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I once read that the original dish was penne a la vacca, which I believe is cow in Italian - it referred to the addition of milk or cream in the sauce to lighten it - then in America it got changed to vodka -

I think the REAL question is who invented the Cobb Salad?? Anyone?? Seriously.

(it's an episode of curb your enthusiasm... hilarious)

Paula Franzese (though I'm not sure that's how she spells her name) does claim that her father invented Penne ala Vodka. She is a professor of Real Estate (I believe) and teaches part of the BarBri NY Bar Exam prep course every year where she relays this story. Maybe someone who just took the Bar remembers the actual story.

Hmm, I took the New York bar exam (and BarBri) a few years ago but I don't remember that story. I DO remember her talking about Destiny's Child and meeting Andy Garcia.

Oh, this is taking me back. The good old days...

She sang Top 40 hits, too. I think her father owned an Italian restaurant but was Russian, so the story goes that he made Penne a la Vodka to impress customers of his fusion of two cuisines, but in fact Vodka has no taste and adds nothing to the sauce.

From the Food Timeline
Several traditional Italian sauces incorporate native wines. Vodka??? Intriguing, but decidedly un-Italian. A survey of newspaper/magazine articles places the genesis of vodka sauce in the 1980s. Nuevo Cucina.

"Pasta with vodka-enhanced sauce was another trendy food in the mid-Eighties. Although cooks later devised such dishes as pasta with vodka, sour cream, and two caviars, the first and probably best was a simple dish of penne (a thick, tubular pasta), vodka, tomatoes, and cream. According to Barbara Kafka in Food for Friends (1984), it was fashionable in Italy before Joanna's Restaurant in New York put it on the menu and made it a fad in the United States."
---Fashionable Food: Seven Decades of Food Fads, Sylvia Lovegren [MacMillan:New York] 1995 (p. 401)

The first references we find to vodka sauce in American newspapers were printed in 1983:

"Pasta with sweet red pepper sauce, pasta with salmon, pasta with sage sauce, pasta with vodka sauce--and this is just the beginning..."
---"Diner's Choice," Bryan Miller, New York Times, October 7, 1983 (p. C18)

"The wives of two American Diplomats who met in Rome five years ago have written a cookbook with recipes that include pasta with vodka sauce and rice with strawberries. Moth are examples of nuova cucina, Italian for new cuisine. What the authors have not included among the more than 250 recipes in "pasta and Rice Italian Style" (Scribner's, $16.95) is pasta with flavors such as chili peppers and carrots. Tomatoes and spinach are used in Italy to color some pasta, but not to flavor it, Efrem Funghi Calingaert and Jacquelyn Days Serwer said in an interview during a trip to New York. They said the fad for unusual flavored pastas in the United States has not caught on in Italy. "Italians like to experiment with the sauces, not the pasta," Mrs. Calingaert said."
---"Two American Diplomat's Wives Tackle Italy's Nuova Cucina'," Jean Lesem, United Press International, November 29, 1983

By the late 1980s, vodka sauce is all the rage:

"With farm markets and produce stands in full bloom, I am always experimenting with new recipes to take advantage of the seasonal bounty. The recipe given here is a variation on pasta prinavera, a dish that has countless incarnations, although the classic version calls for a wide assortment of vegetables and a cream-based sauce. The major twist is adding a daish of flavored vodka to the sauce. You do not really taste the alcohol, most of which evaporates in cooking, but a kind of peppery flavor does come throught. Many herb-flavored vodkas are available, and it can be fun experimenting with them."
---"Flavored Vodka Toasts This Pasta Primavera With a Twist," Pierre Franey, St. Petersburg Times, July 7, 1988 (p. 15D)

Re: Steve CC's Cobb Salad Question,

Check out my fave cooking blog where not too long ago she posted a blurb and recipe for Cobb Salad:
http://www.elise.com/recipes/archives/001931cobb_salad.php

I have no idea if that is true or not, but your picture has sure made me hungry! Any chance you could share your favorite recipe for this dish?

Damn, someone beat me to the Curb/Cobb reference!

I took the bar exam last year and yes, she told us the same story. She's cool. possibly one of the best lecturer from Barbri. She looks like Sally Fields.

Paula Franzese is a professor at Seton Hall Law (she does BarBri lectures on the side). She tells the story of her father inventing penne alla vodka quite frequently.
Her father, Luigi, was a master chef at Rossi's in NYC. She claims that while working at Rossi's her dad needed to thin a sauce and decided to use the vodka that he had in his flask. Then when everyone began to smell the aroma they asked him what he was making. He replied Pasta All Russo (Russo is Russian in Italian).

I just took the bar review for PA and saw Paula's lecture--real property, not real estate. The story goes exactly how former law student said!!