CALVIN TRILLIN does not like turkey. He has called it “basically something college dormitories use to punish students for hanging around on Sunday.” In 1981, he suggested in The New Yorker that Americans gather around the Thanksgiving table for an unlikely substitute: pasta carbonara. He imagined that it was served at the first Thanksgiving, confounding both the Indians and the Pilgrims, who declared it “heretically tasty” and “the work of the devil.”

This has yet to catch on. But he did capture something of the spirit of carbonara.

Unlike healthy but often bland turkey, it is not a puritanical dish; it is a deli egg-bacon-and-cheese-on-a-roll that has been pasta-fied, fancified, fetishized and turned into an Italian tradition that, like many inviolate Italian traditions, is actually far less old than the Mayflower. Because America may have contributed to its creation, carbonara is Exhibit A in the back-and-forth between Italy and the United States when it comes to food.

Carbonara also inspires strong, almost religious, passions, particularly about what exactly it is. Mr. Trillin’s recipe — pancetta, fontina and prosciutto — would be scoffed at in Rome. But according to one Italian food historian, there are at least 400 versions, from the most classic Roman to variations that are delicious but drive traditionalists mad.

Though Mr. Trillin did not address the subject, carbonara can be tricky to make well, partly because it is so simple: at base, egg, cheese, cured pork, pasta and black pepper. There is little margin for error. I learned this to my great embarrassment at a poolside party a few years ago with a bunch of posh Italians and their sunburned, hungry children...