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Comment by hn_throwaway_99 | Hacker News Reader

Though that pasta would be pretty bland without any tomato sauce!

Also weird to think that, as much as many people associate tomatoes with Italy, they were also brought from the Americas.

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> Though that pasta would be pretty bland without any tomato sauce!

You'd use onions and garlic. Those are both still massively popular today.

Cheese, garlic, and oil are all staples for flavoring pasta, and none of them rely on a new world crop.

And cheese and garlic are used with bread too.

Carbonara, though. Pasta, eggs, bacon, cheese and pepper. Pigs, cows and wheat came with the first farmers, some 6k years ago. Chicken around 2k years ago, but they could have used other eggs. Pepper much later, silk road trade. I imagine they could have had something like carbonara a long time ago.

Guanciale.

https://cookandeatbetter.wordpress.com/2010/05/06/recipe-box...

All good thoughts. I think Italy has the soil and weather for goood tomatoes though, so it took off. That said, I think most sauces in Italy are not tomato based. Simple things like Oil and salt is pretty common on pasta (and VERY tasty if u ask me). But to the point, yeah, bread, pasta, and olive oil…

Here you'll find non-tomato condimento --

https://www.google.com/books/edition/Sauces_Shapes_Pasta_the...

> Though that pasta would be pretty bland without any tomato sauce!

Fettuccine alfredo.

> Created by Alfredo di Lelio I (1882–1959)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fettuccine_Alfredo

Many things we assume Italians ate forever are relatively new: Brocollini, Tiramisu, Ciabatta were all created in the 20th century.

A lot of HN (myself included) is older than ciabatta (1982!)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciabatta

From your link: "Serving fettuccine with butter and cheese was first mentioned in a 15th-century recipe"

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