Bagna Caoda (Hot Sauce) is a traditional Piedmontese condiment with a brown color and fluid consistency. To prepare it you need: butter, extra virgin olive oil, garlic and salted anchovies.
To make the sauce more delicate, cream is added. The addition of half a glass of red wine and a spoonful of vinegar darken the colour and give a more sour smell.
The origins of this condiment date back to the late Middle Ages when the vintners, to celebrate the tapping of the new wine, wanted an unusual dish: a rustic dish, with a strong flavour to contrast with the usual glazed and perfumed meals of the lords. They chose to accompany the good Piedmontese vegetables with the precious garlic (prescribed by the Medieval Statutes and by the Bandi Campestri as a compulsory crop for every landowner), salted anchovy in barrels and olive oil, scarcely produced in Piedmont.
The "Bagna Càuda" became a convivial dish of the winter season. It is said that, even in the past, there were variations to the original recipe such as the Bagna Càuda Madama Reale. The famous "Madama Reale", Giovanna Battista of Savoy-Nemours, had requested the preparation at court, but it seems to have been a pompous and baroque dish, completely foreign to the spirit and meaning of the real "Bagna Càuda". The cooks of the court began to serve different dishes, all dipped in bagna cauda and other baroque sauces
