your excellent article has been consulted in writing this one. I’ve added a footnote reading ‘The dictionary entry is cited in Jeremy Parzen, “The origins of Sugo alla puttanesca?”, Do Bianchi, 13 January 2008, an article which supplied a number of the sources used here.’ Hope that’s satisfactory. Ian Spackman (talk) 11:22, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Renaming
I think this article should be renamed as Puttanesca sauce, because it is the sauce (sugo alla puttanesca) that gives the name to the pasta dishes and it is as often made with linguine. Xufanc (talk) 04:39, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Jeff Smith reference
I have to say that although Jeff Smith (personal issues aside) was an excellent cook, I've found the quality of his historical research to be very lacking, or I would have used The Frugal Gourmet Cooks Italian extensively in the Italian-American cuisine article. I'm not sure he should be considered a valid citation for anything but recipes. Haikupoet (talk) 21:05, 7 February 2010 (UTC)
 * I agree. I removed it. Moby-Dick3000 (talk) 02:34, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Editorial comment from article
Sorry, but this explanations as to the origins of spaghetti alla puttanesca is bogus. My mother who was born in 1917 and is still living remembers the dish as a child and in early adulthood in Naples Italy. The story may be well meaning and a similar older story may be true but this time period is not. The actual story has most likely been lost to history and I can think of several stories as to what might be the origin of the recipe including one that a prostitute came up with the recipe. No one really knows and perhaps it is best this way so that now we can conjur up many possible scenarios as to its origin and have fun with it. 2011-02-27T13:02:05 User:Bobading

Origins of the recipe
The version of this article in Italian attributes the recipe to Lazio and Campania. Something needs to be revised. I assume that the version of this article in Italian is correct.

ICE77 (talk) 21:08, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

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