The Pasta Dish Rumored To Be Al Capone's Last Meal

Al Capone may have been a ruthless gangster who controlled Chicago's underworld during the Roaring Twenties — murdering rivals, bootlegging, and running brothels and illegal gambling operations — but he also enjoyed cooking at home. He would sometimes don an apron and whip up one of his favorite pasta dishes for newspaper reporters at his South Side home, where his neighbors included a minister and several police officers. Reportedly, his favorite Italian dish came from his mother Teresina's Neapolitan side of the family: spaghetti with walnut sauce. Capone's sauce was fairly simple and included lots of olive oil, garlic, parsley, walnut pieces, and parmesan cheese. This dish may have been the last meal he had before dying in 1947 at his mansion on Palm Island, Miami Beach, Florida.

While Capone loved the finer things, like flashy clothes and cars, and enjoyed dining out at places like the posh Blackstone Hotel in Chicago, his culinary tastes sometimes ran to simpler fare. Before rising to infamy as Chicago's crime lord, Capone lived in Brooklyn and loved hotdogs from Nathan's Famous, the Coney Island mainstay where competitive eater Joey Chestnut would much later become a hot dog eating champion at its annual contest. But his biggest soft spot was for home-cooked Italian food.

After Al Capone served eight months in an Illinois prison in 1929 to 1930, his mother made him spaghetti with walnut sauce for his first meal home. She also brought him pasta dishes to the Chicago jail where he was held while appealing his federal conviction for tax evasion. After serving nearly seven years in federal prison, Al Capone was a broken man. He had developed dementia brought on by untreated syphilis, and by January 1947 he lay dying in his Miami Beach home.

Like the famous crooner Frank Sinatra, whose last meal was a grilled cheese sandwich, Capone may have wanted a comforting meal from his childhood during his final days. While there's some evidence that spaghetti with walnut sauce was his favorite, there isn't a ton of information as to when he last consumed it. The YouTube channel "The Last Supper" alleges this was his final meal, but doesn't give any supporting evidence.

Early in the morning of January 21, 1947, Capone began having seizures and muscle paralysis. After these symptoms subsided, two days before he died, his doctor put him on a soft liquid diet, so it's most likely Capone had a clear broth rather than a hard-to-eat pasta dish on his actual deathbed. Capone died of complications from pneumonia and a stroke at age 48. After his death, his sister, Maffie, sold the walnut sauce recipe to pasta sauce brand Ragu.