Italian Cuisine Codexery

Italian meal structure

Italian meals emphasize family, courses, and regional bread traditions.

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Italian meal structure includes breakfast, lunch, supper, and often snacks called merenda.[1] Bread is served at most meals and used to wipe sauce from the plate.[2] Everyday Italian meals are simpler, often consisting of just a first or second course, a side dish, and coffee, while full meals with four or five courses are now mainly reserved for special events like weddings.[3][4]

Quick Facts

Nationality
Italian

Facts from the source article.

Key facts and history

The most popular breakfast is sweet, consumed at home or at a café.[5] At home, breakfast includes coffee, milk or caffè latte with biscuits or bread with butter and jam.[5] At a café, espresso, cappuccino, or latte macchiato is accompanied by a cornetto or bombolone.[6] Lunch is generally considered the most important meal of the day.[7]

Full-course meals are mainly reserved for special events such as weddings.[4] The primo is a filling dish like risotto or pasta, while the secondo contains whole pieces of meat.[4] Wine is often part of the meal, especially during lunch and dinner.[8] For festive occasions such as New Year's Eve, Christmas Eve, and Carnival, richer dinners known as cenoni are served.[9]

What the cited sources add

The Panificio Italiano account states that bread is quintessential for the entire Italian dining experience.[10] It describes the custom of "fare la scarpetta" as making the little shoe.[10] The Treccani dictionary entry explains that the phrase "c'entra come i cavoli a merenda" describes something completely irrelevant to the topic.[11]

References

  1. Wikipedia, "Italian meal structure" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "Mangiare all'italiana"; "Colazioni da incubo in giro per il mondo", 29 March 2016; "Merenda, una abitudine tutta italiana: cinque ricette salutari per tutta la famiglia", 12 August 2021 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  2. Wikipedia, "Italian meal structure" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Artemis, "The Essential Role of Bread in Traditional Italian Dining", Panificio Italiano, 7 January 2025 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
  3. Wikipedia, "Italian meal structure" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "Guide to the Traditional Italian Meal Structure", Cucina Toscana, 22 September 2015 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  4. Wikipedia, "Italian meal structure" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "Quante portate per un matrimonio di nuova generazione?"; "Portate a tavola: qual è la sequenza corretta per non sbagliare?", 12 June 2020; "Primo piatto"; "Secondo piatto"; "Il piatto unico, cos'è" (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  5. Wikipedia, "Italian meal structure" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "Diffusione ed evoluzione della gianduia"; "Colazione più diffusa in Italia" (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  6. Wikipedia, "Italian meal structure" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "Diffusione ed evoluzione del bombolone", 10 February 2016 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  7. Wikipedia, "Italian meal structure" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "La maggior parte degli italiani ritengono il pranzo il pasto più importante", 30 December 2019; "Il pranzo per gli italiani" (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  8. Wikipedia, "Italian meal structure" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "Gli italiani e il vino"; "Il vino sulle tavole italiane", 15 March 2018 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  9. Wikipedia, "Italian meal structure" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Dictionary of the La Repubblica, article Cenone; "Il cenone italiano" (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  10. Artemis, "The Essential Role of Bread in Traditional Italian Dining", Panificio Italiano, 7 January 2025. facts only, no text reused. panificioitaliano.co.uk
  11. "Cos'è la merenda". facts only, no text reused. treccani.it

Each numbered sentence above was checked against the source it cites before publication. Sentences citing Wikipedia adapt text from the English Wikipedia article Italian meal structure (contributors), used under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is available under the same licence. Other sources were used for facts only; no text or images are copied from them.

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Sources

Compiled from Wikipedia and the sources listed below. Text from Wikipedia is available under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is adapted from it.

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