page_title: Roman cuisine
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Roman cuisine / History
caption_attribution_description: spaghetti alla carbonara (closeup view)
context_page_description: Roman cuisine comes from the Italian city of Rome. It features fresh, seasonal and simply-prepared ingredients from Roman Campagna. These include peas, globe artichokes and fava beans, shellfish, milk-fed lamb and goat, and cheeses such as Pecorino Romano and ricotta. Olive oil is used mostly to dress raw vegetables, while strutto and fat from prosciutto are preferred for frying. The most popular sweets in Rome are small individual pastries called pasticcini, gelato and handmade chocolates and candies. Special dishes are often reserved for different days of the week; for example, gnocchi is eaten on Thursdays, baccalà on Fridays, and trippa on Saturdays.
context_section_description: Rome's food has evolved through centuries and periods of social, cultural, and political changes. Rome became a major gastronomical center during the ancient age. Ancient Roman cuisine was highly influenced by Ancient Greek culture. Subsequently, the empire's enormous expansion exposed Romans to many new, provincial culinary habits and cooking techniques. In the beginning, the differences between social classes were not very great, but disparities developed with the empire's growth. Later, during the Italian Renaissance, Rome became well known as a center of high-cuisine, since some of the best chefs of the time worked for the popes. An example of this could be Bartolomeo Scappi, who was a chef working for Pius IV in the Vatican kitchen, reaching fame with his cookbook Opera dell'arte del cucinare, published in 1570. Here he lists approximately 1000 recipes of Renaissance cuisine and describes cooking techniques and tools, giving the first known picture of a fork.
  Roman and all Italian cuisine were transformationally influenced by the introduction of new world crops by the Spanish, especially the tomato.
caption: Classic Roman spaghetti alla carbonara.
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