Italy's STG: four recipes with an EU act

Italy has 4 Traditional Specialities Guaranteed registered in the EU in 2026, Mozzarella Tradizionale, Pizza Napoletana, Amatriciana tradizionale and Vincisgrassi alla maceratese, out of 334² registered Italian food names.

Four names, registered from 1998 to 2022

The four were registered between November 26, 1998 and March 31, 2022, and the agriculture ministry publishes exactly four STG specifications.

Two sources agree on the count: the ministry's page and the EU's eAmbrosia register, which lists all four as registered, with the same dates.

An STG protects a recipe

STG stands for Specialità Tradizionale Garantita, in English a Traditional Speciality Guaranteed. Where a DOP or an IGP ties a name to a production area, an STG registers a recipe and its method.

That's why the list reads like a menu rather than a map: four names for things you eat, and none of them a boundary.

4 out of 334

Add DOP, IGP and STG together and Italy has 334² registered food names in 2026: 174² DOP, 156² IGP and the 4 STG.

So the four recipes are just over one in a hundred of the total. Few Italian recipes have a text in EU law behind them, and you can count them on one hand.

Two mozzarellas, two legal objects

Mozzarella di Bufala Campana is a DOP registered on June 21, 1996; Mozzarella Tradizionale is an STG from November 26, 1998.

The DOP has a zone reaching into Campania, Lazio, Molise and Puglia, and the agriculture ministry lists it as Campania's flagship product. The STG registers a method instead of a territory.

At a counter the words on the label decide which one you're buying. Buffalo appears in only one of the two names, and that's the quickest way to tell them apart.

Amatriciana and vincisgrassi, the recent two

Amatriciana tradizionale was registered on March 13, 2020, and Vincisgrassi alla maceratese on March 31, 2022, the most recent Italian STG.

Our sources don't say which restaurants follow either specification. The name on a menu is a claim you can't check from here, and a registered recipe says nothing about the kitchen that cooks it.

For the full map of protected names, see DOP and IGP in Italy. For a list that works differently, see Slow Food presidia, and for the mozzarella region, Campania.

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