page_title: Italian Argentines
section_title: Cuisine
hierarchical_section_title: Italian Argentines / Culture / Cuisine
caption_attribution_description: Italiano: Spaghetti al pomodoro e basilico. Autore foto: Roberto De Martino
context_page_description: Italian Argentines are Argentine-born citizens of Italian descent or Italian-born people who reside in Argentina. Italian is the largest ethnic origin of modern Argentines, after the Spanish immigration during the colonial population that had settled in the major migratory movements into Argentina. It is estimated that up to 30 million Argentines have some degree of Italian ancestry.
  Italians began arriving in Argentina in large numbers from 1857 to 1940, totaling 44.9% of the entire postcolonial immigrant population, more than from any other country. In 1996, the population of Argentines of partial or full Italian descent numbered 15.8 million when Argentina’s population was approximately 34.5 million, meaning they consisted of 45.5% of the population. Today, the country has 30 million Argentines with some degree of Italian ancestry in a total population of 40 million.
  Italian settlement in Argentina, along with Spanish settlement, formed the backbone of today's Argentine society. Argentine culture has significant connections to Italian culture in terms of language, customs, and traditions.
context_section_description: Argentine cuisine has been strongly influenced by Italian cuisine; the typical Argentine diet is a variation on the Mediterranean diet.
  Italian staple dishes like pizza and pasta are common. Pasta is extremely common, either simple unadorned pasta with butter or oil or accompanied by a tomato- or bechamel-based sauce.
  Pizza (locally pronounced pisa or pitsa), for example, has been wholly subsumed and, in its Argentine form, more closely resembles Italian pizza al taglio but round instead of rectangular. Pizza is shared between two or more people, it's not the usual Italian personal pizza. Typical or exclusively Argentine pizzas include pizza canchera, pizza rellena (stuffed pizza), pizza por metro (pizza by the meter), and pizza a la parrilla (grilled pizza). While Argentine pizza derives from Neapolitan cuisine, the Argentine fugaza/fugazza comes from the focaccia xeneise (Genoan), but in any case, its preparation is different from its Italian counterpart, and the addition of cheese to make the dish (fugaza con queso or fugazzeta) started in Argentina or Uruguay.
  Fainá is a type of thin bread made with chickpea  flour (adopted from northern Italy).  The name comes from the Ligurian word for the Italian farinata. Pizzerias in Buenos Aires often offer fainá, which is eaten with pizza, a wedge of fainá on top of a wedge of pizza.
  Nevertheless, the pastas (pasta, always in the plural) surpass pizzas in consumption levels. Among them are tallarines (fettuccine), ravioles (ravioli), ñoquis (gnocchi), and canelones (cannelloni). 
  For example, pasta is often eaten with white bread ("French bread"). That can be explained by the low cost of bread and the fact that Argentine pastas tend to come with a large amount of tuco sauce (Italian sugo) and accompanied by estofado (stew). Less commonly, pastas are eaten with a dressing of pesto, a green sauce based on basil, or salsa blanca (Béchamel sauce).
  Sorrentinos are also a local dish with a misleading name (they do not come from Sorrento but were invented in Mar del Plata). They look like big round ravioles stuffed with mozzarella, cottage cheese and basil in tomato sauce.
  Polenta comes from Northern Italy and is very common throughout Argentina. And, just like polenta concia in Italy, it is eaten as a main dish, with sauce and melted cheese, or it may accompany a stew.
  Other dishes are milanesas (the name deriving from the original cotoletta alla milanese from Milan), breaded meats similar to the Wiener schnitzel. A common dish of this variety is the milanesa napolitana, an Argentine innovation despite its name, which comes from former Buenos Aires restaurant "Nápoli." It is breaded meat baked with a topping of melted cheese, tomatoes, and sometimes  ham. The milanesa was brought to Argentina by Central European immigrants.
  Pasta frola is a typical Argentine recipe heavily influenced by Southern Italian cuisine, known as Pasta Frolla in Italy. Pasta frola consists of a buttery pastry base with a filling made of quince jam, sweet-potato jam or milk caramel (dulce de leche) and topped with thin strips of the same pastry, forming a squared pattern. It is an Argentine tradition to eat pastafrola with mate in the afternoon. The dish is also very popular in Paraguay and Uruguay. The traditional Italian recipe was not prepared with latticework, unlike in Argentina, but with a lid pierced with molds in the form of hearts or flowers.
  Ice cream (Spanish: Helado, Italian: gelato) is a particularly popular Argentine dessert. Its creamy texture is caused by the large proportion of cream, and, as everywhere, many flavors are available. Ice cream was again a legacy of the  Italian diaspora.
caption: Pasta is a feature of the Argentine cuisine
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