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History of the Roman Supplì
As with any proper definition, let's start from the etymology of the name. “Supplì” is nothing more than the contraction born from the progressive Italianized distortion of the French term surprise, that is, “surprise.” It was the French soldiers who began to call the fried croquette this way, which, once opened, revealed its surprise, namely a filling of rice with chicken liver sauce (in the ancient recipe, today a regular minced meat ragù is preferred). Unfortunately, we do not have certain and official sources on how this rustic Roman specialty was born, but the most plausible hypothesis links its origin to the arrival of the Napoleonic troops in Rome, in 1809. We can try to trace this culinary tradition further back by following Napoleon's path: in 1805, four years before arriving in Rome, the French troops had occupied the Kingdom of Naples. Here, the long Bourbon domination had favored a contamination between Neapolitan and Sicilian cuisine, where the very ancient introduction of rice cultivation (it was the Arabs who first imported it to the island) allowed the birth of the older brother of the supplì and the Neapolitan pall ‘e ris: the arancina or arancino. However, let us remember that before becoming “supplì,” this golden delicacy underwent several name changes: quickly entering the city vocabulary as “surprise,” from surprisa it became supprisa then supprì and finally the masculine supplì.
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However, it would be wrong to say that there is a single and definitive recipe for supplì: differences, experiments, and variations are constantly being added, year after year and from restaurant to restaurant. There are supplì with carbonara and cacio e pepe filling, vegetarian supplì without meat, “white” supplì, amatriciana, basil... Of course, the good old supplì al telefono, a recipe not ancient but now classic, is always delicious. The funny name, which often appears as the full description in some rotisseries, comes from the fact that, when you take the first bite, the stringy mozzarella inside the filling connects the two halves of the croquette, linking them together like the telephone wire to the receiver.
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