So here’s a funny thing; over 200 years before Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford happened across a little Roman trickster by the name of Alfredo di Lelio, it seems the English already had the Alfredo Sauce recipe covered!

Italians have of course been eating pasta with butter and cheese for eons before that little hijacker Alfredo came along, but strangely enough the first ever written recipe for this comes from 1769 Essex, England.

[1769] To dress Macaroni with Parmesan Cheese

‘Boil four ounces of macaroni till it be quite tender and lay it on a sieve to drain. Then put it in a tossing pan with about a gill of good cream, a lump of butter rolled in flour, boil it five minutes. Pour it on a plate, lay all over it parmesan cheese toasted. Send to to the table on a water plate, for it soon goes cold.’

–The Experienced Engish Housekeeper, Elizabeth Raffald, introduction by Roy Shipperbottom [Southover Press:East Sussex] 1997 (p. 144) –

Alfredo Sauce