Pasta

• 1. Introduction

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  Pasta comes in 310 known forms, and those forms carry more than 1,300 documented names. A single shape can answer to a different name in every town. Cavatelli alone is called 28 different things across Italy, depending on the town and the region. Yet the food itself begins with almost nothing. It is an unleavened dough of flour mixed with water or eggs, formed into sheets or other shapes, then boiled or baked. Durum wheat was once the only grain used, though today rice flour, beans and lentils can stand in for it.

  How did such plain ingredients grow into a food that fills supermarket shelves in many countries? Where did pasta actually come from, and why does a famous story about Marco Polo fall apart when historians look closely? What separates fresh pasta from dried, and what happens inside the dough once it meets boiling water? How have cooks from Tunisia to Hong Kong bent the dish to their own tastes, and what do the laws of Italy and the United States say about what may be sold under the name?

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• 2. Dough Before Pasta

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  Evidence of Etruscans making pasta reaches back to 400 BCE in Italy. Pasta is believed to have developed independently there, and it is still a staple of Italian cuisine. The earliest written records, however, describe relatives of pasta rather than the real thing. In the 1st-century writings of Horace, lagana are fine sheets of fried dough, an everyday foodstuff.

  Athenaeus of Naucratis, writing in the 2nd century, preserves a lagana recipe that he credits to Chrysippus of Tyana, a figure of the 1st century. The dough was wheat flour mixed with the juice of crushed lettuce, flavored with spices and deep-fried in oil. An early 5th-century cookbook describes another lagana, built from layers of dough with a meat stuffing. That dish is an ancestor of modern lasagna. Historians point out that none of this cooking matches the modern idea of fresh or dried pasta. The foods shared basic ingredients and perhaps a shape, and little else.

  The 2nd-century Greek physician Galen mentions itrion, a uniform compound of flour and water. The Jerusalem Talmud records itrium, a kind of boiled dough that was common in Palestine from the 3rd to the 5th centuries. Isho bar Ali, a 9th-century Arab physician and lexicographer, defined the Arabic cognate itriyya as string-like shapes of semolina, dried before cooking.

  In 1154 the geographer Muhammad al-Idrisi compiled a text for Roger II, the Norman king of Sicily. He describes Trabia, a settlement on the coast east of Palermo, where flowing streams drove a number of mills. Huge buildings in the countryside turned out vast quantities of itriyya. Very many shiploads left for Calabria and for both Muslim and Christian countries. How that trade reached the Italian mainland, and who carried it, is a question the sources leave open.

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• 3. The Marco Polo Myth

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  Rustichello da Pisa wrote in his Travels that Marco Polo described a food similar to lagana. From that thin thread grew a legend that Polo carried pasta home from China. The food writer Jane Grigson believed the story began in the 1920s or 1930s, in an advertisement for a Canadian spaghetti company. How pasta truly reached Europe remains unknown, and the theories compete.

  Jeffrey Steingarten asserts that Moors brought pasta to the Emirate of Sicily in the 9th century. He adds that traces of pasta have turned up in ancient Greece. Food historians favor a broader explanation: pasta probably took hold in Italy through extensive Mediterranean trade in the Middle Ages. The first concrete information on pasta products in Italy dates to the 13th or 14th centuries. From the 13th century onward, mentions of pasta dishes appear with growing frequency across the Italian peninsula.

  Boccaccio, the 14th-century author of the earthy tales in The Decameron, imagined a mountain of Parmesan cheese. Down its slopes, pasta chefs rolled macaroni and ravioli to gluttons waiting at the bottom. In the 14th and 15th centuries dried pasta grew popular because it stored so easily. That quality let ships carry it on voyages to the New World, and a century later pasta was present around the globe.

  The sauce that now defines so many plates is surprisingly young. Tomatoes reached Italy in the 16th century and entered Italian cooking in the 17th. The first written record of pasta with tomato sauce appears in the 1790 cookbook L'Apicio Moderno, by the Roman chef Francesco Leonardi.

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• 4. Factories And Markets

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  At the start of the 17th century, Naples already had rudimentary machines for making pasta. The city later added a kneading machine and a press, which made production cost-effective. In 1740 a license for the first pasta factory was issued in Venice. During the 1800s, watermills and stone grinders separated semolina from the bran, and the market began to expand.

  The idea spread beyond Italy. In 1859 Joseph Topits, who lived from 1824 to 1876, founded Hungary's first pasta factory in the city of Pest. It ran on steam machines and was among the first pasta factories in Central Europe. By 1867 the Buitoni Company in Sansepolcro, Tuscany, was an established manufacturer. In 1884 the Zátka Brothers opened a plant in Boršov nad Vltavou, the first of its kind in Bohemia. In the early 1900s, artificial drying and extrusion allowed greater variety and larger export volumes. This began a period called "The Industry of Pasta".

  A 2008 estimate held that Italians ate over 60 lb of pasta per person each year, while Americans ate about 20 lb. Italian appetite for pasta exceeds the wheat the country grows, so Italy frequently imports wheat for its pasta. Today pasta is largely mass-produced in factories, and only a tiny proportion is made by hand.

  In 2015-16 Italy led dried pasta production at 3.2 million tonnes. The United States followed with 2 million tonnes, then Turkey at 1.3 million, Brazil at 1.2 million and Russia at 1 million. In 2018 Italy was also the largest exporter, selling $2.9 billion worth, ahead of China at $0.9 billion. Per person in 2015, Italy ate 23.5 kg, Tunisia 16.0 kg, Venezuela 12.0 kg and Greece 11.2 kg. In total volume, though, the United States ate the most in 2017, at 2.7 million tons.

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• 5. Shape Meets Sauce

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  Long pasta is made by rolling and cutting or by extruding, and it pairs with thinner toppings. A thick sauce full of chunks of meat or vegetables would not cling to it. Short pasta is extruded and usually meets thicker sauces, because its shape holds them better. Stuffed pasta is folded around ingredients such as meat and vegetables.

  Fresh egg pasta is typically made from eggs and all-purpose flour or "00" low-gluten flour. It is more tender than dried pasta and cooks in about half the time. Because it does not swell in the pot, 1.5 lb is needed to serve four people generously. In Piedmont and Emilia-Romagna the dough is made only from egg yolk and flour. Cooks there often serve it with butter sauce and thinly sliced local truffles. In Apulia, fresh pasta can be just semolina and water, shaped into orecchiette. Sicilian cavatelli is prepared differently, from flour and ricotta.

  Dried pasta is usually made with semolina and water in large factory machines, and it dries at low temperature for several days. It ships farther and keeps longer. Once cooked it grows to about twice its size, so roughly 1 lb serves up to four people. It suits hearty dishes such as ragù, soups and casseroles.

  In Bologna, the meat-based Bolognese sauce uses only a small amount of tomato concentrate. Genoa is the home of the green sauce called pesto. Central Italy offers amatriciana, arrabbiata and carbonara. In the south, where tomato sauces originated, cooks add fresh vegetables, olives, capers or seafood. Pasta alla Norma, pasta con le sarde and spaghetti alla puttanesca come from that tradition.

  Italians often cook pasta al dente, still firm to the bite, because it softens further when finished in the sauce. Several urban myths surround the pot. Water temperature generally does not matter, though stuffed pasta such as tortellini can break apart at high heat. Salting before or after the boil makes no difference, and the amount of salt does not change cooking speed.

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• 6. Inside The Dough

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  Since at least the time of Cato's De Agri Cultura, pasta dough has been made mostly from wheat flour or semolina. Durum wheat dominates in southern Italy and soft wheat in the north. Cooks in various regions have also used barley, buckwheat, rye, rice, maize, and chestnut and chickpea flours. At least nine pasta forms are known to use yeast-raised dough. People with coeliac disease, wheat allergy or gluten sensitivity can eat versions made from rice, maize, quinoa, amaranth, oats or buckwheat. Gluten-free recipes may add xanthan gum to retain moisture during storage.

  Gluten proteins make up about 75-80% of the protein in durum wheat. As water is added and the dough is worked, they turn elastic and form strands and sheets. Semolina is a protein matrix with starch granules trapped inside it. The moisture of the dough is around 32% on a wet basis when it enters the extruder. There, a screw pushes it toward a die, and swollen starch granules align along the direction of shear. Drying then locks the gluten matrix in place for good. Dried pasta holds around 12% moisture and stays a brittle solid until cooked.

  Boiling brings starch gelatinization and protein coagulation, with starch and protein competing for the water. Commercial dried pasta often gets vitamins and minerals added back to the semolina, because milling strips some from the durum endosperm. These can include niacin, riboflavin, folate, thiamine and ferrous iron.

  Cooked plain pasta is 62% water, 31% carbohydrates (26% of it starch), 6% protein and 1% fat. A 100 g portion of unenriched cooked pasta supplies 160 kcal and 15% of the Daily Value for manganese. Its glycemic index is lower than that of bread, potatoes or rice. Uncooked pasta kept airtight in a cool, dry place can sit in the cupboard for a year. Cooked pasta lasts five days in the refrigerator, or two to three months frozen.

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• 7. Pasta Abroad

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  Ancient Romans cooked their pasta-like foods by frying rather than boiling. They sweetened them with honey or tossed them with garum. Later migrations sent pasta on very different journeys. Italian Tunisians, mostly from Sicily, brought pasta specialties to North Africa in the 19th and 20th centuries. The Tunisian version, Makrouna, always starts with concentrated tomato paste. Cooks add olive oil, garlic and red pepper flakes, and sometimes tabil and harissa. It is eaten with chicken, beef, lamb, seafood or merguez. Ditalini, a favorite shape, is called fell there.

  Somalia, Ethiopia and Eritrea met pasta through Italian colonization and occupation. Southern Somalia has a dish called suugo, a beef-based meat sauce seasoned with the local xawaash spice mix. In Ethiopia, pasta may be served over injera and eaten by hand. Bolognese flavored with berbere can sit beside it.

  In Hong Kong, macaroni cooked in broth with ham or frankfurter sausages, peas and black mushrooms is a cha chaan teng dish for breakfast or a light lunch. It echoes noodle soup. In Nepal, boiled macaroni is sautéed with cumin, turmeric, green chillies, onions and cabbage. Armenia's arishta is toasted in a dry pan until slightly golden, then boiled and topped with yogurt, butter and garlic.

  Twice a year, hundreds of people in Sardinia walk 20 mi through the night from Nuoro to the village of Lula for the Feast of San Francesco. There they eat su filindeu, possibly the world's rarest pasta. It is an intricate semolina pasta made by just three women, who make it only for the festival.

  In southern Brazil, macaroni is called macarrão and pasta in general is massa. Gnocchi becomes nhoque and tagliatelle becomes talharim. The parafuso, whose name means screw or bolt, is a favorite in Brazilian pasta salads and differs from its closest Italian relative, fusilli. In the United States, fettuccine Alfredo is popular, and in Australia boscaiola sauce of bacon and mushrooms is a favorite. Back in Italy, though, the law has its own say about what may be sold as pasta.

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• 8. Laws Of The Dough

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  Presidential Decree No. 187 governs commercial pasta made and sold within Italy. It does not cover pasta made for export, pasta imported from other countries or pasta made in restaurants. Dried pasta must be made only from durum wheat semolina or durum whole-meal semolina and water. A small allowance lets up to 3% of the flour be soft wheat. The three subcategories are durum wheat semolina pasta, low grade durum wheat semolina pasta and durum wheat whole meal pasta, each labeled accordingly.

  Special pastas add ingredients such as spinach, which must be named on the package. Egg pasta requires at least 4 hens' eggs, weighing at least 200 g without shells, per kilogram of semolina. Fresh and stabilized pastas may use soft-wheat flour without restriction. Prepackaged fresh pasta needs a water level of at least 24%, refrigeration at no more than 4 C with a 2 C tolerance and a heat treatment at least equal to pasteurisation. It must be sold within five days of manufacture. Stabilized pasta may hold only 20% water, but it can travel and sit at ambient temperature.

  In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration set standards of identity for macaroni products under Section 341 of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. They appear in 21 CFR Part 139 and cover 15 specific types of dried pasta, including imports. Enriched versions must contain thiamin, riboflavin, niacin or niacinamide, folic acid and iron. Vegetable macaroni needs added vegetable solids of at least 3% of its weight. Wheat and soy macaroni requires soy flour of at least 12.5% of the total. Nonfat milk macaroni must contain between 12% and 25% milk solids-not-fat.

  Those federal standards are not mandates, but states have turned many of them into law. When Connecticut adopted its enrichment law in 1972, it joined 38 to 40 other states that had adopted the federal standards. School meals add another layer. The United States Department of Agriculture requires grain and bread products in federal school nutrition programs to be enriched or whole grain. Enriched macaroni fortified with protein may count toward either the grains and breads requirement or the meat alternative requirement, but never both in the same meal.

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