Origin of pasta: Many schoolchildren were taught that the Venetian merchant Marco Polo brought back pasta from his journeys to China. Some may have also learnt that Polos was not a discovery, but rather a rediscovery of product once popular in Italy among the Etruscans and the Romans. Well, Marco Polo might have done amazing things on his journeys, but bringing pasta to Italy was not one of them: noodles were already there in Polos time. There is indeed evidence of an Etrusco-Roman noodle made from the same durum wheat used to produce modern pasta: it was called lagane (origin of the modern word for lasagna). However this type of food, first mentioned in the 1st century AD, was not boiled, as it is usually done today, but ovenbaked. Ancient lagane had some similarities with modern pasta, but cannot be considered quite the same. The country will have to wait a few centuries for its most popular dish to make a further culinary leap forward.
Posted on: Thu, 05 Jun 2014 03:44:50 +0000
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