The potato gattò (from the French gâteau) is a savoury potato cake typical of Neapolitan cuisine. Today it is widespread in all Italian regions and is often eaten as a single dish, but also as a side dish. It is often called Gattò because of its assonance with the correct term gateau.
After 1768, with the wedding of Queen Maria Carolina, daughter of Maria Teresa Lorraine-Habsburg, wife of Ferdinand I Bourbon, Naples became a place of comparison of the great European cuisines. The new Queen strengthened in the capital the French taste and the custom of entrusting the kitchen service to the "monsieurs", high-ranking cooks who, from that time on, the Neapolitans began to call "monzu’" and the Sicilians "monsù", from the corruption of the French term. Within a few decades, some traditional Neapolitan and Sicilian dishes took on French names: gattò, crocchè, ragù, sartù di riso, supplì.
