Behind the Recipes: Tonnato

Tonnato delivers the same kind of magic, only even more savory. “Tonnato” translates to “tunafied” in Italian, and here it’s a fresh-made mayonnaise that gets the tinned tuna (and anchovy) treatment. The fish don’t announce themselves in the creamy sauce; they merely leave behind a lingering sense of: What makes this so good?

Many say that tonnato made its first appearance in the landmark cookbook of traditional Italian cuisine The Art of Eating Well (1891), by chef Artusi Pellegrino.

There, the sauce cloaks veal, but today, cooks understand that it harmonizes with almost any protein or—my favorite way to enjoy it—vegetable. 

Some tonnato recipes (such as Marcella Hazan’s) suggest making a hand-whisked mayonnaise and then blending it with the tuna, but it’s more efficient to make the entire sauce in a blender.

The machine efficiently emulsifies an egg (along with touches of red wine vinegar and Dijon mustard to cut the richness) with oil while incorporating air to create a thick, voluminous mayonnaise. The only drawback is that blending can introduce bitterness from olive oil, whose polyphenols disperse into the sauce when it’s emulsified. My simple fix: Use vegetable oil instead. 

I did, however, include the flavorful olive oil that the tuna was packed in—there wasn’t enough to cause bitterness—and it’s another advantage to using oil-packed fish over the water-packed kind, which I found yielded a looser, blander sauce.

Finally, a half-dozen anchovy fillets and a big spoonful of capers lent the sauce even more umami and briny complexity, while red pepper flakes and black pepper enlivened things with subtle heat.

Use some of the tonnato today—on the page that follows, you’ll find three vegetable-centric dishes that feature the luscious sauce—and save the rest for later. It keeps beautifully in the fridge, ready to drizzle, dollop, or spread onto nearly everything you cook.