The Classic Italian Pasta That Sophia Loren Loves To Make

We may receive a commission on purchases made from links.

Sophia Loren is arguably the most famous actress to come out of Italy. Her acting chops, charisma, and drop-dead beauty made her a film icon, particularly in the roles she performed towards the end of Hollywood's Golden Age. In regard to her allure, many are familiar with a quote often attributed to her: "Everything you see I owe to spaghetti." Although Loren herself denied that she ever spoke such words, she is nevertheless regularly connected with the famous line. Despite this, she is very much a fan of pasta, particularly penne alla puttanesca.

Loren included a recipe for the dish in her 1998 cookbook titled "Sophia Loren's Recipes and Memories," and she called her penne alla puttanesca "as good as it is fast" (via Silver Screen Suppers). She admitted that the dish, created in Naples (where people used to eat pasta with their hands), is popularly made with long, strand pasta like spaghetti or bucatini. However, she prefers short, tubular penne and saves long pasta shapes for another of her favorite pastas: Sophia Loren's lemon spaghetti – the recipe was published in the same book.

Loren's puttanesca sauce is deeply savory with a salty bite and composed of anchovy filets, garlic, olive oil, butter, tomatoes, black olives, capers, and parsley. It simmers for just 15 minutes before it's ready to be tossed with hot pasta, making this dish a great option for a quick weeknight meal based on pantry staples.

The very name "puttanesca" is a bit scandalous. In her cookbook, Sophia Loren herself makes a note that the pasta is named in reference to "the world's oldest profession," sex work (per Silver Screen Suppers). She also says the word can mean "vitality" and "cheerfulness" depending on context. The legend behind pasta alla puttanesca is that the dish was so simple and quick to put together that sex workers could prepare it between appointments. Another theory says that the intoxicating aroma of the sauce cooking enticed potential clients off the street.

Still, others believe the name has nothing to do with sex work but that the dish was created around the 1950s in a restaurant in Ischia, a small island off the coast of Naples. When some late-arriving customers learned there wasn't much left in the kitchen that night, they requested "una puttanata qualsiasi," or for the chef to throw together whatever they had — the result is what became pasta with puttanesca sauce, or so the story goes. Having lived near Naples up until her teenage years, Loren has likely been familiar with the dish for most of her life. Although it was a regional dish for a time, it is now served all over Italy and abroad.