Description

Caprese Salad (Insalata caprese)

One of the most delicious dishes found in all of Italian cuisine is Caprese Salad or the Insalata Caprese. This dish marries some of the most notable ingredients in Italian cuisine including tomatoes, olive oil, fresh mozzarella cheese, and fresh basil. The dish has been popular for many decades, but where did it actually come from?

Caprese Salad As with many great Italian cuisine inventions such as pasta and pizza, for the Caprese salad as well origins are not precisely known. It is easy to fall in love with this simple but refined dish, which has in itself the colors and flavors of products that have made the history of Italian cooking: tomato, basil and mozzarella. The caprese is also a lifestyle, being an uncooked dish where ingredients are everything, and the taste is simple but intense.

History

Some sources report it was an invention of a patriotic mason who after World War I loved to enclose the colors of the tricolor inside a fragrant bun. Surely the first historical mention is from the early 1920s when it appeared in the menu at the Hotel Quisisana where Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, founder of Futurism, in the summer of 1924 raged against pasta calling it “outdated”.

Decades later, precisely in the 1950s, it is reported that King Farouk, asking for something light as an afternoon appetizer, was served a sandwich stuffed with mozzarella, tomato and basil. It is therefore definitely one of the discoveries of the twentieth century.

With mass tourism the caprese ceased to be a Capri recipe and became an international dish, a Mediterranean dream just as a quick sandwich on the streets, in motorway and airport autogrills. Meanwhile, the dish was improved when the traditional vaccine mozzarella started to be replaced with bufala mozzarella, a dairy product typical of Campania.

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