Spaghetti con le vongole – spaghetti with clams

The story of ’o spaghetto a vongole

’O spaghetto a vongole, spaghetti with clams, is pasta dressed with clams, garlic, olive oil and parsley. In Naples it is said in the singular, “spaghetto a vongole”. It comes in bianco and in rosso, with tomato: both versions are traditional.

The first written recipe for pasta with clams is attributed to Duke Ippolito Cavalcanti, who in the first half of the nineteenth century published the “Cucina teorico-pratica” in Naples: among his recipes are vermicelli with clams. As early as the eighteenth century, Vincenzo Corrado was proposing clam soups for noble tables.

In Naples it is the all-but-obligatory dish of Christmas Eve. The story goes that Eduardo De Filippo, one evening when the larder was empty, invented spaghetti “a vongole fujute”, with runaway clams: garlic, olive oil, parsley and cherry tomatoes, the scent of clams without the clams. The recipe appears in the cookbook of his wife, Isabella Quarantotti De Filippo.