Neapolitan cuisine has influences that date back to the Greco-Roman period. Over the following centuries, the cuisine developed as different cultures controlled Naples and its kingdoms, such as those of Aragon and France.
Because Naples was the capital of the Kingdom of Naples, its cuisine drew substantially from the cuisine of the entire Campania region, leading to the cuisine including both dishes based on rural ingredients (pasta, vegetables, cheese) and seafood (fish, crustaceans, mollusks). Many recipes are influenced by the local aristocratic cuisine, such as timballo and the sartù di riso, pasta or rice dishes with elaborate preparation, and dishes from popular traditions prepared with inexpensive but nutritious ingredients, such as pasta e fagioli (pasta and beans) and other pasta dishes with vegetables.
Dishes originating from Neapolitan cuisine, particularly pasta and pizza, are among the best known foods in Italian cuisine worldwide, disseminated via migration. Citing this influence, food writer Waverley Root wrote in the late 60s that "what the world knows as “Italian” cooking originated in [Naples]."
Overview
Campania extensively produces tomatoes, peppers, spring onions, potatoes, artichokes, fennel, lemons, and oranges which all take on the flavour of volcanic soil. The Gulf of Naples offers fish and seafood. Campania is one of the largest producers and consumers of pasta in Italy, especially spaghetti. In the regional cuisine, pasta is prepared in various styles that can feature tomato sauce, cheese, clams, and shellfish.
is a popular dish made with olives, tomatoes, anchovies, capers, chili peppers, and garlic. The region is well known for its mozzarella production (especially from the milk of water buffalo) that is used in a variety of dishes, including (shallow fried aubergine slices layered with cheese and tomato sauce, then baked). Desserts include (deep fried balls of dough), ricotta-based , , , and rum baba.
Originating in Neapolitan cuisine, pizza has become popular worldwide. "American Pie", American Heritage, April/May 2006. Pizza is an oven-baked, flat, disc-shaped bread typically topped with a tomato sauce, cheese (usually mozzarella), and various toppings depending on the culture. Since the original pizza, several other types of pizzas have evolved.
Since Naples was the capital of the Kingdom of Two Sicilies, its cuisine drew significantly from the cuisine of the entire Campania region, leading to the cuisine including both dishes based on rural ingredients (pasta, vegetables, cheese) and seafood dishes (fish, crustaceans, mollusks). Many recipes are influenced by the local aristocratic cuisine, such as and , pasta or rice dishes with elaborate preparation, and dishes from popular traditions prepared with inexpensive but nutritious ingredients, such as pasta with beans and other pasta dishes with vegetables.
Regional wines include Aglianico (Taurasi), Fiano, Falanghina, Lacryma Christi, Coda di Volpe dei Campi Flegrei, and Greco di Tufo.
History
Naples has a history that goes back many centuries, and the city itself predates many others in the region including Rome. It has endured the Greeks, Romans, the Goths, the Byzantines, and dozens of successions of kings from France and Spain. Each culture left a mark on the way food is prepared in Naples and Campania itself.
Finding the connections between modern and Greco-Roman culinary traditions is not always easy. Among the traces of classical culinary tastes, plates from the period of Greek rule found in Magna Graecia (southern Italy) depict fishes and mollusks, an indication that seafood was appreciated during that period. Frescoes from Pompeii depict fruit baskets filled with figs and pomegranates. An excavation at Oplontis in the Villa Poppaea shows a fresco of a cake, the ingredients of which are not yet known.
The Roman garum is the ancient sauce most similar to that used for the modern colatura di alici, typical of Cetara. It can be traced back to the sweet-sour taste typical of the Roman cooking described by Apicius, along with the use of raisins in salty dishes, such as pizza di scarola (endive pie), or braciole al ragù (meat rolls in ragù sauce). The use of wheat in the modern pastiera cake, typical of Easter, could have had originally a symbolic meaning, related to cults of Artemis, Cybele and Ceres and pagan rituals of fertility, celebrated around the Spring equinox. The name struffoli, a Christmas cake, comes from the Greek word στρόγγυλος (stróngylos, meaning 'round-shaped').
During the 16th century, Naples was known for their breads. Pasta was a luxury and not especially common; in times of famine, production was restricted so more bread could be made. The basic diet centered around a combination of meat and cabbage. According to food writer Arthur Schwartz, the most common flavour combination was sweet and sour.
By the beginning of the following century, this began to shift. Under Spanish rule, production issues and inefficiencies in the public market system caused the supply of meat and vegetables, particularly cabbage, to falter. In their place, Neapolitans ate breads and pasta. The uptake of pasta was assisted by developments in technology, allowing cheaper production and a new status as a staple food. Cheese and pasta took over as the basic food pairing, and the Neapolitans became known as "macaroni eaters". In the 19th century, this combination was developed with the addition of tomato sauce.
As Italy underwent unification in the mid 19th century, Naples, and by extension Southern Italy, was strongly identified with pasta. To calm a tense political environment, the Piedmontese of Northern Italy adopted pasta as a symbol of unity, and as they did, pasta became a symbol of Italy as a whole. At the turn of the century, Naples had a reputation among travellers for squalid conditions; journalist Waverley Root described scenes he observed driving through Naples in the 1920s of "home-made macaroni hung out to dry like the family washing—at the mercy of dust, dirt, insects and the depredations of passing pigeons, children and dogs." Over the following decades, Naples industrialized, and most pasta became made in factories.
Typical ingredients Pasta There is a great variety of Neapolitan pastas. Pasta was not invented in Naples, but one of the best grades available is found quite close by, in Gragnano, and in Torre Annunziata, a few kilometers from the capital. It was here also that the industrial production of pasta started, with the techniques to dry and preserve it. The main ingredient is durum wheat, which is harder than soft wheat, so there was more industrial production than in northern Italy, where home-made pasta is more popular. Traditionally in Naples pasta must be cooked al dente.
The most popular variety of pasta, besides the classic spaghetti and linguine, are the paccheri and the ziti, long pipe-shaped pasta, broken by hand before cooking and usually topped with Neapolitan ragù. Pasta with vegetables is usually also prepared with pasta mista (pasta ammescata in Neapolitan language), which is now produced industrially as a distinct variety of pasta, but which was once sold cheaply, made up of broken pieces of different types of pasta.
Hand-made gnocchi, prepared with flour and potatoes, have been popular despite widespread dislike of potatoes in Naples. In 1949 W. H. Auden wrote Igor Stravinsky from Forio in Ischia, "Forio thinks us crazy because we eat potatoes, which are to them a mark of abject poverty." In reporting this, Francis Steegmuller, a longtime resident of Naples, remarks on the French-inspired gattò, in which "the potato complement is nearly overwhelmed by cheese, ham and other ingredients".Steegmuller 1991:79
Some of the more modern varieties of pasta, such as scialatielli, are also becoming popular.
Tomatoes
Tomatoes entered Neapolitan cuisine during the 18th century.
Industrial preservation of tomatoes began in 19th-century Naples. Products, including pelati (peeled tomatoes) and concentrato (tomato paste) have become exported worldwide. There are traditionally several ways of preparing home-made tomato preserves, either bottled tomato juice, or chopped into pieces. The conserva (sun dried concentrated juice) tomato is cooked for a long time and becomes a dark red cream with a velvety texture.
Vegetables Campanian dishes using vegetables include parmigiana di melanzane and peperoni ripieni (stuffed peppers). Some of the most typical products are Cichorium endivia, smooth or curly (two varieties of endive), and different types of beans, chickpeas and other legumes. Several types of broccoli are eaten with regularity, the local fondness for the vegetable described by food writer Arthur Schwartz as "beyond [the American] imagining." The most popular of these is broccoli rabe, which is closely associated with sausage and braciole, and is also often eaten with pasta and Italian wedding soup. Cabbage is eaten in winter when other crops are out of season, a simple preparation being stewing. Contrary to what is popularly believed internationally, only small quantities of garlic are used in Neapolitan cooking.
Zucchini are widely used; the largest ones fried with vinegar and fresh mint (a scapece). The male flowers of zucchini can be fried in a salty dough (). Regular red and yellow peppers are widely used, and a local variety of small green peppers (not spicy), peperoncini verdi, are usually fried. Black olives used in Neapolitan cooking are always the ones from Gaeta.
Salad is a side dish of many dishes, especially seafood ones. Lettuce, and more often the incappucciata (a local variety of the iceberg lettuce), more crispy, is mixed with carrots, fennel, rucola (some time ago it spontaneously grew in landfields, and was sold in the streets together with the less noble pucchiacchella), radishes, traditionally the long and spicy ones, which today are more and more rare, almost completely replaced by the round and sweeter ones.
During the Second World War, poor families sometimes resorted to eating whatever was available. Recipes have been reported of pasta cooked with empty pods of fava beans or peas.See Frijenno Magnanno in the bibliography.
Cheese
Cheeses, both soft and aged, are important part of the Italian diet and also used in Neapolitan cooking: some recipes are descended from very old Roman traditions.
Starting from the freshest ones, the most used are: the , very fresh and light, was originally sold in hand-made baskets. Commonly found now as a filling for certain pastas the , eaten both fresh, and as side ingredient (for instance, on top of pasta with Neapolitan ragù) the , salty, slightly aged, typical of the Easter period the , of Sorrento's peninsula, with very delicate taste the , fresh cheese made with buffalo's milk, produced mostly on the region of Aversa and in the plain of Sele river the , similar to mozzarella, but made with cow's milk; it is best produced in the region of Agerola. the , a with scent of oak wood smoke, light brown on the exterior, more yellowish inside the , or , small mozzarellas, preserved in clay pots, flooded into cream or milk the , white or smoked the , small provolone cheese with a butter hart the provoloni, the of different aging
Seafood