Spaghetti and meatballs – was there ever a more perfect pairing?
I mean what other dish can claim to be the centre of the most iconic scene involving dogs eating dinner ever? You know the one I mean – in Disney’s Lady and the Tramp.
The dish is so well-known there’s even a song written about the adventures of a rogue meatball in ‘On Top of Spaghetti’.
Nothing is more sacred than a meatball’s place being served in a tomatoey sauce on a pile of spaghetti.

Well, that was what we thought yesterday.
Today, we found out everything we thought we knew about spaghetti and meatballs is a lie.
You see spaghetti and meatballs isn't the fundamental Italian dish we all thought it was. No - it's not even bloody Italian at all.
As top Italian-American chef Silvia Baldini informed us all during an interview with The Independent we should not be serving spaghetti and meatballs together - not if we want to be authentically Italian.
"Of course meatballs don’t go on spaghetti," he says, insisting that Italians never serve spaghetti as a side dish for meat or chicken either.
Listen: Michelle Bridges admits that her and Steve do eat pasta and drink wine.
And if they don't go on spaghetti in Italy - the birthplace of pasta - where the hell do they go, you ask? Baldini says meatballs are actually most commonly served as an entree, without sauce. That's right, they don't even need a SAUCE.
Top Comments
Authentic bolognese is more meaty, and barely tomatoey.
Also strongly suggested is a small grating of fresh nutmeg :)