Benvenuto in cucina
Every Italian sauce: where it comes from, what goes in it, and why it matters. There is a whole story behind every dish, and it tastes better when you know it. Made with love. Served correctly.
Explore the catalogueArrabiata
The angry sauce. Four ingredients, one rule: enough chili to matter.
The complete collection
Alla Norma
The Sicilian pasta that carries a name from opera. Fried aubergine, sweet tomato, ricotta salata, basil, four components that only work when each one is done correctly.
Marinara
A Neapolitan sauce with no pretensions. Tomato, garlic, oil, basil, oregano, done in the time it takes to boil the pasta. Simplicity is not the same as easy.
Ragù alla Bolognese
A slow-cooked, complex meat sauce. It is not a 'meat-flavoured tomato sauce'. It is a meat sauce that happens to have a little tomato.
Carbonara
A Roman dish built on patience and restraint. The richness you taste is not cream. It is the alchemy of egg yolk, aged cheese, and the water your pasta cooked in.
Aglio e Olio
Rome distilled to four ingredients. The result depends entirely on how you treat the garlic.
Cacio e Pepe
Beyond simplicity lies complexity. Cheese and pepper. That is all. Yet the three-minute emulsification required to build this sauce separates the masters from the novices.
Burro e Parmigiano (Alfredo)
A silken emulsion of butter, Parmigiano Reggiano, and pasta water. Roman simplicity at its peak, no cream, only technique. The sauce emerges when cold butter meets hot pasta and starchy water.
Alle Vongole
The sea served on pasta. Clams, white wine, garlic, parsley, nothing added, nothing covered up.
Amatriciana
A bold, rustic sauce from the mountain town of Amatrice. It is the evolution of Gricia, adding tomato to the holy trinity of guanciale, pecorino, and pepper.
Pesto alla Genovese
A vibrant, aromatic cold sauce that captures the essence of the Ligurian coast. It is a pound-by-pound masterpiece of basil, nuts, and cheese.
Puttanesca
A bold, pungent sauce of Neapolitan street food. Built on tomatoes, olives, capers, and anchovies, complex, salty, assertive, and unapologetic.
Vignarola
A springtime celebration of Rome's finest vegetables: fava beans, peas, and artichokes tossed with guanciale and Pecorino Romano. Light, seasonal, and deeply Roman.
Papalina
A creamy Roman sauce of peas, heavy cream, and either prosciutto or guanciale. It is a richer cousin to Peas and Bacon, with papal grandeur in its name.
Zozzona
A rustic, hearty Roman pasta of tomatoes, onion, and guanciale or pancetta. The name comes from the Roman dialect word 'zozz,' meaning dirty, simple man. It's a working person's dish.
Gricia
The ancestor of Carbonara. Guanciale, Pecorino, and black pepper without the egg: a dish of pure Roman clarity, celebrated for its restraint.
Arrabiata
The angry sauce. Four ingredients, one rule: enough chili to matter.
Funghi Porcini
Porcini carry more flavour than most meats. In autumn, they need very little help.
Con le Sarde
A Sicilian sauce that refuses to be categorised. Fresh sardines, wild fennel, raisins, pine nuts, saffron, the combination reads like an inventory of the Arab traders who shaped the island's food. The sweet and the savoury are not in tension here. That is the point.
La Genovese
A Neapolitan ragù built on time and onions. The beef is there, but the onions are the sauce, slow-cooked until they collapse entirely into something sweet, dark, and unlike anything else in Campania.
Al Cinghiale
Wild boar from the Tuscan hills, cooked long in red wine. The result is a ragù of considerable weight, dark, gamey, and entirely of its landscape.
Al Tartufo Nero
The Umbrian answer to the question of what to do with the most valuable thing in your kitchen. Almost nothing else. The truffle is the dish, and everything around it is designed to get out of the way.
Con la 'Nduja
'Nduja from Spilinga melts directly into the pan. The fat runs orange, the chili is absolute, and the tomato is there to carry it, not to contain it.
Alla Romana
A Roman sauce of prosciutto cotto and peas in a light tomato base. No guanciale, no egg, no pecorino. This is the weeknight corner of the Roman kitchen.
Cacio e Uova
A shepherd's sauce from the Lazio mountains, the simplest possible emulsion of pecorino, egg, and pasta water. It is the ancestor of Carbonara in its most stripped-down form, and it predates the guanciale by centuries.
Sugo di Noci
Liguria's walnut pesto. Walnuts, stale bread soaked in milk, garlic, Parmigiano, served cold, in a mortar. The method is the same. The result is earthier, heavier, and suited to the hills rather than the coast.
Boscaiola
Salsiccia, porcini, cream, and herbs. A Tuscan forest sauce, the name means woodman-style. The sausage starts the pan; the porcini are the whole story here.
Olio e Parmigiano
Pasta with olive oil and Parmigiano Reggiano. This is not a recipe. It is an assembly. The entire dish depends on two ingredients of the highest possible quality, and a technique that consists entirely of knowing when to stop.
Colatura di Alici
Colatura from Cetara, the direct descendant of Roman garum. Added raw at the end. The anchovy does all the work.
Alla Carrettiera
Garlic, chili, parsley, and oil, with cherry tomatoes to distinguish it from aglio e olio. A cart-driver's sauce from Campania, designed to be made on the road.
Ai Ricci di Mare
Sea urchin roe, olive oil, and garlic. The roe is not cooked. It is warmed through by the pasta. The finest expression of the Italian coast, and the simplest.
Al Bava
Butter, fontina, and egg, a Piemontese cheese sauce that forms long, stringy threads. The name means drool, and that is exactly what it does.
Al Limone
Butter, lemon, and Parmigiano. From the Amalfi Coast, where the lemons are so fragrant they define the landscape. Three ingredients, and every one of them must be excellent.
Penne alla Vodka
Tomato, cream, and vodka. The alcohol is not a gimmick. It releases flavour compounds from the tomato that water and oil cannot reach. A 1970s classic, still misunderstood.
All'Aricciarola
Short pasta, porchetta di Ariccia, and a mountain of Pecorino Romano. A dish from the fraschette of Ariccia, the porchetta is warmed, never crisped, and the cheese is mantecato into the pan like cacio e pepe.
Alla Nerano
Fried zucchini, aged provolone, basil, and starchy pasta water, a creamy sauce that contains no cream. From the fishing village of Nerano on the Amalfi Coast, made famous by Stanley Tucci.
Paccheri alla Vittorio
Paccheri in a silky tomato-butter sauce, made famous by the three-Michelin-star Da Vittorio in Bergamo. The tomatoes are cooked, blended, and sieved to velvet, then mounted with cold butter and Parmigiano.
Alla Natalina
Spaghetti from the Neapolitan countryside, anchovies melted into the oil, walnuts, pine nuts, sultanas, olives, and tomato. Salty, sweet, and completely surprising. The anchovies disappear. Their flavour stays.
Burro e Salvia
Butter and sage, nothing else needed. The dressing for fresh pasta: the butter foams, the sage crisps, and the Parmigiano melts into the pan. Four ingredients, timed to the second.
Pizzoccheri
The mountain dish of Valtellina. Buckwheat ribbons, potatoes, and savoy cabbage boiled in one pot, layered with Casera cheese, and drowned in hot garlic butter. Gooey, nutty, and built for a cold valley evening.
Scarpinocc di Parre
A meatless stuffed pasta from Parre, in the Val Seriana above Bergamo, shaped like the cloth shoes the village shepherds wore. A spiced cheese-and-breadcrumb filling, dressed the only way it should be: butter and sage.
Maltagliati al Mascarpone
Irregular diamond scraps of pasta in a velvety mascarpone-and-egg sauce. A Lombard dish from the Po Valley, built from nothing wasted: five minutes, five ingredients, and a sauce that coats like nothing else.
Find sauce by region
Every region has its own traditions and every pasta sauce has a home. Knowing where it comes from makes it taste better