Bella! Italians praise Mary for putting cream in bolognese
Yelps of anguish on social media but experts defend veteran star and say she’s spot on in avoiding spaghetti
MARY Berry has been defended by Italian chefs after she caused outrage by putting white wine and double cream in her bolognese sauce.
She told those who tuned into her BBC 2 show Mary Berry Everyday to add wine, “white or red, whatever you’ve got to hand – although I really prefer to add white.
“There’s never any left in our household. I might even have to open a bottle especially.”
She also stopped part way to add cream, saying: “My secret is to make it even richer by adding double cream… it just enriches it.”
Double cream? White wine? There were yelps of anguish on social media as viewers complained that the venerable cookery writer was ruining a classic Italian dish. One particularly disgruntled viewer raged: “Just watched a cooking programme where Mary Berry put white wine in bolognese. Turned it off. Shudders.”
However, Berry has been vindicated after fans pointed out that both ingredients have been included in classic Italian recipes. The Accademia Italiana della Cucina, in a recipe published in 1982, included white wine and milk. Ursula Ferrigno, the respected Italian food writer, recommends a helping of cream.
Giorgio Locatelli, the Michelinstarred chef and presenter of several television series on Italian food, also defended Berry and said there is no definitive recipe. “In Italy, it is different from house to house, not even from village to village,” he said.
“We didn’t have tomatoes until the 1600s in Italy and ragu was cooked well before that, so if you go to places in northern Italy there is no tomato. My mother never used to put tomato in meat ragu. We cook our bolognese with a bit of milk, so maybe it is fair to add a bit of cream. In some places in Italy they put white wine because that’s what they have. Some people use only pork, some use beef, some use veal, pork and beef.
“Some put herbs, some don’t put any herbs at all. Carrots, onions, celery – some people use them, some people don’t. In the south they’ll make ragu that is just meat and tomato without the vegetables.”
According to Locatelli, the less-ismore approach works best with bolognese. “If I find a fault with Italian food, it’s usually because they’ve put too many things in it.” Nor should it have too much meat: “The point of this recipe was to have half a kilo of meat feed four or five people by making it into a ragu. There is only one bolognese rule that must be obeyed: it must not, under any circumstances, be served with spaghetti. Berry got it right by serving hers with pappardelle.
“I’m glad she decided to use the right shape of pasta because this is the important thing to teach everybody,” Locatelli said. “With spaghetti, you can’t eat the meat and pasta together. You may as well have shepherd’s pie with a bit of spaghetti on the side.
“Congratulations to Mary Berry on saying no spaghetti. I would be happy to taste her pappardelle with cream without any shadow of a doubt.”
Xanthe Clay, The Daily Telegraph’s food writer, said cream and white wine “are perfectly authentic Italian additions. It’s the copious amounts of tomatoes that might send the wooden spoons flying in Bolognese kitchens, where chefs rarely add more than a squeeze of tomato puree, and sometimes not even that.”
For the British “spag bol” invented in the 1960s, Clay said, tomatoes are essential. However, only the adventurous would try Elizabeth David’s suggestion: adding ovarine, or the unlaid eggs from a hen’s carcass.
‘I’m glad she decided to use the right shape of pasta because this is the important thing to teach everybody’