Food · Curated list
Pizza, Spaghetti, Tiramisu and 22 more, ranked by how much of the world has written about each one.
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Most written-about first. Each description summarises the dish or drink's Wikipedia article, which its name links to.
1
Italian dish
An Italian dish, usually a flat round of leavened dough made from wheat, covered with cheese, tomato and other toppings and baked very hot, traditionally in an oven fired with wood.
Wikidata · Photo: Valerio Capello at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0
2
Type of pasta
A long, thin, solid pasta, round in section, and a staple of Italian cuisine. It is made of water and milled wheat; the standard Italian kind uses semolina of durum wheat.
Wikidata · Photo: Tim Reckmann from Hamm, Deutschland, CC BY 2.0
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3
Italian dessert
An Italian dessert of ladyfingers soaked in coffee under a cream of mascarpone, egg yolks and sugar, dusted with cocoa powder. It comes from northeastern Italy, and its modern versions were made popular by restaurants from the late 1960s on.
Wikidata · Photo: Sharon Chen from Austin, United States, CC BY 2.0
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4
Flat pasta and stacked pasta dishes
Also called by its plural, lasagne, a pasta made in broad, flat sheets. From Italian cooking, where it is served in many ways, it most often comes as a baked dish of pasta sheets stacked in layers with fillings of sauces, vegetables, dairy or meat between them.
Wikidata · Photo: Breville USA, CC BY 2.0
5
Drink made with espresso coffee and steamed milk
A coffee drink based on espresso, traditionally made with steamed milk and topped with a layer of milk foam.
Wikidata · Photo: Original: Blackcat / Derivative work: Danyele, CC BY-SA 4.0
6
Type of semi-soft Italian cheese
A semi-soft, unaged cheese made by pasta filata, stretching the curd. Southern Italy has made it for a long time, though no one knows exactly where it began.
Wikidata · Photo: Popo le Chien, CC BY-SA 3.0
7
Type of strong coffee
A concentrated coffee made by forcing hot water at high pressure through finely ground coffee. First made in Italy, it has become one of the world's most popular ways of making coffee.
Wikidata · Photo: Berthold Werner, Public domain
8
9
Type of pasta
Called maccheroni in Italian, a pasta in the shape of narrow tubes. Made from durum wheat, it is usually cut short; the curved kind is sometimes called "elbow macaroni".
Wikidata · Photo: Popo le Chien, CC0
10
Cured sausage, fermented and air-dried meat
A salume of fermented, air-dried meat, usually pork. In the past it was popular with peasants of Southern, Eastern and Central Europe because, once cut, it kept for a while at room temperature, eking out a supply of fresh meat that might be scarce or unreliable.
Wikidata · Photo: André Karwath aka Aka, CC BY-SA 2.5
11
Northern Italian rice dish
An Italian rice dish cooked in broth, made from vegetables, fish or meat, until creamy.
Wikidata · Photo: Burkhard Mücke, CC BY-SA 4.0
12
Chocolate and hazelnut flavoured spread
An Italian brand of sweetened hazelnut and cocoa spread, made by the Italian company Ferrero. It was launched in 1964, though its first form dates from 1963.
Wikidata · Photo: Janine from South Korea, United States, CC BY 2.0
13
14
Italian blue cheese
A blue cheese from Italy made with whole cow's milk and believed to date back to the 9th century. Today its name is protected, and may be used only under the rules of a PDO, a protected designation of origin.
15
Italian whey cheese
An Italian whey cheese made from the whey of Italian water buffalo, goat, cow or sheep milk left over from making other cheeses, though today it is often made from milk instead.
Wikidata · Photo: Paoletta S., CC BY 2.0
16
Italian pasta dish
A pasta dish of black pepper, salt, eggs, hard cheese and cured pork, typical of Italy's Lazio region.
Wikidata · Photo: Javier Somoza, CC BY-SA 4.0
17
Italian cream cheese
A soft Italian dairy product made by coagulating cream with acid and heat. Technically it counts as a cream rather than a cheese: no rennet goes into it, and no true curd ever forms.
18
Type of filled pasta
A stuffed pasta: a filling wrapped in thin pasta dough. Usually served with a sauce or in broth, they began as a traditional food of Italian cooking.
Wikidata · Photo: OneArmedMan, Public domain
19
Italian aromatized, fortified wine
An Italian fortified wine, aromatised with various botanicals and sometimes coloured, made mainly in Spain, France and Italy. Its modern versions were first made in Turin, Italy, in the mid- to late 18th century.
Wikidata · Photo: Kenneth C. Zirkel, CC BY-SA 4.0
20
Small pasta-like dough dumplings
A varied family of dumplings of Italian cooking, like pasta, made from small rolls of dough, for instance a simple mix of salt, egg, potato and wheat flour.
Wikidata · Photo: Paoletta S., CC BY 2.0
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21
Italian yeasted cake
Milan's sweet bread, a fruitcake baked for Christmas and New Year, now eaten in the west, south and southeast of Europe and also in North and South America, Australia and Eritrea.
Wikidata · Photo: N i c o l a from Fiumicino (Rome), Italy, CC BY 2.0
22
Beverage made with espresso coffee and milk
An Italian coffee drink, espresso topped up with steamed milk and customarily served in a glass; it also goes by caffè latte, caffellatte, caffelatte or, rarely, caffè e latte.
Wikidata · Photo: Jazzbobrown, Public domain
23
24
Main variety of ragù in Italian cuisine
Called ragù alla bolognese or ragù bolognese in Italian, the chief kind of ragù in Italian cooking, typical of Bologna.
Wikidata · Photo: Erikatrioschi, CC BY-SA 4.0
25
Thin pieces of fish or meat, served raw as an appetiser
Raw meat or fish, cut or pounded very thin, usually served as a starter. Giuseppe Cipriani, who founded Harry's Bar in Venice, Italy, invented it in 1950, and it became popular in the second half of the twentieth century.
Wikidata · Photo: franzconde, CC BY 2.0
Every Wikidata item that is a dish, drink, dessert or cheese whose cuisine, on Wikidata, is Italian cuisine, or whose country of origin is Italy, and that has its own English Wikipedia article, ranked by the number of Wikimedia sites with a page about it — Wikipedia's language editions, mostly, and sister projects such as Wikiquote. That counts how many communities independently thought it worth describing, and nobody can buy a place on it. The top 25 are shown.
Wikidata files these under this list's query, but they are not what the list is about:
Fetched from Wikidata on 2026-09-25. Each description is this site's summary of the entry's Wikipedia article, which its name links to: the wording is ours, the facts are Wikipedia's, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. To correct an entry, correct it there; the next refresh carries the change.
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