A history of Italian pasta can only start here, with the legendary fettuccine Alfredo. A very simple dish, with just three ingredients, that has been wildly successful: it turns up in over 800 American cookbooks published from 1933 to the present. So why will your Italian friends tell you they’ve never heard of the stuff?

It’s not their fault. Alfredo is by no means a household name in our country, which is why those of us who have heard of it put it in the same category as spaghetti and meatballs—which we’ve only ever seen in Lady and the Tramp—or carbonara with bacon, garlic, mushrooms and cream: some shoddy imitation of an Italian dish, seemingly unrelated to our traditional cuisine.