Spaghetti puttanesca: turn your leftovers into something special

If you’ve heard a story about puttanesca it is likely that it translates as whore’s spaghetti – that it was born in the brothels of Naples’ Spanish quarters, a favourite of the prostitutes who worked there, for its quick, cheap and easy nature. But – ah, isn’t it always the way? – the truth is perhaps a little more prosaic. The word puttanesca is indeed derived from the Italian for prostitute (‘puttana’), but the same word is also used as a catch-all profanity, an Italian ‘crap’. In this vein, the dish would come to mean ‘any old crap’ pasta. This makes sense, because puttanesca is a true store-cupboard dish, made almost entirely from tins and jars and dried pasta (entirely if you forgo the parsley). It also chimes with the alternative origin story that the dish was created in the 1950’s by Sandro Petti, proprietor of the Ischian restaurant Rancio Fellone: when asked by some late night customers for sustenance, he protested that he didn’t have enough ingredients. ‘Facci una puttanata qualsiasi,’ they said. So that’s what he did, using tomatoes and olives and capers.

Either way, versions of the dish certainly existed before the middle of the twentieth century, and can be found in cookbooks under different names. In 1844, a similar recipe under the title ‘vermicelli all’oglio con olive capperi ed alici salse’ appears in Cucina teorico-pratica, and in 1931, ‘maccheroni marinara’ is listed as a Neapolitan specialty in a 1931 edition of Guida gastronomica d’Italia, but bears a striking resemblance to the modern puttanesca. But it wasn’t until the 1960’s that puttanesca was used as a dish name – where it appeared not in a cookbook, but in a novel: Raffaele La Capria’s Ferito a Morte (Mortal Wound).

Whichever origin story you favour, the ad hoc nature of the dish belies its harmony: the richness of the tomatoes provides the perfect canvas for the salty depth of olives, the briney pop of capers, and the hum of chilli.