A wide pan of spaghetti in a glossy dark red tomato sauce studded with black olives and capers, tongs twisting a portion out of the pan

Puttanesca: A Pantry Pasta Older Than Its Name

Puttanesca is the pasta you make with the cupboard door open. The tomatoes come from a tin and the olives and capers from their jars. Add garlic and a pinch of chile, and in the Lazio version a few anchovy fillets melted into the oil. Only the parsley needs to be fresh, and even that is optional. It is on the table in about half an hour, and it tastes like a sauce that took far longer, because the anchovies, capers and olives spent weeks or months curing before they reached the pan.

That is also where it goes wrong. Anchovies, capers and olives all arrive already salted. A cook who salts the pasta water the usual way and then adds all three ends up with a dish that is loud in only one direction. The recipe below treats the salt as a single allowance spent in four places, and the rest of the method follows from that.

The name gets the attention. The dish is a good deal older.

A dish that changed names at least twice

In 1844 Ippolito Cavalcanti's Cucina teorico-pratica carried a recipe for vermicelli all'oglio con olive, capperi ed alici salse: vermicelli with oil, olives, capers and salted anchovies. The title has no tomato in it. Set it beside a modern puttanesca and the bones are all there, anchovy included. Aglio e olio strips the same idea down further still (see the aglio e olio guide).

By 1931, when the Touring Club Italiano published its Guida gastronomica d'Italia, a recognisably similar sauce appeared among the specialties of Campania under a more respectable name, maccheroni alla marinara, one nobody would ever have to explain to a bishop.

The name comes later. For pasta alla puttanesca, the Grande dizionario della lingua italiana gives as its earliest citation Raffaele La Capria's Ferito a morte, the novel that won the Strega Prize in 1961. The novel mentions spaghetti alla puttanesca "as they make it in Syracuse," which is to say in Sicily, while the other claims to the dish all come from around Naples.

Ischia has two claims on the name, both set in the years between. The Neapolitan food writer Jeanne Caròla Francesconi, in La cucina napoletana, credited the painter Eduardo Colucci, who settled on Ischia in the late 1940s. By her account, he took to calling his vermicelli alla marinara by the ruder name.

The architect Sandro Petti, co-owner of the Rancio Fellone, a restaurant and late-night spot on the island in the 1950s, told the local paper Il Golfo a livelier story. One night around four in the morning, he said, some very hungry friends were at the Rancio and told him to make them una puttanata qualsiasi, any old rubbish, with whatever was in the pantry. He had tomatoes, olives and capers. The dish went on the menu under that name, and Petti remembered being summoned by the bishop, who thought the word an offence to decency on a menu. By Petti's account, he left the bishop the recipe.

Both claims rest on recollections set down years later, not on documents from the time, and Cavalcanti undercuts both: he had most of the recipe a century earlier. What Ischia plausibly supplied is the name.

The legends

Two other stories circulate. One says a Neapolitan brothel popularised the sauce. The other says its colours echoed the underwear of the women who worked there. Jeremy Parzen, tracing the dish's origins, found no evidence pointing to prostitution as its source, and both stories look like explanations worked backwards from the word. The plainer reading is more convincing. In Italian, puttanata is slang for something of very little value, or a foolish, clumsy piece of work, which fairly describes a sauce made from whatever is left in the cupboard. It is also the word Petti's friends used.

Naples or Lazio: the anchovy question

Two versions are still cooked today, and they differ by one ingredient. The Campanian puttanesca is tomato, black olives, capers, garlic and chile, with no fish. The version tied to Lazio and Rome adds salted anchovies, melted into the oil at the start. Cavalcanti's 1844 vermicelli had anchovies, and its title names no tomato, so neither side can claim the original outright. The anchovy version tastes deeper and rounder, and it is not fishy as long as the fillets fully dissolve. The Neapolitan one is brighter and lets the olives lead. The recipe below makes the anchovies optional.

If you use anchovies, fillets packed in olive oil are the easiest, such as Les Mouettes d'Arvor (shop Les Mouettes d'Arvor anchovies). The anchovy guide covers salt-packed fillets and how to clean them.

The salt budget

Four things bring salt: the anchovy, the caper, the olive and the pasta water. Depending on the tin, the tomatoes may add a little more. Use each one at full strength and the dish tips over.

The water is the easiest place to cut. Our dried pasta guide puts water for a plain tomato sauce at about one percent salt. Puttanesca does better at roughly half that, around 20 grams of fine sea salt for four quarts. On its own the pasta will taste slightly under-seasoned. Once it meets the sauce, it won't.

Capers are the second place to cut. Salt-packed capers, such as I Contadini's from Racale in Puglia (shop I Contadini capers in salt), go into a bowl of water before they reach the pan. Fifteen minutes in cold water with one change is about right; a caper nibbled afterwards should taste pleasantly salty, not harsh. Brined capers need only a quick rinse. Capers kept in olive oil, like the Caravaglio capers from Salina (shop Caravaglio capers), need only a taste first, and their oil can go into the pan. The bite comes from mustard-oil compounds that form as the buds cure, which is why a caper tastes sharper than its size suggests. The caper guide goes into grades and sizes.

Olives are the third. Anything brine-cured and dark will do. A well-known olive of the country between Rome and Naples is the Gaeta, protected as a DOP since 2016. It comes from the Itrana variety, grown in the Lazio provinces of Latina, Frosinone and Rome and in the Campanian province of Caserta. Its official specification classes it as a black-type olive but describes the finished fruit as intense pink to violet, so a Gaeta in the pan reads violet rather than black. Skip the canned American "ripe" olive. It is cured in lye and darkened with air, and it gives colour and texture but only a mild flavour. I Contadini's Leccine olives in brine (shop I Contadini Leccine olives) are another brine-cured choice, reddish rather than black. The olive guide goes through the different cures.

Ingredients, for four

  • 400 g (14 oz) dried spaghetti or vermicelli, such as Gentile spaghetti (shop Gentile spaghetti) or Rustichella d'Abruzzo spaghetti (shop Rustichella spaghetti)
  • 5 tablespoons (75 ml) extra virgin olive oil, plus a little to finish
  • 3 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
  • 4 anchovy fillets in oil (optional; the Lazio version)
  • 1/2 teaspoon chile flakes, or 1 small dried chile, crumbled
  • 1 can (about 400 to 550 g, 14 to 19 oz) whole peeled tomatoes, such as I Contadini I Pelati (shop I Contadini I Pelati), crushed by hand, with their juice
  • 100 g (about 2/3 cup) brine-cured black or violet olives, pitted and torn in half
  • 2 tablespoons (about 25 g) capers, salt-packed and soaked, or brined and rinsed
  • A small handful of flat-leaf parsley, chopped
  • About 20 g fine sea salt for 4 quarts of pasta water

Whole tomatoes crushed by hand give the sauce some texture. A smooth passata makes a more even, clinging sauce and works fine too. Tinned cherry tomatoes, such as I Contadini's cherry tomato halves (shop I Contadini cherry tomatoes), make a sweeter, lighter version. The tomato buying guide explains how to read the label on a tin.

Method

  1. Prepare the jars. Soak salt-packed capers in cold water for 15 minutes, changing the water once, then drain. Brined capers need only a quick rinse. To pit the olives, press each one under the flat of a knife until the stone pops free, then tear the flesh in half.
  2. Salt the water lightly. Bring 4 quarts of water to a full boil and add about 20 g of fine sea salt, roughly half what you would use for a plainer sauce. Hold the pasta back for now; the sauce needs a head start.
  3. Melt the anchovies. Put the oil, the sliced garlic and the anchovies into a wide skillet while it is still cold, then set it over medium-low heat. Starting cold lets the garlic warm up with the oil so it doesn't scorch. Cook for 3 to 4 minutes, pressing the anchovies with a wooden spoon. They should fall apart and disappear into the oil. Stop when the garlic is soft with pale gold edges. Brown garlic turns bitter, and even a sauce this strong won't hide it. Add the chile for the last 30 seconds.
  4. Cook the tomatoes, start the pasta. Tip in the tomatoes and their juice; they will spit for a moment. Raise the heat to a lively simmer. At the same time, drop the spaghetti into the boiling water and stir it for the first minute. Let the sauce bubble for 8 to 10 minutes, crushing any large pieces. It is ready when it has thickened, the oil has gathered into small orange beads around the edge of the pan, and a spoon dragged across the bottom leaves a trail that closes slowly.
  5. Add the olives and capers. Stir them in and simmer for 2 minutes more. That is long enough to warm them and let them season the sauce; any longer dulls the capers and softens the olives. Taste the sauce now, before the pasta goes in.
  6. Toss. Scoop out about 1 1/2 cups of the pasta water. Drain the spaghetti 1 to 2 minutes before the package time, while a thin white line still shows at the center of a bitten strand. Add it to the skillet with a splash of the reserved water and toss hard with tongs over medium-high heat for 1 to 2 minutes, adding more water a little at a time. The starch in the water pulls the oil and tomato together into a glossy sauce that clings. Stop when the pan is nearly clean and nothing pools under the pasta.
  7. Taste, then finish. Taste a strand before adding any salt. The capers and olives, and the anchovies if used, have already seasoned it. Off the heat, toss in the parsley and a thread of raw olive oil, such as Capezzana (shop Capezzana). Serve straight away in warm bowls.

It doesn't need cheese. The salt budget is already spent, and the olives and capers carry the dish. For more heat, a spoonful of chopped Calabrian hot cherry peppers, such as Azienda Agricola Scalzo's (shop Scalzo Calabrian hot cherry peppers), works well in place of the flakes.

In Denver

At sea level water boils at 212°F. Colorado State University Extension puts it at about 203°F at 5,000 feet, and a little lower again at Denver's mile. Pasta takes longer in cooler water. At altitude, start tasting at the package time rather than two minutes before, and drain when a thin white line still shows at the center of a strand.

CSU Extension also notes that the low humidity typical of high elevations makes the moisture in food evaporate faster during cooking, so a simmering sauce tightens sooner. Keep the full cup and a half of pasta water. If the sauce looks thick before the pasta is ready, add a splash and turn the heat down. The Denver altitude cooking guide explains why.

When it goes wrong

Symptom Likely cause Fix
Too salty Fully salted pasta water plus three cured ingredients Halve the salt in the water, soak salt-packed capers, and taste before seasoning. To rescue a salty pan, add more plain tomato and a splash of unsalted water and simmer a minute
Bitter The garlic browned Start the garlic in cold oil, keep the heat at medium-low, and take the pan off the moment the edges colour
Watery, sauce slides off the pasta Tomatoes not reduced enough, or the pasta was drained dry and not tossed Simmer until the spoon leaves a trail, then toss the pasta in the pan with its water until the sauce grips
Oily, a red slick in the bowl The oil and water never bound together: too little starchy water or too little tossing Toss harder over the heat with a splash more pasta water
Fishy The anchovies didn't fully dissolve Press them into the warm oil until they disappear before the tomatoes go in
Flat, one-note Mild canned ripe olives, or capers soaked too long Use brine-cured olives, and taste a caper while soaking; stop while it still tastes salty

At the table

Whichever version reaches the bowl, its flavour was made weeks or months before anyone lit the stove, when the capers and olives were cured and, in Lazio, the anchovies salted. The cook's job is to keep those ingredients from shouting over each other. Get the salt right and puttanesca tastes of all of them at once. The tins and jars it starts from, such as I Contadini whole peeled tomatoes (shop I Contadini I Pelati) and Caravaglio capers in olive oil (shop Caravaglio capers), ship nationwide from theambrosianpantry.com.

Sources & Further Reading

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