The History of Pasta (Encore)
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The following is an encore presentation of Everything Everywhere Daily. There is a very good chance that many of you listening to the sound of my voice have had pasta maybe within the last week. Pasta is a simple, affordable food that comes in a wide variety of forms. It can be served with almost anything and in a wide variety of styles. And despite its current global nature, pasta is a food that originated in Italy. Or did it?

Learn more about pasta, how it originated, and how it spread around the world on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. ♪

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Upfront payment of $45 for a three-month 5GB plan required, equivalent to $15 a month. New customer offer for the first three months only, then full price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra, see Mint Mobile for details. The food that we know as pasta came from Italy. There is a bit more to the story than that, and I'll get to it in a bit, but for all practical purposes, we can call it an Italian food. Pretty much every type of pasta has a name of Italian origin, and the word pasta itself is Italian.

The word pasta comes from the Italian word for paste, because in its raw form it has a paste-like consistency. However, there are some who think that it actually comes from a Greek word of the same name, via Latin, which describes a barley porridge. The definition of pasta is any unleavened dough made out of wheat with water and or eggs. It is also usually, but not always, boiled.

The history of pasta is actually difficult to determine. Pasta is an extremely simple dish and it's really not that far from bread. Take some bread dough, shape it and boil it, and you basically have pasta. Before we start talking about Italy, there is one country we have to bring up because I'm sure that many of you may have thought about it before. China. Pasta-like noodles have been in China for thousands of years.

I'm not going to dwell too much on it because Chinese cuisine and Chinese noodles are worthy of its own episode. The big question that people have debated for a long time is if pasta originated in China. In fact, there was a story floating around that pasta came to Italy from China via Marco Polo in the late 13th century. The origin of that story may have come from a passage in Marco Polo's travels. However, it appears that he was referencing a food from Italy known as Lagana.

Also, the earliest evidence of the Marco Polo story actually comes from the Macaroni Journal, which was published by the American National Pasta Association. So, there's really no evidence for the story. Likewise, there have been theories that pasta, or at least noodles, were brought into Italy via the Moors when they conquered Sicily. However, there isn't a whole lot of evidence for this either.

The other reason why it is believed that pasta didn't come from somewhere else is that there may be evidence of pasta dating back at least 2,000 years in Italy. There is a 4th century BC tomb in Italy that has an image painted on it that seems to show people holding a bowl of something that looks like pasta, in particular spaghetti. However, this too is open to interpretation.

In the 1st century, the Roman poet Horace made a reference to Laganum, also known as Laganah, which were thin sheets of fried dough. In the 2nd century, the Greek grammarian Athenius of Nacratis gave a recipe for Laganah, which consisted of sheets of dough made from wheat flour, lettuce juice, and deep-fried oil. The Jerusalem Talmud, which was compiled in the 4th century, speaks of a food known as Yttrium, which was a boiled dough.

The point of all this being is that there were very early references in Italy and around the Mediterranean that reference either pasta or some sort of pasta-like food. Given how simple pasta is and how close it is to bread, it's highly probable that it was developed independently in China and in other places around the Mediterranean. The first reference to something that we can definitively say is pasta in Italy dates back to the late 13th and early 14th century.

The writer Boccaccio wrote in his book The Decameron about a fantasy of a mountain made of Parmesan cheese with macaroni and ravioli rolling down it. There were also references to gnocchi and vermicelli in other works indicating that there were multiple varieties of pasta already at this time. One thing we do know is that sometime around the 14th and 15th century, there was a change in pasta. Pasta up until this point was made fresh. Today it's known as pasta fresca.

The big development was dried pasta, or pasta secca. This was a pretty simple development, but it was huge in that it allowed for the preservation of an easy-to-prepare meal. Dried pasta was something that could be cooked with very little preparation. Italian pasta of this period also began to be made primarily with semolina, which is coarsely ground durum wheat.

Durham wheat was originally imported to Italy from Arab traders and is considered a hard wheat in that it's difficult to mill. However, as a dough, it's considered to be very soft, which is why it makes for better wheat for pasta and is not necessarily good for bread. What makes Durham ideal for pasta is its higher gluten content. Today, most pasta is made out of Durham wheat, and in Italy, by law, anything labeled as pasta without any special qualifiers has to be made out of Durham wheat.

The consumption of pasta in the Middle Ages was nothing like how you've probably had it. For starters, it was usually cooked much longer than it is today. The pasta would have been softer and not cooked al dente. Al dente is an Italian term that literally means to the tooth. When applied to pasta, it refers to the consistency that's achieved when pasta is cooked to be firm to the bite. What pasta was served with was also very different.

It would be served with things like raisins, cheese, meat, butter, sugar, cinnamon, and olive oil. Tomato sauce did not exist at the time. It also became something that was consumed by the wealthy simply because of the amount of time required to make it. While pasta is simple in terms of the ingredients, the cutting and shaping of pasta was very time-consuming regardless of whether it was fresh or dried.

One of the big changes to pasta, and the thing that brought it to the masses, was the development of pasta machines. Cutting and shaping pasta was time-consuming, but it was also something that was ripe for automation. In the early 17th century, rudimentary pasta machines were being used in Naples, and the first pasta factory was licensed in Venice, Italy in 1740. It was the automation of pasta production that turned it into a food for the lower classes.

Neapolitans were once called leaf eaters, but by the early 18th century, they were now called macaroni eaters. In fact, pasta became so prevalent that it went from being associated with the nobility to being associated with beggars, but the upper class did still eat it.

Thomas Jefferson is credited with bringing pasta to the United States. When he served in France, he purchased a macaroni mold from Italy that he brought back to Virginia. And he also reportedly had macaroni shipped from Europe to the U.S. At the time, all pasta was commonly referred to as macaroni. The word macaroni comes from a Sicilian phrase for kneading dough vigorously.

1790 was also the very first year that a written recipe for pasta was created that used tomato sauce. The 19th century saw major changes in the consumption and preparation of pasta. Pasta manufacturing became industrialized. Flour milling became mechanized, which further reduced the cost of flour and made pasta even cheaper. Pre-packaged dried pasta was able to be sold and purchased by almost anyone.

Pasta factories opened outside of Italy, but for the most part, pasta was still mostly an Italian dish. In 1844, the recipe for spaghetti and meatballs was published for the very first time. What really spread the popularity of pasta was the migration of Italians, particularly to the United States and South America.

The spread of pasta was very similar to that of pizza in the 20th century. It started out as a dish that was considered to be exclusively Italian. If you wanted a pasta dish, you probably had to go to an Italian restaurant that specialized in pasta. However, over time, just as with pizza, pasta entered mainstream culture. It became popularized in movies such as Lady and the Tramp. After the Second World War, soldiers who had served in Italy came home and brought their love of pasta back with them. Again, very similar to the story of pizza.

From there, it escaped being a dish served mostly in Italian restaurants. Dried pasta was cheap and easy to prepare, which was one of the reasons it spread in popularity. A meal of spaghetti and meatballs could be prepared in just a few minutes for very little money. As pasta expanded geographically, the number of pasta varieties expanded as well. Today, there are over 300 known types of pasta, many of which are just variations on a similar theme.

Despite being made out of pretty much the same ingredients, the different shapes of pasta are often designed for different reasons. Some types of pasta, such as rigatoni, have ridges on the edge to make it easier for thicker, chunkier sauces to adhere to the pasta. Other, smoother pasta is designed to be consumed with more liquid, runny sauces. Lasagna is considered to be a pasta dish, but there are several things about it that make it unique. First, it's probably the oldest known pasta as it dates back to the food Lagana.

and it's one of the few pasta dishes where pasta is baked and not boiled. The global pasta market today has become enormous. Worldwide sales of pasta in 2023 are estimated to be $68 billion, with projections showing the market reaching $90 billion by the year 2030.

In 2011, a global survey conducted by the British non-profit Oxfam found that pasta was the most popular dish around the world, beating out meat, rice, and pizza. It earned the top place on five different continents, including countries such as the Philippines, Guatemala, Brazil, South Africa, and of course, Italy.

The number one country in terms of pasta consumption per capita is, not surprisingly, Italy, where each person eats on average 23 kilograms of pasta per year. The two other biggest countries in terms of consumption are Tunisia and Venezuela. Italians consume about three times more pasta each year than Americans do. Pasta has a strange history. From its shadowy past originating somewhere we're totally not sure, it has become a staple Italian dish.

It used to be a food for the wealthy, but it's now considered to be one of the cheapest meals you can make. It can be very difficult to make fresh, but incredibly easy to make if it's dried. Its long history and unique properties of being easy to ship and preserve are just some of the reasons why pasta has become the world's most favorite dish in the 21st century. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Austin Oakton and Cameron Kiefer.

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