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The colour of the sun: a brief voyage through pasta's history
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Known in Italy well before Marco Polo's return from China, pasta has a fascinating history which winds its way along the Mediterranean coast: from biblical Middle-East to the docks of Naples we will follow the evolution of a food which has accompanied Man as long as he can remember.
Sicily, 1154. Al-Idrisi, an Arab geographer, writes in his Book of Ruggero that in Trabia, near Palermo, "a dough is made into string-shapes which are then extensively exported to Calabria and to many Christian and Muslim countries by ship". Thus the predecessor to Spaghetti is born with the Arabic nameitryah (flatbread cut into strips), evidence of which can be found in the very similar "vermicelli di tria" still produced today in some parts of Southern Italy. |
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In reality, the history of pasta takes root in a much earlier era and begins when primitive nomads created the first human settlements: the earliest record of grain cultivation in the high valleys of Jordan, in fact, dates back to at least 8000 B.C. The first mention of flatbreads is in the Bible, in the Book of Genesis, while the Book of Kings tells us that they were cooked on hot stone.
As far as ancient inhabitants of the Italian peninsula are concerned, it seems the Etruscans knew pasta as a sheeted dough, while the Greek civilization in the first millennium B.C. called by the name laganon, later called in Latin laganum, a thin, flat dough cut into strips.
Through the roman empire pasta conquered Eastern Europe, and it is to a roman from the Ist century B.C. that we owe first pasta-based recipe: in his De re coquinaria libri Apicio describes a kind of timbale enclosed in "lągana".
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FROM SICILY TO GENOA: HOW IT SPREAD THROUGHOUT ITALY |
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The practice of drying pasta for conservation was most likely brought to Sicily by occupying Arabs, between the IXth and XIth centuries, but it was the nomadic desert tribes who first sought and found a system for preserving pasta during travel. To this day among the populations of Libya and Syria it is common to find rista, dried macaroni with lentils.
Although the first appearance of "trie" took place in Palermo, we must move to Genoa in 1279 before we find the first written reference to "maccheroni". Specifically, this reference is taken from a will drawn up by the Genovese notary Ugolino Scarpa, which includes, among other things, "a basket full of macaroni", perhaps having come to Liguria for maritime commerce with Sicily. From the historical documents it seems clear then that pasta was well-known long before Marco Polo came home from China (1295), to whom tradition has long attributed the introduction of this fundamental food.
Between 1200 and 1400 there are numerous references to pasta in Italian literature, from Jacopone da Todi to Cecco Angiolieri, but it is with the Decameron, written between 1348 and 1353 by Giovanni Boccaccio, that "maccheroni" are officially consecrated as a refined delicacy: through the description that Maso del Saggio gives to the fool Calandrino of the "Paese di Bengodi": "...and on a mountain, all of grated Parmigiano Reggiano, dwell folk that do noughtelse but make macaroni, and boil them in capon's broth, and then throw them down to be scrambled for" . Note: with the term "maccheroni" Boccaccio is describing a pasta similar to present-day "Gnocchi", fresh and not dried, which was still widely unknown in Central and Northern Italy.
Between 1500 and 1600 we begin to see pasta, and its producers, obtain a precise role in society. It is in this century, in fact, that the records indicate many "Statuti dell'Arte dei Pastai" ("Pasta Artisans Charter") which officially sanctioned the transformation of a family business into a Corporation, with all the applicable rules and taxes.
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NAPLES, THE PASTA CAPITAL |
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And Naples? In that which is commonly referred to as the pasta capital, pasta as a staple food became popular at a relatively late date. Until the end of the 1500s, in fact, macaroni were an exotic food for the inhabitants of Naples, one that was reserved for the upper-class: we find them mentioned among the delicacies of Cinderella's fabulous banquet in Giovan Battista Basile's description in the Pentameron.
Organized production of pasta begins in the region of Campania on the Amalfi coast, around the year 1000, owing once more to maritime commerce that the Maritime Republic had with Sicily. Economic reasons (among which the need to import hard-wheat flour from Puglia or Sicily) put them in a want category level with sweets; that is, the first thing to go when times are tough.
Everything changed with the invention of the mechanical mill which allowed production at much lower prices, and, from the XVIIth century on, pasta became staple food in the diets of every social class, to the point where it was sold on street corners topped with grated cheese. It is during this period that the nickname for Neapolitans changes from "mangiafoglie" ("leaf-eaters" because they consumed a lot of cabbage) to "mangiamaccheroni" ("macaroni-eaters"), an epithet previously reserved for the Sicilians.
In 1764 Neapolitan industry begins exporting its pastas to the other regions of Italy, and from the beginning of the 1800s Naples establishes itself as the capital of macaroni. It is in Naples, during the same period, that the practice of garnishing pasta with tomato sauce with a basil infusion first begins. In Torre Annuziata, Naples, pasta production was first industrialized, producing a variety of Amalfi Coast pastas.
During the course of the 19th century "Naples" and "Spaghetti" become synonymous. A connection later celebrated in literature, theatre, and, more recently, through the voracious hunger of Italian film personalities as Eduardo De Filippo and Totņ. We should also not leave out "Pulcinella" the traditional Carnival character who is a glutton for pasta.
It was also during this period, in 1877, that Pietro Barilla opened the first pasta store in Parma, beginning one of the world's foremost gastronomic adventures, both in Italy and abroad. From that moment on, the constant pursuit of quality has ensured that Barilla would continue to play a fundamental role in the Italian gastronomic tradition.
The search for the highest quality grain became the starting point of the companies quest for quality. 1961 marked the arrival of the first agronomist whose mission was to improve the quality of the wheat plants and to try to extend their cultivation over the whole peninsula, not just in South-Central Italy as was the case at the time. Today the acreage required to satisfy the company's yearly demand is enough to fit twelve-thousand basketball courts.
Then, of course, it was Italian emigrants to America and the rest of the world who would make pasta one of the most enduring symbols of Italian lifestyle and culture.
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