Where did pasta originate?
It's easy to say pasta. Typical food of Italian cuisine, pasta in its various formats lends itself to being seasoned in a thousand different ways, from the simplest and most elaborate recipes to gourmet dishes. But when and where pasta is born, that is, what is the history of pasta?
The history of pasta has its origins in ancient times, well before the Chinese spaghetti that Marco Polo, who returned from the East in 1295, had got to know. Already Etruscans and Romans, according to archaeological findings, they prepared and ate lagana, the ancestor of modern lasagna, composed of sheets of pasta stuffed with meat cooked in the oven. In an Etruscan tomb in Cerveteri were found pastry board, rolling pin, knife, a bag to dust the flour and even a wheel that presumably served to make the wavy edges.
But the history of dry pasta as we know it today is linked to the Arab domination of Sicily according to several historians. It was 1154, when the Arab geographer Edrisi mentioned "a flour food in the form of threads", the "triyah" prepared in Trabia (the current Palermo). From Sicily the pasta prepared in this way was then exported to the continent. Always according to the Arab geographer already in the mid-1100s in Sicily and in particular in the area of Trabia so much "so much pasta" was produced that it was exported "in all parts, in Calabria and in other Muslim and Christian countries and many loads of ships are shipped".
In the Arab cookbooks of the 9th century there is already talk of pasta, with manufactures typical of the Moorish culture for its production: dry pasta was suitable to be preserved for a long time even through long journeys in the desert. Going forward with the years, dry pasta will become a productive "prerogative" of the regions of Southern Italy and Liguria: the dry and windy climate of these lands was ideal for drying in the open air.
Pasta will become mass food only in the seventeenth century and out of necessity: the very serious famine that broke out in the Kingdom of Naples, badly administered by the Spaniards, combined with demographic overcrowding led the Neapolitans to hunger: you could no longer buy meat but not even bread. So the population began to feed on pasta that in the meantime had become cheaper thanks to the invention of new tools that made production easier and faster, namely the kneading and the press.
It's easy to say pasta. Typical food of Italian cuisine, pasta in its various formats lends itself to being seasoned in a thousand different ways, from the simplest and most elaborate recipes to gourmet dishes. But when and where pasta is born, that is, what is the history of pasta?
The history of pasta has its origins in ancient times, well before the Chinese spaghetti that Marco Polo, who returned from the East in 1295, had got to know. Already Etruscans and Romans, according to archaeological findings, they prepared and ate lagana, the ancestor of modern lasagna, composed of sheets of pasta stuffed with meat cooked in the oven. In an Etruscan tomb in Cerveteri were found pastry board, rolling pin, knife, a bag to dust the flour and even a wheel that presumably served to make the wavy edges.
But the history of dry pasta as we know it today is linked to the Arab domination of Sicily according to several historians. It was 1154, when the Arab geographer Edrisi mentioned "a flour food in the form of threads", the "triyah" prepared in Trabia (the current Palermo). From Sicily the pasta prepared in this way was then exported to the continent. Always according to the Arab geographer already in the mid-1100s in Sicily and in particular in the area of Trabia so much "so much pasta" was produced that it was exported "in all parts, in Calabria and in other Muslim and Christian countries and many loads of ships are shipped".
In the Arab cookbooks of the 9th century there is already talk of pasta, with manufactures typical of the Moorish culture for its production: dry pasta was suitable to be preserved for a long time even through long journeys in the desert. Going forward with the years, dry pasta will become a productive "prerogative" of the regions of Southern Italy and Liguria: the dry and windy climate of these lands was ideal for drying in the open air.
Pasta will become mass food only in the seventeenth century and out of necessity: the very serious famine that broke out in the Kingdom of Naples, badly administered by the Spaniards, combined with demographic overcrowding led the Neapolitans to hunger: you could no longer buy meat but not even bread. So the population began to feed on pasta that in the meantime had become cheaper thanks to the invention of new tools that made production easier and faster, namely the kneading and the press.
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