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Cheese on macaroni: the pasta and its garnish
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The very first garnish used on past that history records is cheese. It would seem, in fact, that "Spaghetti cacio e pepe", traditional Sicilian and Roman dish, was the most popular recipe for pasta before the introduction of the tomato. A generous showering of cheese over the macaroni, to which the rich would add a precious dusting of black pepper, topped off with fried egg was the most common way to prepare pasta.
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The earliest pasta recipe on record, in the De re coquinaria by the Roman Apicio (Ist century A.D.), suggests garnishing "làgane" with honey and finishing it with a generous amount of pepper. Gastronomic treatises from the XVth and XVIIIth centuries demonstrate the custom among lower classes of preparing pasta with extended cooking times (as much as two hours) in a rich capon broth and of flavouring it with cheese, sugar, honey, "sweet" spices like cinnamon or hot spices.
For the "lean" days Cristoforo Messisburgo, court carver of Cardinal Ippolito d'Este in Ariosto's time, recommended simply boiling in water and garnished with fresh "butiro" (butter). Though the condiments and seasonings used at the table by the aristocrats were always more or less the same, the pasta was given a variety of flavours by varying the cooking liquid: between the XVth and XVIth centuries, for example, besides capon broth and stock, pasta was cooked in goat's milk and sweetened almond milk.
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THE TRADITIONAL GARNISHES |
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Through the end of the 1700s the most popular garnish remains cheese: in 1787 Goethe records in his Voyage in Italy, that in Naples "macaroni are cooked for the most part simply in boiling water and then cheese is grated over the top, serving both as the fat and as the seasoning".
Even though there is no real written documentation we cannot ignore the fact that diffusion of pasta across geographic and class boundaries correlates to an even more diffused variety of garnishes and flavourings. These are, in turn, traceable through the traditional recipes of each region, handed down through the centuries. Though not everyone at the time could afford rare meats or spices every day, this does not mean that that pasta was not a lively and flavourful dish: on the contrary, it was the creativity of the common people that gave birth to such dishes as the Sicilian pasta with sardines, the Catanian pasta with cuttlefish, the Genovese "Trenette" with Pesto (a traditional Ligurian family holiday dish) and even the Lasagna alla Bolognese with béchamel. Speaking of béchamel, as opposed to what many lexicographers believe, this delicate sauce was not invented by Louis De Bechameil, chancellor to king Louis XIV: several documents refer to "balsamella" as being among the foods with which the townspeople of Cesena celebrated the departure of cardinal Albornoz in the second half of the XIVth century.
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It was only in 1839 that pinnacle of garnishes for pasta was "discovered"; the tomato sauce.
After the Spanish brought it from Peru to Europe in the early 1600s, the tomato was cultivated in Northern Italy initially as an ornamental fruit.
Some experts sustain that tomatoes were first used on pasta in Eastern Sicily, perhaps at the end of the 1600s. The first record of its use as the base of a sauce, even though not associated with pasta, dates back to 1778 and was recorded by Vincenzo Corrado in his The Gallant Cook.
Finally, in 1839, Ippolito Cavalcanti celebrates the official marriage of pasta and tomato. He explains in his Kitchen Theory and Practise how the secret of a perfect "Vermicelli collo pomodoro" lies in "reducing with care" the sauce and, after having cooked the Vermicelli al dente, "add them to the sauce, with salt and pepper, still over the flame so they dry out a little", while "turning periodically".
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The Spaghetti-tomato duo, therefore, represents the solid foundation upon which, for two centuries, armies of chefs, gourmands, and fledgling housewives have unleashed their creativity while remaining, in its essence, one of the most loved and most representative of the "made-in-Italy" tradition.
Since the end of the 1800s the market has come up with an infinite variety of shapes and sizes which, between pure semolina and egg pasta, total more than 300. What should we know about matching the shapes with an appropriate sauce? What combinations should be avoided?
True pasta connoisseurs will swear that pasta, like a beautiful woman, doesn't require "makeup" or gaudy decoration. A splash of oil, a leaf of basil, and a little tomato concassée is enough to bring out the inherent flavour of the pasta, given that it is of premium quality. For those of us who love to express our creativity and those of us who like to experiment without prejudice, we can provide some general guidelines for correctly matching sauce and shape.Long, thin pasta of medium to small diameter requires a sauce that is assertive in flavour, oil based, that accentuates the shape's slipperiness. Some purists avoid putting Parmigiano Reggiano on Spaghetti as it weighs down the dish. With thicker Spaghetti or Bucatini one can consider a richer, more complex sauce finished with butter or cream. Medium-sized short pasta (e.g. the classic "Penne) is the most versatile: perfect with both butter and olive oil, matches well also with cheese.. Large short pasta (e.g. the famous Rigatoni) holds up to any type of sauce; from delicate, vegetable based sauces to the most sophisticated preparations, and is the shape of choice for oven-baked pastas made with béchamel, butter or cream.
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