Il metodo
How Nonnario sources its recipes
Italian food is full of strong opinions and weak evidence. Nonnario's rule is simple: every recipe tells you how strong its evidence is.
Four levels of proof
- IEU-codified
- The dish itself is protected by an EU specification (TSG, PDO or PGI) that fixes how it is made.
- IIDeposited recipe
- An official recipe filed with an Italian Chamber of Commerce or a notary by a recognised culinary body.
- IIIConsortium or town standard
- A reference recipe set by a protection consortium or by the town the dish is named after.
- IVDocumented tradition
- A regional tradition documented in cookbooks and local practice, with no single official text.
A higher level is not a better dish — carbonara has no official text, and it is no less Roman for it. The level tells you how much of the recipe is fixed by a document you can check, and how much is living tradition.
How every recipe is checked
Each recipe is checked line by line against the sources listed on its page. Where an official text exists — an EU specification, a deposited recipe, a consortium standard — the recipe follows it, in its latest version: official texts do change, and several of ours were updated between 2023 and 2026. Where there is no official text, the recipe follows what two or more serious Italian sources agree on, and anything that rests only on legend is labelled as such.
A recipe that has passed this check shows ✓Sources checked with the month of the check. Recipes are checked again when their sources change.
Separately, recipes the editor has cooked from the page show ✓Cooked by the editor. A new recipe that has not yet been checked is marked Draft · being verified.
Two ways to read the menu
An Italian meal runs antipasto, primo, secondo with its contorno, then dolce — so soups, pasta and risotto are all primi. Readers elsewhere usually think in dish types: starters, soups, pasta & rice, mains. The Italiano / International switch at the top of every page chooses between the two. It starts from your browser's language and remembers your choice.
Images
Dish images are illustrations of how each dish is traditionally served. The recipe text, not the picture, is the reference.
What you will never find here
- Advertising, pop-ups, trackers or cookies.
- A life story before the ingredients.
- Recipes that quietly change a dish and keep its name.
Credits
Regional boundaries are drawn from ISTAT data as published by openpolis/geojson-italy under the CC BY 4.0 licence. Headings are set in Bodoni Moda, a revival of the types of Giambattista Bodoni of Parma, under the SIL Open Font Licence.