The History Of Pasta

Pasta History: It Traveled From China To Arabia To Italy

Tortellini, here with a tomato sauce and diced ham, is an elaborate rendition of a
food that began as simple noodles, thousands of years ago. Photo by Nathalie Dulex
| SXC.Pasta is an ancient food—not so ancient that it predates written records, but no one was
taking notes when this popular food first came onto the scene. Scholars credit the Chinese with
making pasta from rice flour as early as 1700 B.C.E. The pasta-centric Italians believe pasta
dates back to the ancient Etruscans, who inhabited the Etruria region of Italy (the central western
portion of Italy, what now are Tuscany, Latium and Umbria) from the Iron Age into Roman
times (from the 11th century B.C.E. to the 1st century B.C.E.). Around 400 B.C.E., they began to
prepare a lasagna-type noodle made of spelt. The Romans who followed made lagane, a kind of
lasagna, from a dough of water and flour. However, both the Etruscans and the Romans baked
their noodles in an oven, so boiled pasta had yet to be born in Italy.

According to the American historian Charles Perry, who has written several articles on the
origins of pasta, the first clear Western reference to boiled noodles, is in the Jerusalem Talmud of
the 5th century C.E. Written in Aramaic, it used the word itriyah. By the 10th century, itriyah in
many Arabic sources referred to dried noodles bought from a vendor, as opposed to fresh ones
made at home. Other Arabic sources of the time refer to fresh noodles as lakhsha.¹

¹ See “Pasta: Where It Came From And How It Got There,” by Corby Kummer, published on
MrSleepersPasta.com.
Credit for the invention of
boiled pasta is given to
the Arabs. Traders from
Arabia packed dried pasta
on long journeys over the
famed “Silk Road” to
China. They carried it to
Sicily during the Arab
invasions of the 8th
century.² The dried The Silk Road or Silk Route was an
noodle-like product they interconnected series of routes spanning
brought with them could 5,000 miles through Southern Asia,
easily be reconstituted traversed by caravan and ocean vessel,
into a hot, nutritious meal. connecting Chang’an (today's Xi’an),
This is most likely the China with Antioch (in today’s Turkey) as
origin of the dried pasta well as other points. The term is a
that began to be translation from the German
produced in great Seidenstrasse, bestowed by German
quantities in Palermo at geographer Ferdinand von Richthofen in
this time. The word 1877.
“macarone” derives from
the Sicilian term for
making dough forcefully;
early pasta-making was a
labor-intensive, day-long
process (more about that
in a few paragraphs).

How the pasta was eaten is not known, but many old Sicilian pasta recipes still include other
Arab culinary introductions such as raisins and cinnamon. The oldest macaroni recipes in
existence are from Sicily and still part of today’s cuisine: macaroni with eggplant (eggplant was
introduced by the Arabs in Sicily around the year 1000, via India) and macaroni with sardines.
What the Italians most likely did add is sauced pasta.

²There were repeated invasions between 827 and 965 C.E., with the fall of Palermo in 831 and
the fall of Siracusa in 878.

The Middle Ages

Documents from the 12th century describe something like a factory in the area of Palermo, that
exported dry pasta to regions of southern Italy. By the 1300s dried pasta had spread to Genoa.
Genovese sailors, among the most active traders in the Mediterranean, carried the pasta north
from Sicily, and from the port of Genoa it traveled to other areas, including Provence and
London. Genoa became a trader, and then a producer, of dry pasta. Pasta was very popular for its
nutrition and its shelf life, and was ideal for long ocean voyages.

What about the belief that the great Venetian explorer, Marco Polo, introduced pasta to Italy
from China? There is much historic record to show otherwise. And while Marco Polo was
visiting the Far East (he set out in 1271 and returned in 1295), in 1279, the last will and
testament of Ponzio Baestone, a Genoan soldier, was written. In this will, Baestone bequeathed
“bariscella peina de macarone,” a small basket of macaroni.

We know from this and other

written records that pasta
was in Italy before Marco
Polo’s return. Dry pasta was
unknown to the Chinese.
What Polo did bring back in
1295 was rice flour pasta,
the perishable, soft kind from
which Chinese dumplings
had been made since 1,700
B.C.E., and the concept of
stuffed pasta. Today the
These steamed, meat-filled dumplings, or
“dumpling” style of pasta is
tangbao, may be similar to what Marco Polo
manifested in ravioli, gnocchi
introduced to Italy when he returned to
and other preparations using Venice from China. Flatten them out a bit,
regular wheat flour, eggs and and they’d look similar to modern,
water. It is referred to as handmade Italian ravioli. Photo by Joan Ho.
“dumpling”-style or soft
pasta, even when it is dried
hard.

That a basket of pasta was bequeathed in a will shows that it was still a luxury in the 13th
century. By 1400 it was being produced commercially, in shops that retained night watchmen to
protect the goods. Why was it so costly? Labor! Barefoot men had to tread on dough to make it
malleable enough to roll out. The treading could last for a day. This is because milled durum
wheat, semolina, is granular like sugar, not powdery like other flours. It must be kneaded for a
long time (which is why it is not used in homemade pasta—the motors of home machines are not
sufficient to process it). The dough then had to be extruded through pierced dies under great
pressure, a task accomplished by a large screw press powered by two men or one horse.

Durum wheat was well-suited to the soil and weather of Sicily and equally to Campania, the
region around Naples. It was grown in large quantity in southern Italy. Naples also had an ideal
climate for drying pasta: mild sea breezes alternating with hot winds from Mount Vesuvius. This
ensured that the pasta would not dry too slowly and become moldy, or dry too fast and crack. A
thriving pasta industry developed in the region.
The Pasta Renaissance

By the 1600s, in an industrial revolution in Naples, a process was invented to extrude the dough
through a mechanical die, allowing for the large-scale, efficient production of pasta. This
allowed the pasta to have a long shelf life, and brought Naples out of a severe economic
depression. Imports of meat and fresh produce had become expensive, but flour was available,
and pasta had become more affordable after the invention of the mechanical press. Dry pasta
quickly became the people’s food, to the point that Neapolitans were commonly called mangia-
maccheroni (macaroni-eaters). Southern Italy had hundreds of artisan pasta makers. The number
of pasta shops in Naples grew from 60 in the year 1700 to 285 in 1785.

Although pasta became very popular, dry pasta was the food of the man in the street. Since its
introduction, it was eaten using the hands (remember its
origins as a soldier’s field provision). It was sold as street
food by vendors called maccaronaros who cooked it over
a charcoal-stoked fire; it was eaten on the spot with bare
hands, plain or sprinkled with grated sheep or goat
cheese, no sauce. The wealthy, who did not eat with their
hands, ate fresh pasta stuffed and seasoned with cheeses
and meats—lasagna-type preparations that had been
around since Roman times and the newer dumpling styles
from China. Around 1700, one of the chamberlains to
King Ferdinand II thought to use a fork with four short
prongs to eat the long strands of cooked dried pasta. After that, eating long “strings” of pasta
became a common practice. It enabled pasta to be served at banquets all over Italy, and from
there to all of Europe and the world.
Photo of fettuccine by Michael Richter | Morguefile.

The next big advancement occurred a hundred years later, with the marriage of pasta and
tomatoes. Although yellow cherry tomatoes had been brought back from the New World by
Christopher Columbus at the turn of the 16th century and then by Hernando Cortez in 1529, they
were used as a houseplant. (The Italian word for tomato is pomi d’oro, golden apple.) The fruit,
a member of the nightshade family, was viewed as poisonous. Lean times drove peasants to try
the fruit, with happy consequences. The first documented tomato sauce recipe is from 1839.

From Handmade To Factory-Made

Pasta spread through southern Italy
and other shapes appeared,
including spaghetti, vermicelli and
the short tube shape called
macaron. But pasta was still an
artisan product, handmade locally
by small family businesses.

In 1824 in northern Italy, close to

Genoa, the first industrial pasta

factory was established by the
Agnese family. In November
1827, Giulia Buitoni, a widowed
mother of five children, started
another pasta factory nearby.
Casa Buitoni—not the original factory
started by Giulia Buitoni, but a
symbol of the success that bought
this Tuscan villa for her grandson,
Giuseppi. The property is now the
product development center for
Buitoni International.

For centuries, the Italian peninsula had comprised disparate states under different rulers, whose
people spoke different dialects. In 1862, after insurrection, revolution and war, King Vittorio
Emanuele II, the ruler of Sardinia, helped unite the warring states into the nation of Italy.

With peace, travel was much safer and more frequent. Italians gained exposure to pasta-making
techniques and recipes of other regions, with an explosion in creativity and proliferation of
shapes. Then, in the decades from 1880 to 1900, waves of southern Italians began to immigrate
to America, bringing pasta with them.

American Pasta

However, pasta first came to the U.S. much earlier. Thomas Jefferson served as minister to
France from 1785 to 1789, and was introduced to pasta during a trip to Naples. He returned to
the U.S. with crates of “maccheroni” and a pasta-making machine (which he proceeded to
redesign). While Corby Kummer references a pasta factory established in Philadelphia in 1798
by a Frenchman (Zingerman’s Guide to Good Eating gives the date as 1794), any name and
details beyond this are lacking. Most sources, including the National Pasta Association, credit a
later Frenchman with establishing America’s first pasta factory, in Brooklyn in 1848. A flour
miller from Lyon, Antoine Zerega, had a horse in his basement to turn the millstone; and like
the Neapolitans, he hung his spaghetti strands on the roof to dry. Today, the fifth generation of
Zeregas run the leading supplier of pasta to the foodservice industry in North America.

Spaghetti and meatballs had yet to appear. Macaroni had been brought to England earlier by the
Genovese sailors, and the British baked it with cheese and cream—in essence, making macaroni
and cheese, a preparation also popular in the north of Italy. They also baked pasta in sweet
dessert custards, similar to German-Jewish noodle puddings. These recipes crossed the pond and
were enjoyed by 19th-century Americans. According to Corby Kummer, upper-class Americans
also purchased pasta imported from Sicily, which then, as today, had more cachet than the
domestic product. The information in the remainder of this article comes largely from Mr.
Kummer’s extensive piece, Pasta: Where It Came From And How It Got There.

As other pasta factories sprouted up, the cost of pasta became more affordable. By the time of
the Civil War (1861 to 1865), even the working classes could afford a pasta dinner. Cookbooks
of the period indicate that the common way to prepare pasta was still baked with cheese and
cream. In the mid-1880s, according to food historian Karen Hess, cookbooks published as far
west as Kansas included recipes for macaroni, some involving a tomato and meat sauce. But
pasta did not become the beloved dish it is today: it lost its cachet once the masses could afford
it. The fashionable restaurants of New York, which served Continental cuisine, did not serve
pasta or any other traditional Italian dish, even though many of these restaurants were run by
Italians.

The huge wave of Italian

immigration that began toward
the end of the 19th century was
ultimately responsible for pasta
becoming an American staple.
From 1880 to 1921, more than
five million Italians immigrated
to America, three quarters of
them from the regions south of
Rome. Two scholars have
studied the food of the Italian
immigrants extensively: Harvey
Levenstein, a professor of
history at McMaster University in
Ontario, and Joseph Conlin, a
professor of history at Chico Map of Italy, highlighting Calabria,
State University in California. courtesy of Wikipedia.
They report that the immigrants
from Campania became
established as grocers, such
that the tomato paste, oregano
and garlic basic to their region’s
cuisine were more readily
available than seasonings
typical of other regions, such as
Sicilian pine nuts, wild fennel,
and saffron or ginger for the
cuisine of Basilicata, the region
to the east of Campania.

Thus, the seasonings used for “Italian food” in America were primarily the classic ones of
Campania carried in the local grocery stores, because it was difficult and expensive to obtain
ingredients from other regions. What became Italian-American cuisine was different from the old
country cuisines for other reasons, too. There were fewer varieties of fruit, vegetables and
cheeses available than in Italy, and much more meat which was cheap and plentiful in America.
 Spaghetti And Meatballs

Spaghetti and meatballs is a dish unknown in Italy, but probably

had its origin in several baked Neapolitan pasta dishes served at
religious festivals such as Carnival and Christmas. (Naples is the
capital of Campania.) Remembering that meat in Italy is costly,
these dishes used meatballs the size of walnuts—unlike the
American version that used meatballs the size of eggs—and also
included other ingredients as ham and boiled eggs. The large
portions served, and heavy seasonings of garlic, oregano and hot
pepper flakes, are American developments.

Photo: The American version of spaghetti and meatballs, large

meatballs showing off the plentitude of meat in America, is
unknown in Italy.

The Mainstreaming Of Pasta

Although hundreds of small pasta factories opened in America’s Little Italys, Italians preferred
to buy imported pasta, however expensive, because it was made from durum wheat. (American
farmers did not grow durum until the 20th century.) It’s easy to chart the subsequent quick
growth of pasta. Some highlights:

• In the 1890s, the Franco-American brand of canned spaghetti was launched.

• World War I (1914 to 1918) brought imports to a halt, and the number of
American pasta-makers rose from 373 to 557.
• Pasta was inexpensive at a time when food prices were rising. Recipes for
spaghetti and tomato sauce started turning up in women’s magazines.
• Millers sponsored “eat more wheat”
campaigns in the early 1920s. Pasta
manufacturers began to use durum, which
they advertised as being higher in protein
than soft wheat (it is, but not by much).
• Campbell’s, Heinz and other manufacturers
brought out canned macaroni with tomato
sauce.
• In 1927, Kraft introduced grated parmesan
cheese in a cardboard container with a
perforated top, as a topping for spaghetti
with tomato sauce.
• Cafeterias became very popular in the
1920s, and spaghetti and tomato sauce
was a hot item. Italians nationwide opened
“spaghetti houses” to serve blue-collar
workers. By the end of the decade, the
 Italian restaurant had become the most popular type of ethnic restaurant in
America, a position it still holds.
Photo of spaghetti in pot by Clara Neroli | Morguefile.
• The Great Depression of the 1930s made inexpensive food like spaghetti a
necessity. Spaghetti and meatballs began to appear regularly on millions of
American tables.
• Today pasta is a completely versatile food: from school cafeteria to the most
exclusive restaurant, from main course to side to dessert, it fills any need
asked of it.

Today durum wheat is a huge crop, producing more than 100 million bushels annually, largely in
North Dakota. According to the National Pasta Association, America manufactures more pasta
than any other country in the world—more than five billion pounds a year. In 2000, five billion
pounds of pasta were produced: 4.5 billion in dry pasta and .5 billion in frozen and fresh pasta.

In terms of being an “American” food: macaroni and cheese made the list of the top 10 foods of
the century, according to an article in the Sacramento Bee that polled authorities on the foods
most representative of American cooking in the 1900s³. Spaghetti and meatballs did not make the
list.

³The ten are apple pie, barbecue, chili, chocolate chip cookies, fried chicken,
hamburger/cheeseburger, Jell-O, macaroni and cheese, pancakes and pizza.

From The Nibble: Great Food Finds (The Magazine about Specialty Foods)

Content copyright © 2005- 2010 Lifestyle Direct, Inc. All rights reserved. Images are the copyright of their respective owners.
History of pasta
By Justin Demetri

19th century Maccaronaro selling pasta.

Spaghetti (at the time called macaroni) drying in streets of Naples circa 1895

Pasta Drying: Copyright Life In Italy

Dried Pasta

There are roughly 350 different shapes and varieties of dried pasta in Italy, even more counting
regional differences. Shapes range from simple tubes to bow ties (farfalle, which actually means
"butterfly"), to unique shapes like tennis rackets (racchette). Many, but not all of these types are
usually available wherever pasta is made. By Italian law dried pasta must be made with 100%
durum semolina flour and water, a practice that all but the worst quality pasta makers worldwide
have since adhered to. However there are two factors in dried pasta from Italy that make it
typically better than most other products: extrusion and drying methods.

Dried pasta, especially the more complex shapes (such as radiatore) are designed for grabbing
and holding onto sauces. Dried tube pasta (ziti or penne) often has ridges or slight abrasions on
the surface to hold onto the pasta sauce as well. These ridges and bumps are created during the
extrusion process, when the pasta is forced from a copper mold and cut to desired length before
drying. These molds, while expensive and prone to wear are favored for making the best dried
pasta. However most producers worldwide use steel molds that produce pasta that is too smooth
to hold onto sauce. Fortunately more pasta makers outside of Italy are starting to use the older
style copper molds.

After the pasta is cut it must be dried using a process of specific temperature and time. This is
another area where mass produced pasta falls short of good Italian pasta made the correct way.
The mass produced pastas are dried at very high temperatures for a shorter time than quality
pasta. Traditional pasta is allowed to dry slower, up to 50 hours at a much lower temperature. It
is after the pasta is fully dried that it is packaged. The result is a product with a much better
mouth-feel, quicker cooking time, and superior sauce holding noodles.

Fresh Pasta

The Origin of Pasta

Pasta has become synonymous with Italian cuisine the world over. Eaten on all five
continents, it has become Italy's culinary flag embraced globally. "Pasta" is Italian for paste,
referring to the combination of flour and water. It is a term that also encompasses the
many forms and shapes it comes in. Pasta mainly comes in two types, fresh and dried.
Generally, the ones most people are familiar with are the ones bought in packets. Durum
wheat, a hard wheat, is milled into semolina and mixed with water to form a dough which is
kneaded and cut into different shapes and dried and packaged. Today, there are more than
600 different shapes produced worldwide.

The standard way of cooking pasta is to boil then strain from the water. It is usually eaten
with different types of sauces or tossed with oil, herbs and spices. The exception being
layered flat sheets like lasagna, which is baked and tubes and pillows which are stuffed.
Spaghetti is the most common type of pasta and the word is the diminutive of spago,
meaning string in Italian. Italians are very descriptive of their many different types of pasta
and when translated into English sound most curious. Examples include, angels' hair,
ribbons, worms, little ears, butterflies, etc. Despite the odd names, Italians tend to treat
pasta with the utmost seriousness.

In Italy, pasta is served as a first course, but of course it is enjoyed any old time
everywhere else. Not only was there a World Pasta Conference organized in 1995 in Italy,
but to commemorate this, Italians promote their culinary pride by celebrating Word Pasta
Day every year in October since 1998. Not only does Italy have an Italian Pasta Association,
but there is also a Pasta Museum in Rome. There, visitors can view antique pasta-making
machines, study dried specimens of centuries-old pasta, gather nutritional value of pasta
and learn about pasta processes.

It is a matter of much controversy with regards to the origin of this well-loved comfort food.
The history of pasta is in fact as convoluted as a bowl of spaghetti. The romantic legend
that Marco Polo brought pasta back to Italy on his return from travels in China is, as can be
expected, totally rejected by nationalistic Italians. They claim that Marco Polo returned in
1295 but in 1279, a Genoese soldier listed in the inventory of his estate a basket of dried
pasta, thus debunking this particular myth. Most do concede though that the Chinese are
known to have been eating a noodle-type food but point out that pasta and noodles are
different. Noodles are a starchy product known to have been made from breadfruit and not
wheat!
Another theory is that the origin of pasta dates back to an archeological find of Etruscan
tombs. Carvings on some of the stucco reliefs in the tombs depicted a knife, board, flour
sack and an iron pin. It is interpreted that these instruments were sued to make pasta and
the iron pin in particular to shape tubed pasta. However, this is just conjecture as the
instruments may have had other uses and there is no further evidence to support the claim
that the Etruscans invented pasta.

However, the first certain record of pasta cooked by boiling is made in the Talmud, written
in Aramaic in the 5th century AD and coems from Arabic references. Known as Itiyah, it
refers to dried pasta which was portable and carried as a dry staple. More than likely, pasta
was introduced during the Arab conquests of Sicily. Some historians believe that the Sicilian
word maccaruni, which means made into a dough by force, is the origin of macaroni. In
ancient times, kneading was done with the feet and often took all day.
Some pasta dishes still eaten today in Sicily include raisins and spices that were brought in
by the Arabs, another indication that perhaps it was the Arabs that introduced pasta. Dried
pasta became popular throughout the 14th and 15th centuries as it was easily stored for
long periods and evidence shows that ships setting on their voyages of discovery to explore
the New World had pasta in their stores. Various types of pasta are also mentioned in the
records of many monasteries in the 15th century and by the 17th century, pasta had
become part of the daily diet of many Italians. It was an affordable staple, readily available
and very adaptable. In the 16th century, the Spanish brought back many culinary
discoveries including the humble tomato. When pasta met tomato, the way pasta was eaten
was changed forever. Before this coupling, pasta was eaten dry with the fingers. With the
introduction of a liquid sauce, the traditional use of a fork to eat pasta was born.

Cheese is one of the earliest documented condiments for pasta. Even before the earliest
recipes were written, cheese with pasta was all the rage in the Middle Ages and present in
all the medieval collection of recipes that feature pasta. Grated cheese was often mixed with
spices. This practice survives until this day.

Thomas Jefferson has been widely credited with introducing pasta to America. He served as
the American Ambassador to France and upon his return in 1789, brought the first
"macaroni" making machine to America. He also later invented his own pasta machine.

In Naples, commercial pasta making took off when King Ferdinand II hired an engineer who
devised a system of using a machine to knead and cut the dough. Naples soon became
Italy's center of pasta. Macaroni and cheese was a popular dish in America during the Civil
War, but it wasn't until the large scale Italian migration to America that pasta as we know it
today became widespread.

Many anecdotes about as to the creation of pasta recipes of which there are many and
growing year by year. In 1914, Alfredo Di Lelio, a Roman restaurateur, created the famous
dish of egg noodles with butter and cheese. It is said that Alfredo's wife lost her appetite
while pregnant, and to entice her to eat, he went to the kitchen and created Fettuccine
Alfredo. Alfredo and a family friend then went on to open a chain of Alfredo restaurants in
America and many Hollywood stars of the time ate there, popularizing the dish.

Another interesting story as to how another famous pasta sauce was invented is that of
Carbonara. It is said that during World War II, American soldiers stationed in Italy asked for
bacon and eggs for breakfast. The Italians compromised but creating a pasta dish that
incorporated what the soldiers craved.
The history of ravioli is yet another interesting tale. So far as Italy is concerned, the earliest
records of ravioli appear in the preserved letters of Francesco di Marco, a merchant of Prato
in the 14th century. The pasta is described as being stuffed with pork, eggs, cheese, parsley
and sugar, and during Lent a filling of herbs, cheese, and spices was used. There were both
sweet and savory kinds. The city of Cremona claims to have created ravioli. But Genoa
claims that too, insisting that the word ravioli comes from their dialect word for pasta,
rabiole, which means "something of little value" and referred to the practice of poor sailors
who suffered leftovers into pasta to be eaten for another meal.

So the heated debate continues down the ages paralleling pasta's continued development.
Regardless, though, as to who did what and when, more importantly the world now enjoys
pasta, and it has evolved without a doubt through the creativity and inventiveness of many
including Italians who have embraced it as their own with the creation of shapes, sauces
and processes.

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APA CITATION:
 Demetri, J. (n.d.). The History of Pasta. Retrieved from Life in Italy website
URL: http://www.lifeinitaly.com/food/pasta-history.asp on November 25, 2010.

Pasta history: It traveled from China to Arabia to Italy. (n.d.) Retrieved from
The Nibble website URL: http://www.thenibble.com/reviews/main/pastas/history-of-
pasta.asp on November 25, 2010.

The origin of pasta. (n.d.) Retrieved from 101 Recipes website URL:
http://www.101cookingrecipes.com/pasta-recipes/origin-history-pasta.php on
Novermber 25, 2010.