THE INVENTION OF PASTA

Like other communities around the Mediterranean and elsewhere in the world, the Romans had already adopted the custom of preparing dough from flour and water and flattening it into a wide sheet called a lagana—known today as lasagna—that was then cut into broad strips and cooked. But it was only in the Middle Ages that some of the distinctive elements emerged that make pasta the culinary category we know today. These elements include above all a great variety of shapes and sizes, broad or narrow, elongated or short, hollow or filled. Another aspect of pasta is its enormous range of preparation. In contrast to the Roman custom of cooking the lagana in the oven along with the sauce that functioned partly as a cooking liquid, a new custom emerged in the Middle Ages that was destined to last down through the centuries: the practice of boiling the dough in water, broth, or occasionally milk. Dried pasta, designed to last over time, eventually came into use. Its invention marked the transformation of a handmade product into an industrial one, suitable for transportation and commercialization. The origin of this fundamental aspect of the history of pasta is usually attributed to the Arabs, who introduced the technique of drying dough in order to guarantee food supplies for their long journeys through the desert. Dried pasta appears in Arabic recipe collections in the ninth century. Hence the presence of pasta manufacturers in Sicily, specifically in western Sicily, where Arab culture dominated, can be plausibly linked to this tradition. The phenomenon is documented from the twelfth century onward. The geographer Edrisis informs us of the existence of a genuine industry of dried pasta (itrija) during this period in Trabian territory, thirty kilometers from Palermo. He notes that so much pasta was being manufactured in the area that it could be exported to many different places, “to Calabria and to other Muslim and Christian countries, and many shiploads are dispatched by sea.” The use of elongated pasta was also probably introduced by the Arabs, and this is corroborated visually in the illustrations accompanying the fourteenth century Tacuina sanitatis. Italy was in fact the meeting point of two diverse and converging gastronomic traditions, the Roman and the Arabic, that were probably linked in turn to other traditions and cultures. Some writers maintain that pasta originated in Persia, spreading from there to the west with the help of the Arabs and to the east, where it ultimately became part of Chinese cuisine.

 A series of circumstances, not least of which was the decisive role of Italy’s maritime cities in the commercial system of the Middle Ages, favored the adoption of these different traditions by those who lived on the Italian peninsula, as well as their progressive transformation and extraordinary variety. An increase in the varieties of pasta accompanied the diffusion of their culinary use, both in the guise of food freshly prepared for domestic use (in urban as well as rural areas) and in the form of industrial products shipped along the coast of the peninsula or transported deep into the European continent. In the twelfth century Genoese merchants were mainly responsible for the spread of Sicilian pasta in the regions to the north. Shortly thereafter Liguria established itself as the primary location for the production of vermicelli and other types of pasta, as well as the site of its heaviest consumption. It is no accident that the recipes for tria presented in the fourteenth century cookbooks are designated as “Genoese.” In subsequent centuries, even down to the modern period, recipe collections attach the label “Genoese pastas” to this product. In the course of the fifteenth century other areas of production developed beyond Liguria and Sicily, especially in Apulia, while the Po region (Emilia, Lombardy, and the Veneto) remained more committed to the domestic use of fresh pasta, a trait that still endures. In the meantime, documents mention fresh pasta with increasing frequency. In the twelfth century lasagne, tortelli, and a pasta of “granelli” appear on the table of the hermits of Camaldoli in the Apennine region between Tuscany and Umbria. These dishes are served on specific occasions and on special feast days, according to a calendar specifically attuned to the customs of the religious community.

Among fourteenth-century recipe collections, only one, the Neapolitan Liber de coquina, offers a step-by-step description of the preparation and serving of lasagna. Here fermented dough (we do not know if this is an exception or the rule) is flattened into a thin sheet and cut into rectangles three inches long.
These are boiled in water and then seasoned, layer by layer, with grated cheese (caseum gratatum) and, if desired, pulverized spice. The recipe concludes with the stipulation that the dish should be eaten with a pointed wooden utensil (uno punctorio ligneo). This detail suggests that the precocious use of the fork in Italy was prompted at least in part by the introduction of a dish as difficult to handle as pasta, which is slippery and dangerously hot.In fact, while Italians regularly dined with forks from the fourteenth century onward, other Europeans resisted this innovation, continuing to use their hands right up to seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The Liber also tells us that “croseti” are prepared in a manner similar to lasagne. These are round or oblong in shape, and the cook must press the dough firmly with his finger in order to create a hollow in the center. This is obviously a description of corzetti, used in Genoa and Provence, which are not unlike Apulian cavatelli. Elongated pasta is perhaps what is meant by the term “ancia alexandrina” that appears in the Liber; it is a dish prepared with “Apulian semola” that is supposed to be cooked in almond milk. It is thought that this name derives from the word ancia, meaning tube, straw, or “little worm” (vermicello). Certainly this is what is indicated by the term tria, which appears in a number of written texts and illustrated documents. The earliest technical instructions for the creation of vermicelli are found in Maestro Martino’s fifteenth-century recipe collection: “Moisten the dough . . . and spread it out into a thin sheet. Using your hands, break it into little pieces that look more or less like worms, and place these in the sun to dry. ”  Martino also gives us a recipe for “Sicilian macaroni” in which the term “macaroni” clearly indicates the product as we know it today—as short, tubular pieces of pasta (pasta pertusata): “Take some flour of very fine quality, and mix it with egg white and rosewater, or even with common water . . . and make dough of a firm consistency. Then break off pieces of dough the length of your palm and as thin as a straw. And take a rod of iron the length of your palm, or longer, and as thin as a piece of string. Place this over the said piece of dough, and, using both hands, roll it over on the table. Then remove the iron and the macaroni will have a hollow space down the middle.”

The dish described as “Roman macaroni” is prepared differently, since it does not really involve macaroni (unless the term is used to designate a pasta dish in the broadest sense) but rather fettuccine or tagliatelle: “Take some fine quality flour, moisten it, and make a sheet of dough a little thicker than that used for lasagne,” and fold it across a stick.(This strategy does not create a tubular piece of pasta but allows the fettuccine to maintain the same width along the length of each piece).“ Then remove the stick and cut the pasta into pieces a scant inch wide, and it will take on the look of ribbons or strings.” The same procedure is described with some variations by Messisbugo and Scappi. Although the pasta products described in texts from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance seem very familiar to us, the rules for cooking them are quite different, as are the condiments that accompany them and the ways in which they are served. In comparison to the contemporary preference of Italians for pasta al dente (the consistency of which becomes less firm, however, as one travels from the south to the north of Italy), involving a very brief cooking time, the pasta eaten five or six centuries ago seems decisively overcooked.  “The macaroni must be boiled for a period of two hours,” writes Maestro Martino in his instructions for “Sicilian macaroni.” It is difficult to ascertain when the preference for pasta al dente began to prevail. In Scappi’s recipes, produced in 1570, it seems to lie in the future, but by the beginning of the 1600s Giovanni Del Turco states that the “appropriate” period for cooking macaroni should not be too long. He also suggests pouring cold water over the pasta immediately after cooking in order to make it “firmer and harder.” Nevertheless, the taste for well-cooked pasta persisted for a long time.  It can still be found today outside Italy, especially in Germany, where another important trace of the more archaic models of pasta can be observed in the custom of serving it as an accompaniment to other foods, particularly meat. The fourteenth-century Liber de coquina suggests that “Genoese pasta” (tria ianuensi) should be served “with capons, eggs, and meat of any kind.” This rule prevails even two centuries later, as seen in Scappi’s suggestions for “capons in dough, boiled and wrapped in lasagne,” “boiled domestic ducks, covered with macaroni, Roman style,” “fowl boiled and covered with Neapolitan macaroni,” “fat geese, boiled and stuffed, covered with annolini,” and so on. Yet this did not exclude simpler ways of eating pasta.

From the thirteenth century onward we find many literary portraits of diners greedily anticipating plates of steaming pasta, including that of Fra Giovanni of Ravenna, about whom Salimbene da Parma wrote: “I never saw a man so eager to eat lasagne with cheese.” There is also the figure of Noddo d’Andrea in a story written by Franco Sacchetti; this individual is supposedly famous for his ability to devour “boiling macaroni” with great speed, much to the dismay of those who dine with him, since they often find themselves with nothing left to eat. One might in fact distinguish two different types of consumption split along social lines: pasta as a side dish, which appears in the cuisine of the aristocrats, and pasta as a dish unto itself, which belongs to the customs of the masses and the bourgeoisie. Cheese—possibly enriched with spices—was the obligatory flavoring for pasta from the outset. This custom lasted at least until the eighteenth century. “It must be known”—says the Liber de coquina—“that one should use a large quantity of cheese with both lasagne and corzetti.” The cheese could be sliced rather than grated, which is the alternative suggested for Genoese tria in the same recipe collection.It is clear, however, that grated cheese was the preferred choice, signifying from the start a successful union between pasta and cheese, the foremost variety of which is Parmesan (or Piacentino, or Lodigiano, as cheese of this type was also known for centuries). All cookbooks confirm this, and not even the new and successful combination of pasta with tomato sauce, which was first introduced around the end of the eighteenth century and fully established by the 1820s, would really change things. Cheese and tomatoes, together or separately, are the most popular and most accessible flavorings for pasta, in contrast to meat sauce and ragù, the prevailing choice in Parisian and Neapolitan cooking. Butter rather than lard, which had appeared from time to time in fourteenth century recipes, was added to sweeten the cheese from the fifteenth century onward.The spices that were pulverized and sprinkled on top of the pasta are also described as “sweet”: “Add fresh butter and sweet spices to the dish along with grated cheese in a goodly quantity,” wrote Maestro Martino in his recipe for “Sicilian macaroni.” Throughout the modern era, sugar and cinnamon were considered as indispensable as cheese. Practically all the pasta dishes in Scappi’s recipe collection are served with the addition of “cheese, sugar, and cinnamon on top.”
The extraordinarily long shelf life of pasta (macaroni and vermicelli dried in the sun can last “two or three years,” according to Maestro Martino) led to its growing commercial and gastronomic success, above all in areas served by urban markets. We do not know a great deal about pasta consumption in rural areas, but it is significant that Teofilo Folengo’s Maccheronee associates all kinds of pastas—macaroni, lasagne, tagliatelle, and tortelli—with peasant cooking. Normally, this would have meant fresh pasta, made as needed. The pasta industry did not extend to the countryside, and in fact the climate in many parts of Italy would not have facilitated the domestic production of dried noodles. Nevertheless, for peasants, to serve a dish of pasta meant a feast. In 1694 Girolamo Cirelli notes, with the kind of condescension typical of a city dweller, that “[peasants] imagine they are putting on a big show when they invite a friend to eat and serve him lasagne or macaroni.”
The recipe books often describe pasta as a “lean” dish, referring to the observance of liturgical requirements.It is hardly surprising, therefore, to find one of the most complete inventories of “pasta soups” in Paolo Zacchia’s Vitto quaresimale (Lenten food) in 1636: They are very varied, depending on whether the pastas are dried or fresh, broad or narrow, or made with wheat flour or other ingredients. They have many different shapes, since some are round, like those that we call vermicelli or macaroni, and among these some are hollow and others are not. Some pastas are broad and flat, like lasagne, and others are little and round, like the type we call millefanti. There are also pastas that are flat but narrow, like fettucce, which are usually called tagliolini, and others that are short and thick, and we call these agnolini. Others are longer and plumper and are called gnocchi. And they exist in a thousand other guises, none of them being any better or worse than the other. For a long time, pasta was only one food among many. Even in the sixteenth century it was perceived as a delicacy that could be, or should be, abandoned in times of difficulty. In Naples (where pasta began to be imported from Sicily only toward the end of the fifteenth century), an ordinance issued in 1509 forbade the making of “taralli, susamelli, ceppule, maccarune, trii vermicelli,” and all other “things made with dough” during times in which the cost of flour increased “as the result of war, famine, or a bad season.” This is evidently not the main dish of the population, nourished on a diet of bread, soup, vegetables, and meat. Even in Sicily pasta was a costly product. Only in 1501 was it included among the basic foods subject to price control, and in the middle of the same century macaroni and lasagne still cost three times as much as bread. It was during the course of the seventeenth century that pasta began to take on a different role in the Italian diet. The shift was first observed in Naples, where by midcentury overcrowding and a political and economic crisis had led to problems in the availability and distribution of food, particularly meat. In the meantime, a minor technological revolution (brought about by the greater accessibility of the kneading trough and the introduction of the mechanical press) enabled macaroni and other types of pasta to be produced at a considerably more moderate cost than in the past. For this reason, pasta gained a position of great importance in the diet of the city’s poorer classes. Thus in the eighteenth century Neapolitans became known as “the macaroni eaters,” a term previously reserved for Sicilians. When Goethe visited Naples in 1789 he observed that “macaroni of all kinds . . . are found everywhere at a low price.” 
The method of preparing pasta, however, was still medieval: “Macaroni is cooked in water, and the grated cheese serves both as fat and as flavoring.” The stereotype of the Neapolitan as a devourer of macaroni—further reinforced through visual images—would soon become widespread. In 1860, as the process of Italian unification drew to its conclusion, we find the annexation of Naples by Piedmont evoked symbolically as a pasta feast: “The macaroni is ready, and we will eat it,” Cavour wrote to Costantino Nigro, the Piedmontese ambassador to Paris, referring to Garibaldi’s entrance into the capital of the erstwhile kingdom.Since this national revolution meant the takeover of the south by the north, it also entailed a revolution in Italy’s culinary image. As Franco La Cecla has put it, “the Mediterranean blanket, of which macaroni constitutes an essential part, is drawn further toward the north.”
Outside Italy, the stereotype of the macaroni eater was already perceived as part of the Italian character in the broadest sense. At the end of the eighteenth century, Carlo Goldoni, who was invited to dine at the home of “a very agreeable lady” in Paris, was surprised to hear a man named La Cloche reproach his hostess with the words: “Are you serving soup to an Italian? But Italians eat nothing but macaroni, macaroni, and macaroni.”

By Alberto Capatti & Massimo Montanari, (translated by Aine O’Healy) in the book 'Italian Cuisine a Cultural History', Columbia University Press, New York, 2003, p.72-78. Edited and adapted by Leopoldo Costa.