The Italian name of this pasta sauce means in the style of a whore. The immediate Italian source for this culinary term is puttana, meaning whore, which in turn derives from the Latin putida, meaning stinking. This origin may help explain why anyone would give such a name to a food: when it’s cooking, the sauce—which contains tomatoes, olives, anchovies, garlic, capers, and herbs—is highly aromatic; it stinks, so to speak. Some culinary historians even say that the intense aroma of the bubbling sauce was used by prostitutes to signal customers: if a man were wandering down a lonely street, and smelled puttanesca sauce on a stove, he might follow his nose to more than just a meal.