Vitello tonnato
A cold starter of Piedmontese cuisine: slices of veal covered in a sauce of tuna, anchovies and capers, born in the eighteenth century with anchovies alone.
Vitello tonnato, in Piedmontese vitel tonnè,[1] is a cold dish of cooked veal cut into thin slices and covered with a sauce based on tuna, anchovies and capers. Born in the cuisine of Piedmont, it is considered the quintessential Piedmontese starter.[2] In Turin it ranks among the dishes of the city's tradition, alongside agnolotti and bagna càuda.[3]
The name and the definition
The Treccani dictionary lists the entry under the adjective "tonnato" and describes the dish with almost recipe-like precision: "girello of veal (larded with anchovy fillets), boiled in meat broth or in water with aromatics and a glass of wine, served in slices, covered with a sauce of tuna and anchovies pounded in a mortar and strained". The same dictionary notes that restaurants have widely added mayonnaise, and that in hotel-trade jargon the name takes pseudo-French forms such as "vitello tonné" or "thonné".[4]
Accounts of the word's origin diverge. According to a 2018 article by Mole24, "tonné" originally meant "cured" ("conciato") and had nothing to do with tuna ("tonno"): a linguistic misunderstanding is said to have later brought the fish into the recipe.[2] A second article from the same outlet, in 2019, traces the term to a French "tonnè" meaning "botched" or "mixed up".[1]
From anchovies to tuna
The paradox of a dish based on sea fish in a landlocked region is explained by the recipe's history. The earliest attestations in cookbooks date to the eighteenth century and are placed in the area of Cuneo; in that version the sauce contained no tuna but salted anchovies, the same preserved fish Piedmont had used for centuries, for instance in bagna càuda.[1]
The oldest preparation called for a long marination of the veal in water, wine and vinegar, and a sauce bound with egg yolks.[2] According to Mole24, tuna appears in the recipe with Pellegrino Artusi's manual,[1] La scienza in cucina e l'arte di mangiar bene, published in 1891, in whose version, Mole24 notes, eggs do not appear.[2] Over the course of the nineteenth century the dish became known outside Piedmont, especially in northern Italy as a cold summer dish.[1]
Mayonnaise and the "old-style" version
In the twentieth century mayonnaise began to appear in the tuna sauce, becoming in many homes and restaurants the base of the preparation.[1] Traditionalists reject it: for them the sauce is made with good-quality tuna in oil, anchovies, capers, extra-virgin olive oil, lemon juice and vinegar.[1] The so-called "old-style" version remains the best known, and the reference cut of meat is the girello (eye round) of veal.[2]
In descriptions of Turin's cuisine the dish also appears made with fassone, the Piedmontese cattle breed, marinated in herbs and white wine, then boiled, thinly sliced and served cold in a sauce of tuna, mayonnaise and capers.[5] In 2017 the Accademia Italiana della Cucina, in an editorial by its president Paolo Petroni on classic dishes vanished from restaurant menus, cited vitello tonnato, distinguishing the authentic version from the industrial one.[6]
In the taverns of the Langhe
Vitello tonnato was on the menu of one of the taverns linked to the birth of the Piedmontese gastronomic movement of the 1980s. At the Osteria dell'Unione in Treiso, in the Langhe, opened on 1 May 1982 as an Arci club by Pina Bongiovanni and her husband Beppe Marcarino, the Manifesto of Slow Food — then still called Arcigola — was conceived there in the second half of the decade, and the cook was a point of reference for its first members.[7] The cook described how her menu had taken shape:
"I only served bread and salami, then came the tajarin, the agnolotti del plin (the tiny ones pinched shut, ed.), rabbit stew and vitello tonnato."
Pina Bongiovanni, who died in May 2023, was present at key moments in the history of the association led by Carlo Petrini, up to the handover between Petrini and Edie Mukiibi in July 2022.[7] The dish also appears in collections of traditional recipes: reviewing a Slow Food cookbook on Piedmontese cuisine in 2016, the Cuneo edition of La Stampa listed it among the starters alongside friceu and pepper frittata.[8]
Today
Vitello tonnato remains one of the symbols of Turin's table. On 21 September 2025, in Piazza Carignano, in front of Palazzo Carignano, the city hosted the "Pranzo della Domenica" ("Sunday Lunch"), an initiative promoted by the Ministries of Agriculture and Culture with the support of ANCI to back the candidacy of Italian cuisine for UNESCO intangible heritage status, with the participation of more than five thousand municipalities. In the Piedmontese menu curated by food critic Luca Iaccarino there was, according to reports, "the inevitable vitello tonnato," prepared by the Turin restaurants Antiche Sere and Scannabue.[3]
Related articles: Agnolotti piemontesi
Pages linking here
Sources
- Mole24 — 17 August 2019
- Mole24 — 19 December 2018
- TorinoClick — 21 September 2025
- Treccani, Vocabolario
- Mole24 — 3 November 2022
- Accademia Italiana della Cucina — 1 September 2017
- Slow Food Italia — 29 May 2023
- La Stampa (ed. Cuneo), rassegna stampa Slow Food — 28 October 2016