Can someone please answer my spaghetti with meatballs quesition?

Question

i´ll give you 5 stars

jessica c
10 minutes ago

re: spaghetti with meatballs?
Hi,
could someone help me clear this up for me? Spaghetti with meatballs originated as an Italian-American dish, that is, the Italians added the meatblalls to their sauce when the anglo saxons were horrified of their poor diet..
now, when having a discussion with my friend, I realized I didn´t know if Pre Italian immigration time (to the U.S) Italian recipies had a mixture of tomato sauce and meat. Of course, currently there are plenty of dishes which do (spaghetti alla carbonara, Ragú...) but I´m not sure how old they are. do you know?
thanks.

2 answers
You can't answer your own question.

Answer 1

Most food historians write that spaghetti and meatballs is not an Italian dish, meaning, if you go to Italy, you won't see this particular dish on the menu. That's okay, because American cooking is all about taking the best of all cuisines and cultures and making something new and exciting with the ingredients. Meatballs and spaghetti is a great example.

Imagine that in 1890 a German man and an Italian woman, living in New York, get married. He adores the German meatballs his mother used to make. She makes fabulous tomato gravy and serves some form of pasta at every meal. Voila! Meatballs and spaghetti is born.

The Italian lady, who does all the cooking in that late nineteenth century household, takes her mother-in-law's meatball recipe and changes it up a bit. She adds oregano, Parmesan cheese, and garlic to the classic mixture of ground beef and pork. Sometimes she serves the meatballs with long, thin spaghetti (spaghetti means "long, thin cords"), but at other times, when both families and their neighbors come over after Mass on Sunday, she serves the meatballs in a huge casserole of tomato gravy and bakes penne or ziti (hollow, tubular pasta) separately with onions, cheeses, and garlic. It's a great way to feed a crowd.

"As one would expect from its climatic requirements, [the tomato] successfully adapted to Mediterranean conditions although its welcome was not immediate or unanimous. The first printed recipe for spaghetti with tomato sauce was publsihed in an Neapolitan cookobok in 1837, although we do not know how long the dish had been eaten before that. It must have been late in the nineteenth century before "as easy as spaghetti with tomato sauce" became the Italian equivalent for our "easy as pie." And then it was hardly welcomed all over Italy...In fact the myth of tomato-soaked Italian cuisine is a product of American perception of Italo-Ameircan food, which was not at all a realistic assessment of Italian foods as it is or ever was."

Answer 2

What's different about "spaghetti and meatballs" in American as versus Italian cuisine is the compression of two separate courses into one by Italian-Americans.

In Italy one will eat a pasta course which might be spaghetti and then have a main course that will consist of meat and vegetables.

Depending on the family's affluence the relative size of the two courses may vary.

All Italian-Americans have done is to collapse the two course and serve the pasta and meat courses melded into one.

Answer 3

Italy is a country composed of several regional cultures, we have a lot of different recipes.
In northern Italy (and I think in central-north either) we don't have meatballs with pasta, in central south Italy (Abruzzo) and southern Italy they have recipes with pasta and meatballs, southern Italian immigrants brought their culture in the US which americanized their dishes and that's why you have spaghetti and meatballs.
Anglo Saxons and Germans have nothing to do with your dish.

Italian recipes as a whole didn't have, and still don't have, a mixture of tomato sauce and meat. We have A LOT of dishes without tomato and the kind of pasta as spaghetti, maccheroni, penne are from the south. In the north we have rice (risotto) and homemade pasta as tortellini, lasagne, tagliatelle.

Spaghetti alla carbonara doesn't have tomato at all, and there are plenty of different ragù.

The Anglo Saxon terrified by our poor diet? Don't make me laugh. Come to Italy, enter a restaurant and see how many foods we have.

Answer 4

If you are asking about tomato sauce, then the answer is that it didn't appear in the US until the 1830s. Prior to that, tomatoes were considered to be poisonous weeds. But it wasn't Italians who introduced it to the American diet. Instead, it was the Greek sailors who were growing tomatoes on their ships to prevent scurvy.

Answer 5

Is this the one about the Magical Spaghetti Monster that created the world?

Link the original question here so we can see it!

Answer 6

i didnt see the question, but spaghetti with meatballs are great! you can find good frozen meatballs that actually taste really good, there fully cooked, and you just drop them in the sauce when your cooking the sauce.

Answer 7

Gladly

Answer 8

5 stars, woo hoo, if only I could see the question

Answer 9

OK, Uhhh what's the question?

Answer 10

I answered your question.