Red, white and green. The colours of the Italian flag and of every Italian’s passionate heart. And the colour of the classic Caprese Salad, which originates, as the name suggests, on the Isle of Capri. But beware: a terrible fate might befall you should you get it wrong.
Caprese: literally “of Capri”. The salad we call Caprese, or Insalata Caprese in Italian, originates on the Isle of Capri on the Tyrrhenian Sea where the Mediterranean meets the Bay of Naples, with its fabulous First World shopping, its yachting culture at Marina Grande where celebrities rub shoulders with tourists, and the world-famous dish whose name reminds us of its genesis. And where, once upon a time, a dish was served ostensibly to please a poet, futurist and co-author of the Fascist Manifesto, founded by Benito Mussollini, Il Duce himself.
Fitting, then, that just a glance at any Caprese salad brings to mind the country’s very flag, with its red for tomato, its green for fresh basil, and its white for mozzarella. It is thought to have been invented as a sandwich filling by an unnamed mason who, after the end of World War I hostilities in 1918, enclosed tomato, basil and mozzarella in bread, although the ever-cautious Wikipedia does not go there.
The Italy Heritage website does, however, saying it appeared on the menu at the Hotel Quisisana in the town of Capri in the early 1920s and where in 1924 (the website claims) Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, the founder of Futurism, “raged against pasta, calling it outdated”. In short, he wanted pasta abolished. Which makes me want to rush out and order a large plate of pasta which, of course, quickly faded into ignominy and has scarcely been heard of since. A true visionary, that man.
But the La Cucina Italiana website offers a different perspective: “In 1932 Marinetti published a cookbook titled The Futurist Cookbook, which criticised much of Italy’s food traditions, particularly taking a swipe at pasta (the nerve of him!). so it’s said the hotel (Quisisana) created Caprese salad, a pasta-less dish in honour of these contrarians.” Since Marinetti’s Futurist Cookbook only appeared in 1932, the Italy Heritage date seems suspect.
Then again, Marinetti was a proponent of futuristic vegetarian cooking of lighter flavours without flour, and one theory has it that it was invented in honour of his “manifesto” of this approach to food; and in that, of course, his futurism was ...