Bagna caôda is a taste of another time.
A peasant's dish, its original use was as a morning snack for chilled-to-the-bone vineyard workers pruning the vines in midwinter.
They would make a small fire from vine cuttings and heat the bagna; hence the name.
What got dipped into this tasty bath was whatever was on hand: grissini (breadsticks) for certain, and any available vegetables, such as carrots, cardoons, celery, red peppers, sweet fennel, mushrooms, onions, and anything else on hand in late fall and through the winter. For the food historian, bagna caôda is an extraordinary dish.
It was a food of poverty, yet two of its three informing ingredients-olive oil and anchovies-were neither local nor indigenous.
This is highly unusual. Rarely do you come across a ubiquitous peasant preparation not made from ingredients locally grown or found for free by foraging. (The third critical ingredient, garlic, was local. It was so widely grown and used in the Cùneo province, especially around the town of Bra, that the synonym for garlic in Turin was vaniglia di Bra, "vanilla of Bra").
Bagna caôda tells us just how cheap olive oil and anchovies were centuries ago.
So how did a faraway item such as anchovies become such a staple of the Piedmontese kitchen, even in the poorest kitchens? The answer goes back five hundred years, to the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492, a consequence of the Spanish Inquisition. Dispersed through Europe, the Spanish Jews-many of whom were traders and merchants-sought new homelands.
Piedmont became one of them, notably the town of Cherasco, which for centuries had been a major stop on itinerant traders' routes through Europe.
It was one of Piedmont's significant trading centers. Jews settled in Cherasco, and elsewhere, bringing with them their tastes and trade connections.
One such taste was for anchovies. They were easily imported as they shipped well, packed in salt. And they were cheap, as the popularity of bagna caôda attests.
As for olive oil, it was an ancient item of commerce. Liguria was the predictable source. The lowest, and most easily traversed, of the Piedmont's mountain passes is across the Maritime Alps to Liguria. Even by mule, a trader could get from Mediterranean Liguria to inland Piedmont in about one week. Piedmont, especially the famous Langhe area, had abundant, cheap, and wonderfully good red wines. Liguria had abundant, cheap, and wonderfully good olive oil.
The exchange soon became institutionalized. Traders crisscrossed the Maritime Alps with metronomic frequency. Olive oil, like anchovies, effectively became an honorary indigenous ingredient. Bagna caôda is a spiritual meal:a ritual, a rite.
It is a dish designed for the despair-inducing fogs that settle into Piedmont in late autumn and through the winter. Not only is it warming and nourishing to bone-chilled bodies, but its communal nature warms the spirit.
It takes little imagination to understand how for many Piedmontese, including those well outside of the Langhe zone, bagna caôda became a ritual dish-an affirmation of Piedmontese-ness.
The eating of it is tribal. Traditionally, the anchovy bath is served in a large pottery bowl placed over a candle warmer put in the center of the table.
Today, the fashion is for each participant to have his or her own little glazed pottery bowl set atop a matching stand (a fornelletto) that contains a small candle to keep the bath hot.
A platter of foods to be dipped is always placed in the center of the table.
The wine is always Barbera-the peasant's grape whose high acidity knifes through the strong, rich flavors of the anchovy dip.
Bagna caôda is still widely and avidly eaten, if not with the frequency that farm laborers once did.
In November and December, the height of the white truffle season, bagna caôda is garnished at the table with shavings of fresh white truffle. Frankly, that's a bit of a waste, but it does show the affection held for the dish. (It also reveals how cheap white truffles once were, as this is a traditional practice.)
When the Piedmontese want to feel and celebrate being Piedmontese, they eat bagna caôda. It is one of the tastiest, most elementally satisfying of winter dishes.
Bagna caôda is a meal in itself that, like a good cassoulet, needs nothing more afterward than a long walk.

Copyright: Matt Kramer, "A Passion for Piedmont - Italy's Most Glorious Regional Table"
William Morrow & Company Inc. NY, 1997