There is no Dolomite cuisine: there are three

One dish, three names: barley soup

In Val Badia it is panicia. In German-speaking South Tyrol it is Gerschtnsuppe. In Comelico it is minestra d'orzu. It is the same dish, pearl barley cooked long, and it sits at the centre of all three cuisines.

That is no accident: barley is the grain that ripens high up where wheat does not, and it is the shared staple of every Alpine population. The three versions diverge on what goes in, and that is where the real difference starts: the Comelico version has borlotti beans, potatoes and a smoked pork bone.

If we had to name one dish to understand these mountains, it would be this one. Not strudel, which is an imported Habsburg dessert, and not canederli either, which are Tyrolean and nothing else.

Ladin cooking: high-altitude grains and a lot of frying

Val Badia, Gardena, Fassa and Livinallongo. It is the poorest of the three and the oldest, built on barley, rye and buckwheat, on dairy from the high pastures and on very little fresh meat, because the pig was killed once a year and the rest was preserved.

Frying carries a surprising weight: tutres are fritters filled with spinach or sauerkraut, cajincí arestis are fried half-moons with ricotta or poppy seed, furtaies are spiral fritters. In a kitchen without an oven and with little animal fat, frying in oil was how you made what you had substantial.

The dishes to look for on the menu, with the names they use: panicia, cajincí te ega, tutres, les bales da cioce, which are speck dumplings in the Ladin version.

• Panicia: barley soup with vegetables and meat
• Cajincí te ega: spinach half-moons, boiled
• Cajincí arestis: the same, fried, with ricotta or poppy seed
• Tutres: fritters filled with spinach or sauerkraut
• Furtaies: spiral fritters, the house dessert

Tyrolean cooking: the only one with a dessert repertoire

Alta Pusteria, Val d'Ega, Alpe di Siusi, the South Tyrolean side generally. Austro-Bavarian in origin: speck and smoked or brined meats, rye bread, sauerkraut, and the dumpling as the identity dish, which the province's official site calls, in so many words, the national dish.

It is the only one of the three with a real, structured dessert repertoire, and that is a Habsburg legacy: Kaiserschmarrn, strudel, krapfen. The other two, on sweets, stop at the fritters made at home.

Schlutzkrapfen, half-moons of wheat and rye with spinach and ricotta, are attributed to the Val Pusteria and are close relatives of the Ladin cajincí: same shape, different flour, different history. Gröstl, potatoes fried with onion and meat under an egg, began as a way of using leftovers.

• Speckknödel: speck dumplings in broth
• Schlutzkrapfen: wheat and rye half-moons, spinach and ricotta
• Gröstl: potatoes, onion, meat and egg, born of leftovers
• Schüttelbrot: the crisp rye flatbread, PGI since 2020
• Kaiserschmarrn: the torn-up sweet pancake

Cadore cooking: where the base is polenta, not bread

Cadore, Comelico, Zoldo, Agordino. Here you are in the Veneto, and it shows: the base is not rye bread but polenta, and pork is worked fresh at home rather than smoked.

The two Belluno markers are pastin, minced beef and pork salted and spiced, and schiz, a fresh cheese to be pan-fried. Neither exists on the other side of the massif.

And there is a detail worth a page of its own: the casunziei of the Comelico are filled with potato, onion and smoked bacon, not with beetroot like the Cortina ones everybody knows. Same name, different dish, thirty kilometres apart.

• Casunzì: here with potato, onion and bacon, not beetroot
• Minestra d'orzu: barley, borlotti, potatoes and a smoked bone
• Crestel: potatoes and pork, with sage and rosemary
• Pastin and schiz: the two Belluno markers, found nowhere else

The products with a protected name

Here the figures are verifiable, so we give them with the full date of registration from the ministry's official register, not with an approximate year.

The most Dolomitic of all is Puzzone di Moena, or Spretz Tzaorì, PDO since 18 November 2013, made in twenty-six municipalities across Fiemme, Fassa and Primiero plus Anterivo and Trodena in the province of Bolzano. On the Veneto side there is Piave, PDO since 22 May 2010 across the whole province of Belluno, Miele delle Dolomiti Bellunesi, PDO since 2011, and Fagiolo di Lamon, PGI since 1996.

Speck Alto Adige has been PGI since 20 June 1996, but with a qualification almost nobody makes: the area is the entire province of Bolzano, so it takes in the Dolomite valleys but also the Venosta and the Aurina, which are not Dolomitic. It is a South Tyrolean product, not a product of the Dolomites.

Then there is the Asiago case, which needs handling honestly: its identity heartland is the Vicenza plateau, which is not Dolomitic, but the specification includes, word for word, the entire territory of the province of Trento, so formally Fiemme and Fassa too. Calling it Dolomitic would be wrong, and so would saying the Dolomites are outside.

• Puzzone di Moena PDO, 18 November 2013: the most Dolomitic of all
• Piave PDO, 22 May 2010, the whole province of Belluno
• Miele delle Dolomiti Bellunesi PDO, 2011
• Fagiolo di Lamon PGI, 1996, twenty-one Belluno municipalities
• Speck Alto Adige PGI, 20 June 1996, but across the whole province
• Pitina PGI, 2018, Friulian Dolomites

The presidia, and the one at the centre of them all

The Slow Food presidia of the area make a short list, and it is worth separating the genuinely Dolomitic from those on the edges.

The most Dolomitic in the strict sense is Fodom, an alpine cheese from Livinallongo del Col di Lana, made on pastures between 1,300 and 2,000 metres at the foot of the Sella, with six producers. Alongside it stand the gialèt bean of the Val Belluna, the Villnösser Brillenschaf sheep of the Funes, Gardena, Tires, Ega and Badia valleys, the Pitina of the Friulian Dolomites and the ciuighe del Banale at the foot of the Brenta.

Other presidia often cited as Dolomitic are not, geologically: the Lagorai alpine cheese sits on a porphyry range, the Alpago lamb on pre-Alpine groups. They are excellent mountain products, but the Dolomites are a different rock.

Törggelen, which is not of the Dolomites

It is South Tyrol's most told autumn ritual: you climb to the farmsteads licensed to serve, for the new wine, the chestnuts and the farmhouse dishes. They call it the fifth season, and the name comes from the Torggl, the wooden press in the farm cellars.

The season runs from early October to late November, and the Gallo Rosso 'Original Törggelen' mark imposes three conditions: wine of the house's own making, South Tyrolean chestnuts, and dishes from family recipes. Farms that meet the standard are recognised by a leafy branch hung above the door.

We include it with a qualification usually left out: Törggelen was born in the Isarco valley, which is not geologically the Dolomites. It is a neighbouring South Tyrolean tradition, not a Dolomite rite, and annexing it would be convenient but wrong.

The pages we have, and the ones missing

Of these cuisines we have four dishes on file so far: canederli, casunziei, polenta and cheese and apple strudel.

Three things are now obviously missing: Schlutzkrapfen, which cover the Tyrolean dish and its Ladin cousin on one page; barley soup, the natural pillar of the whole cluster precisely because it exists in three languages; and Kaiserschmarrn, because on desserts we only have strudel.

We will write them, and when we do they will carry what our data carries: the source and the date. That is the method we set out on the verified data page.