The dish is named after the Italian
opera star
Luisa Tetrazzini. The origins of tetrazzini are widely disputed. Some accounts ascribe tetrazzini to being a creation of
Auguste Escoffier. However, other sources attribute the origin to the
Knickerbocker Hotel in
Midtown Manhattan, New York. In 1950s through the 1980s, upscale New York City restaurants including Mamma Leone's and
Sardi's featured tetrazzini on the menu. Sardi's tetrazzini recipe was featured in
Vincent Price's cookbook
A Treasury of Great Recipes, and mentioned in the
Sue Kaufman novel
Diary of a Mad Housewife. Tetrazzini
frozen dinners were popular in the 1960s, as noted by
Joan Didion in
The Saturday Evening Post article "The Big Rock Candy Figgy Pudding Pitfall". Recipes for tetrazzini, both from-scratch and using convenience ingredients, were popular in the 1950s and 1960s, and the dish was featured in an episode of the TV drama
Mad Men which is mostly set in the 1960s. The
Unofficial Mad Men Cookbook, a collection of vintage recipes, featured dishes which are cited in the TV series. It included recipes drawn from various popular mid-century restaurants and cookbooks, including a tetrazzini recipe originally published in
Betty Crocker's
Hostess Cookbook. In the 1960s, southern restaurants and
Junior League cookbooks began featuring versions of tetrazzini (referred to as chicken spaghetti in parts of the American South). In the 1960s, the
Piccadilly cafeteria in
Baton Rouge introduced chicken tetrazzini to the menu, and it remains a customer favorite into the 2020s. Foster's Market in
Durham, North Carolina, introduced chicken spaghetti to their in-house dining and catering menus in the 1980s, with their version based upon the chicken spaghetti recipe featured in the Baton Rouge Junior League cookbook
River Road Recipes. In the 1990s, tetrazzini and chicken spaghetti emerged as
soul food classics. Tetrazzini, specifically chicken tetrazzini, became an Internet meme after a woman on
Maury accused her friend of seducing her boyfriend by preparing his favorite meal, chicken tetrazzini. Clips from the episode were featured on the
E! channel show
The Soup in 2007. In 2020,
Vice magazine food editor Farideh Sadeghin prepared chicken tetrazzini for their Munchies series, referencing the
Maury episode as her inspiration for the dish. ==See also==