Nutella: why is it called that?

Raise your hand if you can resist temptation in front of a jar of Nutella. It is precisely its simple gluttony that has made Nutella one of the most widespread and consumed foods of Italian origin in the world. By now become a global custom phenomenon, the origin of Nutella actually starts from a Piedmontese artisan laboratory. Did you know that Nutella it has not always been sold in a can and at the beginning did it have a completely different name? But what is the history of Nutella and why is it called that?

Why is it called Nutella? The origins

To answer the question about because it’s called Nutella we need to take a step back in time: in fact, Nutella has not always been called that. Her story begins in Italy after the Second World War when the hardships and rationing left over from the terrible conflict had paid off the chocolate and luxury good. The chocolate gianduia it was nothing new: its origin can be traced back to the Napoleonic wars when the Turin pastry chefs decided to compensate for the lack of chocolate by adding much cheaper hazelnuts.

It was the 1946 when the pastry chef from Turin Peter Ferrero created the Giandujot, a gianduja-based pasta at the time sold in a loaf shape similar to a bar and meant to be cut and then spread on bread. After Pietro Ferrero’s death in 1949 it was up to his son Michele to carry on the family tradition. Only in 1951 Giandujot paste is transformed from a bar into a spreadable cream sold in a jar. The decision, according to legend, came after a particularly hot summer which ended up melting part of the stocks and thus giving Ferrero the idea of ​​a spreadable cream. Precisely in 1951 the product changed its name for the first time, becoming first zipper and subsequently Supercrema.

Where does the name Nutella come from?

In the early 1960s, a law forbade the marketing of food products with superlatives such as “super”, “ultra” and the like, forcing Ferrero to have to change the name of its spreadable Supercrema again. In the 1964 it would be Michele Ferrero, on his own initiative, who decided to change his name to Nutella. Why Nutella? The name is the simple combination of the English word “nut” (which serves to indicate various nuts including hazelnuts) and the suffix Italian diminutive and endearment “-ella”. An intuition as simple as it is successful which has allowed the product to maintain its Italian origins while broadening its perspective to a international scope. In fact, it is precisely from the mid-60s that the Nutella brand begins to open the first establishments in Europe and, in the following years, in the rest of the world starting his journey as a global icon of the Italian confectionery tradition.