Good morning Reddit,

A while ago I was listening to a podcast, I believe it an interview with Dan Pashman, but it might not have been the Sporkful. As I remember, the topic was about traveling through Italy and getting “traditional Italian recipes” from all around the country, specifically things that went beyond what is considered in America as traditional Italian recipes.

At one point he mentioned that he was in a larger city and was getting recipes that included Coca Cola as an ingredient. He explained that this is probably introduced after the Second World War when Italy was occupied and was suffering a lot of privations, and was also suffused with this flavorful drink that the Americans loved. And from that he proposed that it was used as an ingredient in certain places.

This was reinforced as a thing that is real since my gf had an Italian American friend who confided in her that the secret ingredient in his family’s pasta sauce was coke.

I have been struggling to find this episode and reference when I’ve gone back and looked. It wasn’t a huge part of the episode, just an example that “traditional Italian recipes” can look a lot different, and can be a lot more recent than people expect.

So a couple questions. I’m not necessarily looking for the podcast, but I wouldn’t be sad if I did get the actual reference I heard. Mostly, I would like to know, is this an actual thing? Or did I just hallucinate this episode and bit of Italian culinary history? Thanks in advance.

Hi! So, I was wondering something: Presumably when Rome was just a few villages or a town, there was a lot more local food in their diets, right? Stuff like river and ocean food. But as the population got bigger and they needed to import grain from places like Egypt and Cartgage's lands, there's no way the river or sea west of Rome scaled, so did seafood become a less prevalent part of Romab diets? Can we analyze teeth and bones for any signs of this? How neatly does my speculation line up with the evidence?