On 1 April 1957, the BBC current affairs programme Panorama presented a three-minute documentary item showing a Swiss family, in the southern canton of Ticino, gathering spaghetti from a line of trees in their garden. Such was the lack of familiarity in Britain with a household staple of millions of “foreigners”, and so authoritative were the dulcet tones of Richard Dimbleby, that an astonishing number of viewers were taken in. The BBC received hundreds of calls asking for details of how to grow a spaghetti tree – the advice, apparently, was to take a cutting (a length of dried spaghetti) and start it off by rooting it in a tin of Heinz tomato sauce.
Today, 65 years on, an average of almost 100 grams of pasta is consumed per person per week in UK households; nevertheless for many people a great deal of confusion still surrounds names, types, styles and authentic recipes. In a new book, A Brief History of Pasta: The Italian Food that Shaped the World, the author Luca Cesari laconically observes: “In the end, pasta is just one way of eating a dough of water and flour: bake it, and it’s a pie, flatbread or pizza; dip it into boiling oil and it’s a fritter (plain or filled) but boil it in water and you’ve entered the vast world of pasta.” Vast it is and hitherto uncharted. Cesari is a fanatic, as the reader soon discovers, and so who better to guide one through the labyrinthine complexities of the world’s favourite food?
Cesari takes ten classic pasta dishes and in ten chapters serves up every known fact about each one. Surprises abound. Who’d have thought that the earliest reference to lasagne comes from a 13th-century Franciscan chronicle, in which an encounter with a corpulent friar from Ravenna provokes the diarist to comment: “I have never seen anyone more eager to devour lasagne with cheese.” Lasagne, cheese and the tempting fragrance thereof become essential ingredients in satirical stories about fat friars for the next two centuries.
Some of the recipes Cesari excavates from the archives come from the recipe books of the cooks employed by grand Roman cardinals. Macaroni dressed with ragù alla bolognese, for example, first appears in a manuscript compilation of recipes from the household of Cardinal Barnaba Chiaramonti, Bishop of Imola, who ascended the papal throne as Pius VII in 1800. I hope the dish was a consolation and a memory of home while he was held captive in France for five years by Napoleon.
On the other hand, fettucine Alfredo, with which Cesari begins his book, is a surprisingly recent invention. Its humble origins lie in a back-street trattoria in Rome at the beginning of the 20th century, where the eponymous Alfredo di Lelio learned his skills in a family restaurant. This ambrosial dish, contrived from only three ingredients – pasta, butter and parmesan cheese – was taken up by Hollywood royalty in the form of Douglas Fairbanks and his wife Mary Pickford. It rapidly appeared in American recipe books and Italian-diaspora restaurants all over the United States. Unheard of in Italy – let alone tasted – outside Rome, this simple dish took America by storm.
Many illusions are shattered. Not only does he reveal that the first recorded recipe for carbonara is to be found outside Italy in Elizabeth David’s Italian Food of 1954, but Cesari also seems to have come to the reluctant admission that this classic pasta dish was invented “upon the arrival of the Allies in 1944, when some cook in a Roman restaurant made a virtue of necessity and a new pasta sauce out of army rations”. Some 50 pages of detailed discussion of the name, the possible origins, permitted ingredients and enormous popularity of this dish precede this extraordinary conclusion.
When in 2015 a well-known Michelin-starred Italian chef added garlic to his sugo all’amatriciana, the city fathers of Amatrice in northern Lazio went into orbit. Struggling to control their emotions, they issued a statement: “We are certain that this famous chef meant well, and know he is free to use garlic in any sauce he prepares. We are even more certain such a sauce may be good, but it cannot be called Amatriciana.” Cesari’s almost obsessive in-depth research effectively demolishes any such claims to “authenticity” in all the dishes he describes. Contrary to what the purists claim, there are endless ways of making even the most familiar pasta dishes. Italian food remains “a vast shared legacy, added to by great chefs and grandmothers alike”.
Given the huge industry that is Italian food in the US, it is not surprising the book is written for an American readership. This in no way detracts from its interest and fascination and this edition has English spelling throughout.
Cesari’s final word prompts a pause for thought: “If the history of pasta has anything to teach us, it’s that the one constant in tradition is change.”
A Brief History of Pasta: The Italian Food that Shaped the World (Profile Books, £16.99) is out now On 1 April 1957, the BBC current affairs programme Panorama presented a three-minute documentary item showing a Swiss family, in the southern canton of Ticino, gathering spaghetti from a line of trees in their garden. Such was the lack of familiarity in Britain with a household staple of millions of “foreigners”, and so authoritative were the dulcet tones of Richard Dimbleby, that an astonishing number of viewers were taken in. The BBC received hundreds of calls asking for details of how to grow a spaghetti tree – the advice, apparently, was to take a cutting (a length of dried spaghetti) and start it off by rooting it in a tin of Heinz tomato sauce.
Today, 65 years on, an average of almost 100 grams of pasta is consumed per person per week in UK households; nevertheless for many people a great deal of confusion still surrounds names, types, styles and authentic recipes. In a new book, A Brief History of Pasta: The Italian Food that Shaped the World, the author Luca Cesari laconically observes: “In the end, pasta is just one way of eating a dough of water and flour: bake it, and it’s a pie, flatbread or pizza; dip it into boiling oil and it’s a fritter (plain or filled) but boil it in water and you’ve entered the vast world of pasta.” Vast it is and hitherto uncharted. Cesari is a fanatic, as the reader soon discovers, and so who better to guide one through the labyrinthine complexities of the world’s favourite food?
Cesari takes ten classic pasta dishes and in ten chapters serves up every known fact about each one. Surprises abound. Who’d have thought that the earliest reference to lasagne comes from a 13th-century Franciscan chronicle, in which an encounter with a corpulent friar from Ravenna provokes the diarist to comment: “I have never seen anyone more eager to devour lasagne with cheese.” Lasagne, cheese and the tempting fragrance thereof become essential ingredients in satirical stories about fat friars for the next two centuries.
Some of the recipes Cesari excavates from the archives come from the recipe books of the cooks employed by grand Roman cardinals. Macaroni dressed with ragù alla bolognese, for example, first appears in a manuscript compilation of recipes from the household of Cardinal Barnaba Chiaramonti, Bishop of Imola, who ascended the papal throne as Pius VII in 1800. I hope the dish was a consolation and a memory of home while he was held captive in France for five years by Napoleon.
On the other hand, fettucine Alfredo, with which Cesari begins his book, is a surprisingly recent invention. Its humble origins lie in a back-street trattoria in Rome at the beginning of the 20th century, where the eponymous Alfredo di Lelio learned his skills in a family restaurant. This ambrosial dish, contrived from only three ingredients – pasta, butter and parmesan cheese – was taken up by Hollywood royalty in the form of Douglas Fairbanks and his wife Mary Pickford. It rapidly appeared in American recipe books and Italian-diaspora restaurants all over the United States. Unheard of in Italy – let alone tasted – outside Rome, this simple dish took America by storm.
Many illusions are shattered. Not only does he reveal that the first recorded recipe for carbonara is to be found outside Italy in Elizabeth David’s Italian Food of 1954, but Cesari also seems to have come to the reluctant admission that this classic pasta dish was invented “upon the arrival of the Allies in 1944, when some cook in a Roman restaurant made a virtue of necessity and a new pasta sauce out of army rations”. Some 50 pages of detailed discussion of the name, the possible origins, permitted ingredients and enormous popularity of this dish precede this extraordinary conclusion.
When in 2015 a well-known Michelin-starred Italian chef added garlic to his sugo all’amatriciana, the city fathers of Amatrice in northern Lazio went into orbit. Struggling to control their emotions, they issued a statement: “We are certain that this famous chef meant well, and know he is free to use garlic in any sauce he prepares. We are even more certain such a sauce may be good, but it cannot be called Amatriciana.” Cesari’s almost obsessive in-depth research effectively demolishes any such claims to “authenticity” in all the dishes he describes. Contrary to what the purists claim, there are endless ways of making even the most familiar pasta dishes. Italian food remains “a vast shared legacy, added to by great chefs and grandmothers alike”.
Given the huge industry that is Italian food in the US, it is not surprising the book is written for an American readership. This in no way detracts from its interest and fascination and this edition has English spelling throughout.
Cesari’s final word prompts a pause for thought: “If the history of pasta has anything to teach us, it’s that the one constant in tradition is change.”
A Brief History of Pasta: The Italian Food that Shaped the World (Profile Books, £16.99) is out now
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