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Spaghetti with Tunny-fish
While one-half pound of spaghetti is boiling in salted water prepare the following: Take two ounces of tunny-fish and cut them into small pieces. Put them into a saucepan and fry them in their own oil. This oil is generally sufficient, but should it not be, add another tablespoon of olive-oil. When the tunny have been fried add a teaspoonful of chopped parsley and four tomatoes, peeled and the seeds removed, and a pinch of pepper. Let the tomatoes cook thoroughly. When they are cooked put the spaghetti into the saucepan and move them about with a fork and spoon until they are thoroughly mixed with the sauce and the tunny. Then serve.
A four-ingredient sauce that depends entirely on the quality of the tuna and the tomatoes. Two things to fix: the tuna must be oil-packed, and the pasta wants to go into the pan while the sauce is still loose.
- Tunny-fishTunny is simply tuna, and the recipe assumes tuna packed in oil — the frying oil is meant to come from the fish itself. Two ounces is a little under half a modern 5 oz tin; water-packed tuna will not work here.
- Frying the fishBreak the tuna into flakes and warm it in its oil over medium heat for a minute or two, no longer. The point is to bloom the oil and take the raw edge off the fish, not to brown it — overcooked tinned tuna turns dry and grainy.
- Four tomatoesRead this as roughly a pound of ripe plum tomatoes, peeled, seeded and roughly chopped. A 14 oz tin of peeled plum tomatoes, drained of most of its juice, is a reasonable substitute out of season.
- "Cook thoroughly"The tomatoes need 10 to 15 minutes over a moderate flame to lose their wateriness and pull together. Keep the pan uncovered so liquid reduces; the sauce should coat a spoon, not pool.
- Timing the spaghettiHalf a pound of dried spaghetti takes roughly 8 to 10 minutes in well-salted water. The original starts the pasta boiling first and builds the sauce alongside it; if your sauce needs longer, drain the pasta a minute early and finish it in the pan.
- Reserve some cooking waterThe original says to move the spaghetti about with a fork and spoon until thoroughly mixed. A few tablespoons of the starchy pasta water added at that point will help emulsify the oil and tomato so the sauce clings, though the original does not mention it.
- Salt and no cheeseSeason at the end: tinned tuna and salted pasta water bring their own salt. Grated cheese is not called for and by Italian convention is not served with fish-based pasta.
- YieldHalf a pound of pasta feeds two as a main course, or three to four as a first course in the Italian manner.
Antonia Isola's Simple Italian Cookery (1912) was one of the earliest English-language books to present Italian home cooking to American readers on its own terms rather than as a curiosity, and its pasta chapter reflects what a modest kitchen actually had on hand: dried paste, tinned or preserved fish, tomatoes, parsley, oil. The spelling "tunny" is the older British-English name for the fish, still standard in cookbooks of the period; "tuna" is generally said to have displaced it in English as American canning grew. Tuna preserved in oil had long been a staple of Mediterranean coastal provisioning, which is why a recipe like this treats the packing oil as an ingredient in its own right. Dishes of this kind — a sauce built in the time it takes the water to boil — depend on little more than a well-stocked shelf.