A silky cheese sauce with crisp pancetta served over a piping hot plate of spaghetti? Yes, please! Because it’s time to celebrate National Carbonara Day!
How to Celebrate National Carbonara Day
Show some love for this tasty meal that can make almost anyone smile and observe National Carbonara Day with some plans like these:
Order a Plate of Carbonara
The ideal thing that almost anyone can do on National Carbonara Day is to head out to a favorite Italian restaurant and order up a plate of carbonara pasta.
The sauce is typically made with just a few ingredients, the featured flavors being bacon and parmesan cheese in the creamy egg sauce. Don’t forget to enjoy a glass of authentic Italian wine, a side salad, some garlic bread or breadsticks and a plate of tiramisu for dessert!
Try Making Carbonara at Home
While it might be easier to buy a jarred sauce and open it up, on the special occasion of National Carbonara Day, it might be fun for cooking fans to try their hand at making this sauce.
The ingredient list is relatively simple, including bacon or pancetta, fresh parmesan cheese, egg yolks, olive oil and some salt and pepper.
One trick of this dish is to make sure the eggs are carefully whisked. Some people also like to use the pasta water to thin the sauce before serving it over spaghetti or some other long pasta. Delicious!
Plan a Trip to Italy
Those extreme foodies who are wholeheartedly dedicated to pasta, Italy or food days in general might want to make a big deal out of this year’s National Carbonara Day by planning a trip to Italy.
Perhaps head to La Carbonara restaurant in Rome to begin a trip where carbonara is sampled in various restaurants in cities all throughout the nation!
National Carbonara Day FAQs
National Carbonara Day Timeline
Cacio e uova recorded in print
A Neapolitan cookbook documents pasta “cacio e uova” with eggs, cheese, and fat, often cited as an ancestor to carbonara’s egg-and-cheese sauce.
Carbonara absent from classic Roman cookbook
Ada Boni’s influential “La cucina romana” was published without any mention of spaghetti alla carbonara, suggesting the dish was not yet part of canonical Roman cuisine.
Post‑liberation Rome and Allied rations
Food historians link the birth of carbonara to the Allied liberation of Rome, when Italian cooks began combining American bacon and powdered eggs with local pasta and cheese.
First known printed mention of “spaghetti alla carbonara.”
The Italian newspaper La Stampa is cited by historians as carrying the earliest documented reference to spaghetti alla carbonara in connection with Roman restaurants serving American officers.
The earliest published carbonara recipe appears in Chicago
Patricia Bronté’s book “Vittles and Vice” prints a “pasta carbonara” recipe from Armando’s, an Italian restaurant in Chicago, regarded as the first known written recipe for the dish.
First Italian carbonara recipe in La Cucina Italiana
The August issue of La Cucina Italiana magazine publishes a spaghetti alla carbonara recipe with pancetta, garlic, eggs, and Gruyère, marking the dish’s debut in Italian print.
Guanciale enters the written recipe
In “La grande cucina,” chef Luigi Carnacina includes a carbonara made with guanciale and even cream, helping move the dish closer to its modern cured-pork profile while fueling debates over authenticity.
History of National Carbonara Day
Although it might seem like carbonara is a dish that has been around in Italy for centuries, that is not quite the case.
In fact, carbonara is a relatively modern dish that was created by Americans living in Italy after World War II. It might be interesting to note that a similar dish, pasta cacio e uova, has been around much longer and some even say it was the pre-war name for carbonara.
One of the main origin stories of the dish is that it was made by charcoal workers from the Apennine mountain region, which makes sense because the term may be derived from “carbonaro” which is an Italian charcoal burner.
In the US, this background may have even led to the silly slang term, “coal miner’s spaghetti”.
Another story goes that this dish is a modernized dish made in Rome, possibly made popular at a restaurant by the name of La Carbonara.
But no matter how it came about, this deliciously decadent pasta dish is deserving of a day of celebration!
The inaugural celebration of National Carbonara Day took place in 2017 when it was established by the Italian Association of Confectionery and Pasta Industries (AIDEPI) and the International Pasta Organization (IPO).
The idea behind the day was simply to pay homage to this amazing dish and its delightful home country.
