Pasta the story of a universal food

Series Editor’s Preface ixNote Concerning a Definition of Pasta Products xvii the king of cereals of the mediterranean 1 wheat in china, a latter-day use 4 going back to the myths 10 pas

a rt s a n d t r a d i t i o n s o f t h e ta b l e

PA S TA : T H E S T O R Y O F A U N I V E R S A L F O O D

Albert Sonnenfeld, series editor

Salt: Grain of Life

Pierre Laszlo, translated by Mary Beth Mader

The Civilization of the Fork

Giovanni Rebora, translated by Albert Sonnenfeld

French Gastronomy: The History and Geography of a Passion

Jean-Robert Pitte, translated by Jody Gladding

T H E S TO RY O F A U N I V E R S A L F O O D

Silvano Serventi and Françoise Sabban

Translated by Antony Shugaar

Publishers Since 1893

New York Chichester, West Sussex

Copyright © 2000 Gius Laterza and Figli SpA

Translation copyright © 2002 Columbia University Press

All rights reserved

This translation of La Pasta: Storia e cultura di un cibo universale

is published by arrangement with

Gius Laterza and Figli SpA, Rome-Bari.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Serventi, Silvano.

[Pasta English]

Pasta : the story of a universal food /

Silvano Serventi and Françoise Sabban ;

translated by Antony Shugaar.

p cm — (Arts and traditions of the table)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

isbn 0 –231–12442–2 (alk paper)

Columbia University Press books are printed

on permanent and durable acid-free paper.

Printed in the United States of America

Series Editor’s Preface ix

Note Concerning a Definition of Pasta Products xvii

the king of cereals of the mediterranean 1

wheat in china, a latter-day use 4

going back to the myths 10

pasta, an unthinkable food source 12

first words, first hypotheses 14

the classical heritage 15

the sacred space of pasta 19

C O N T E N T S

the family of vermicelli 28

dry pasta, fresh pasta 32

later developments of two traditions 34

recognition of a culinary category 38

sicily, the cradle of dry pasta 42

sardinia and other centers of production 44

an article of mass trade 48

the market for dry pasta 50

the fresh pasta shop 53

rolling pins, blades, and brakes 56

the routes of wheat 64

the emancipation of the pasta makers 70

the triumph of the brake 77

the revolution of the extrusion press 83

portrait of the modern pasta manufacturer 87

the birth of manufacturing 93

artisanal manufacturing 98

the hand that makes: the role of women 102

natural drying 108

a short guide to italian manufacturers 115

macaroni from naples and fine pasta from genoa 119

the momentum of modernity 128

the mechanics of progress 133

the triumph of the machine 142

drying without sunlight 150

the splendor and misery of a world

in transformation 157

from the industrial revolution to

the food revolution 162

the new horizons of pasta 170

from germany to the land of the cossacks 172

transatlantic migrations 175

french traditions 176

alsace and the passion for egg pasta 184

pasta from the new world: the example of

the united states 188

the world of pasta 199

the thwarted ambitions of french industrialists 201

the italian reconquest 203

american lessons 208

victories and defeats in the regulation of

raw materials 212

the return to favor of artisans 216

the empire of fresh pasta 222

a tradition that comes from faraway 230

the gastronomy of fresh pasta 233

stuffed pasta: shapes, colors, and flavors 238

dry pasta as an architecture for the mouth 243

from pasta that melts in your mouth to pasta al dente 253

c o n t e n t s vii

pasta on the menu 267

of pasta, breads, and flatbreads: the BINGparadigm 276

the distinguishing features of a civilization 279

favorite food of scholarly society 286

the worshipful BING 294

the allure of pasta and the original form 297

the first recipes 304

the popularity of BINGthroughout china 311

pasta products of the north spread to the south 315

exotic flavors, methods, and preparations 325

the end of a history, the richness of a heritage 333

pasta: the gluttony of the land of cockaigne 345

pasta and temperance 346

a whiff of cinnamon 347

in search of italian pasta 348

service italian-style 349

the macaronic cademy 350

“spiked” macaroni casanova-style 350

neapolitan folklore 352

conviviality around the TAVERNA 353

the dandy at the manufactory 356

behind the scenes in the pasta industry 357

the dreams of the hand 358

And so we have

The broth seasoned with three meats,

The flour made of wheat of the fifth month

Suddenly [the dough] swims in the water where it is stretchedout into long strings

That are lighter than a feather in the wind

(Fu Xuan, 217–278)

In our age of undeniable globalization and world travel, I find it morethan a little comforting to reiterate what turns out to be a fable Iearnestly want to lend credence to Marco Polo’s mission to Venice in

1296as an emissary of pasta from a culinarily advanced China,

import-ing that future staple of la cucina italiana to the peninsula and

coincid-ing chronologically with the “creation” of the Italian language and

lit-erature by Dante’s Commedia.

A fable it is, alas Nor, as is often suggested, did these cereal-basedpreparations migrate to Europe to accompany nutritively the west-ward wanderings of nomadic Arab tribes To make pasta would haverequired access to a reliable supply of flour or semolina, to harvestersand millers—hardly the wherewithal of the nomad!

These legends are the stuff of which gastronomic dreams of ity and unity are made The demonstrable truth is far more complex

simplic-S E R I E simplic-S E D I T O R ’ simplic-S P R E F A C E

The two models of cereal-based dishes are (1) gruel or polenta(flour or crushed grains boiled in moist heat) and (2) breads (kneadeddough cooked in dry heat) Apparently, they held sway from antiquity

to the Middle Ages The newly prominent pasta products in the earlyItalian Renaissance formed the synthesis of this antinomy: pasta is

kneaded dough, but cooked in moist heat Thus, Serventi and Sabban

inevitably offer as well a fascinating parallel history of bread and itsessential ingredient relationship with pasta

Meanwhile (dare I say “meanwhile” for we are in the Qin Dynasty(384–417 ad), some 900 years before Marco Polo?), the poet Cheng-Jiwrote

We are in the second month of autumn

The songs of the crickets will soon fall silent,

Dawn is stirred by a faint breeze

The nights are cool,

In these circumstances

I can say only one word: bing!

Bing were shaped cereal-based tidbits, anything but formal banquet

fare, that inspired poems even several centuries before the available

recipes (which date back only to the sixth century!) Bing were stretched

out in water just as, the poet sang, strands of silk were teased fromcocoons floating in boiling water That malleability is the characteristicessence of fresh pasta Without durum wheat, however, industrial pas-tasciutta (dry pasta), the most popular form in the West, is impossible.Although the authors show themselves to be fully aware of the rich-ness of pasta-associated vocabulary in the languages of EasternEurope, Turkey, Arabia, and Persia, their focus is on the two greatestpasta civilizations: Italy and China

In this monumental, always fascinating story of a universal food, vano Serventi and Françoise Sabban also demonstrate the universality

Sil-of culinary history as a cultural interdiscipline Their parallel studies Sil-of

Italy and China draw on linguistics, economics, literature, philology,theology, anthropology, folklore, and political and religious history in adazzling and immensely readable virtuoso display of genuine erudition

Albert Sonnenfeld

“The world of pasta is essentially a working-class place,” an Italianwriter pointed out almost half a century ago.1 He was referring toItalian pasta, but the observation can safely be generalized to includeall pasta, a food that originated in China and from there spread toJapan, Korea, most of Southeast Asia, and the rest of the world.Pasta perhaps epitomizes food as daily fare Its preparation, essen-tially a household activity, is both easy and quick, and this probablyexplains, at least in part, why pasta is one of the most widespreadpleasures of the world’s table Another reason for this simple food’spopularity is its versatility An immense body of recipes can be found

in every corner of the planet, from the simplest dishes to intricate andsophisticated preparations suitable for the most extraordinary occa-sions and the most elegant repasts Pasta is always affordable, even forthe tightest household budgets A trickle of olive oil and a pinch ofchopped garlic and parsley are enough to make a plate of spaghettiirresistible, and a few ladlesful of fish broth, a few drops of lemonjuice, a handful of fresh julienned carrots, and a few slices of cucum-ber are all that is required to create a savory Vietnamese noodle salad.Pasta has also long been one of the ingredients of the most refinedcuisine The world’s great chefs have no misgivings about featuringravioli or cannelloni—dressed formally, of course—on the menus oftheir five-star restaurants Anyone at all can be inventive with pasta,

P R E F A C E

and the creations of amateur chefs can be every bit as delectable as themost sophisticated culinary preparations Whether they are fresh ordried, made of durum wheat semolina or wheat flour, bound with eggs

or simply kneaded with water, Italian and Chinese noodles provide aremarkable platform for flavors of all sorts Once you have masteredthe art of cooking them properly, they come out the same every time,

no matter how you prepare them

Without a doubt, pasta is popular because it is so natural Simple andneutral, it places no restrictions on the search for new combinations oftextures and flavors The Western world, influenced by Italian cooking,

for the most part prefers pastasciutta, pasta made with durum wheat

semolina, manufactured industrially and served with thick sauces InAsia, on the other hand, people prefer pasta made with soft wheat flour,served in broth with fresh vegetables, finely sliced meat, chunks of fish

or shellfish In neither culinary tradition are there any ironclad rules

or taboos, and the preparation of pasta around the world is infinitelyvaried, from the Far East to the Far West

Many Eurasian countries have a long and rich culinary tradition ofpasta There is historical evidence from Germany to Iran, from Greece

to Russia, from Turkey to Poland, not to mention the countries ofCentral and Eastern Asia or, for that matter, the Western Mediter-ranean and the Middle East (probably the source of the earliest recipesfor dried pasta) But the true homelands of pasta have been Italy andChina, which evolved two different and complementary culinary tra-ditions that have spread throughout their respective worlds, gainingadmiration and influence over the centuries

This book will present the history of those two traditions, and weregret only that we are unable to offer a link between the two culinaryuniverses In fact, the turbulent and fascinating history of the middleland bounded by these two gastronomic territories has yet to be writ-ten This area extends from Central Asia to the westernmost bound-aries of China, stretching toward Turkey and right up to the gates ofEurope The vocabulary of a great many languages in Eastern Europeand in the Turkish, Arabic, and Persian spheres clearly indicates thatpasta has traveled widely, leaving traces in some cases difficult to fol-low, hinting at complex events that, for now, remain enigmatic.Dough, the raw material of both bread and noodles, is the first mal-leable material from which humans were able to make artificial food-stuffs, entirely distinct from the products of the natural environment

It was precisely this quality that so fascinated the Chinese When the

Chinese discovered wheat, several centuries before Christ, its tial quickly became apparent: when mixed with water, it produced amaterial that was as malleable as clay—and the Chinese had longbeen familiar with the properties of clay The Chinese developed whatbecame a full-fledged civilization of fresh pasta, the underlying model

poten-of which remained for many centuries the use poten-of wheat flour in thepreparation of products with a specific shape: pasta products, breads,and flatbreads Observant from the earliest times of the specific phys-ical and chemical nature of foodstuffs, especially cereal flours andstarches, the Chinese became masters at transforming a great variety

of starchy species of plants into pasta products At the same time, theylearned to make every possible use of soft wheat flour They quicklyunderstood that the component parts of soft wheat flour—starch andgluten—had sharply differing properties and could be put to exceed-ingly interesting uses They were probably the only people in history

to develop a cuisine based on gluten, an elastic and almost viscoussubstance that in the West was considered a useless by-product of themanufacture of starch until the end of the eighteenth century Pro-cessing gluten by cooking or fermentation, the Chinese created a newartificial foodstuff, a raw material whose texture and flavor resembledthose of meat Gluten was used brilliantly in China’s vegetarian cui-sine, which continues to be of great importance, in both Buddhisttemples and the shrines of fine dining

Chinese noodles derive from a tradition based equally in thehome and in the artisan’s workshop, relying on hand processing ofthe pasta Complex technical procedures for the manufacture ofChinese noodles have never come into common practice They arefresh products, susceptible to the passage of time, and to ensurefreshness they are often made, with great displays of skill, in full

view of their consumers, much the way Italian pizzaioli prepare

pizza to order, often with almost acrobatic dexterity Originating inthe north of China, the wheat pasta products that over the centurieshave won the praise and admiration of princes and men of lettershave spread throughout China and into every social class and level.Though they are eaten everywhere and by everyone, they are stillconsidered primary and daily fare in the provinces of China, wherethey are thought to have originated, and the variety of formats, basicingredients, and methods of preparation and cooking found in theseregions is unrivaled elsewhere

China is now fully in step with the pace of the modern world, at

p r e fac e xiii

least in the big cities, and it is Asia’s leading manufacturer of instantnoodles This industrial product is the best artificial substitute for thefresh noodles that are impossible to manufacture industrially—henceits unprecedented success Instead of the immense body of knowledgethat was traditionally required for the production of fresh pasta,instant noodles require only the addition of hot water at the lastmoment The entire long and complex process of the original culinaryundertaking has been reduced to this isolated gesture.

In Italy, ancient land of wheat farming, the flour made from thatgrain held no secrets All the same, awareness of pasta products as adistinct category of foodstuff developed slowly For many years, infact, pasta products were overshadowed by bread, a noble and sacredfood, and consigned, because of how they are cooked, to the profaneand humdrum world of gruel and mush That is probably why Italianwritten sources make absolutely no mention of the existence of pastaproducts before the Middle Ages, even though there was a lexical con-nection with the Greek and Roman world and even though evidencefrom as far back as the fifth century in Palestine suggest that peopleate what seem to have been pasta products (Indeed, pasta was a sub-ject of some concern for the Jewish community, as it constantlystrived to obey divine commands in even the smallest arenas ofeveryday life Thanks to this obsessive attention to culinary details,

we find a mention of vermicelli [vermishelsh] in a Jewish context in

northern France in the eleventh century The term clearly indicatesthe Italian origin of the food in question.)

Once pasta was finally recognized as a distinct category, itsgrowth knew no limits Traded internationally in the Mediterraneanbasin from the twelfth century on—in the dry form—pasta alsowon a place in the finest kitchens, finding its way onto the diningtables of kings, princes, and high prelates, made by hand by theirpersonal cooks There evolved a high culinary art of fresh pasta, inall its forms, simple and stuffed The cooks in princely and papalcourts in those years created the cuisine of pasta products, most

notably developing the concept of pastasciutta, creating a specific

role for pasta products enjoyed for their own sake—for their textureand their taste, enhanced by the sauces with which they wereserved Pasta was preferred soft, melting; indeed, in that period thepractice was to cook pasta for relatively long periods of time, in con-trast to modern practice Cheese was a constant companion from the

very beginning of pasta’s reign as a foodstuff, sometimes nied by a sprinkle of cinnamon.

accompa-In parallel with this essentially private and to some degree cratic cuisine, there developed in certain regions—in Genoa, forinstance, and along the Ligurian coast, as well as throughout southernItaly, all the way down to Sicily—a production of dried pasta made ofdurum wheat, at first artisanal and in time preindustrial As the pro-duction of pasta became increasingly industrialized, especially inNaples and the surrounding region, the consumption of pastaextended to the lower classes of the population.The dried form of pastabecame the basic staple of Naples by the eighteenth century In thishuge southern Italian city, however, pasta products were to becomemore than a basic subsistence food; in time they became a symbol ofNaples, gobbled ostentatiously to impress the passing bumpkin TheNeapolitans became advocates of pasta, and in the end they imposedtheir love of it on the rest of the Italian peninsula And in spreadingthis love, they encouraged their compatriots to cook their pasta for

aristo-only a short time so that it was chewy Pasta al dente is definitely a

custom that comes from Naples, and its spread to the north constitutes

a final triumph of dried pasta cooked in the Neapolitan style over themodel that had dominated until the very end of the nineteenth cen-tury This triumph marks the unusual adoption of a working-classmodel of consumption by all the classes of a larger population.Thus pasta products, both in Italy and in China, are not merely anunassuming form of nourishment intended merely to satisfy a physi-ological need And while we need not ponder its history each time wesit down to eat, the popularity of this food appears to be the result of alengthy process of cultural construction Unlike very few other man-ufactured food products that emerge from a time-honored tradition,today’s pasta is the culmination of a wide array of bodies of knowledgeand the end product of a series of specific forms of know-how, skills,and techniques Its very history is multiform A historian must cer-tainly account for the ways in which pasta products have been inte-grated into culinary practices and trace the development of theirstanding within the context of the various categories of foodstuffs andthe various classes of consumers That same historian, however, mustalso make clear the stages of development of the everyday and indus-trial techniques involved in the production of those foodstuffs and, tothe same degree, explore the representations that have accrued in con-nection with the dominant cultural models proper to each era

p r e fac e xv

Nowadays, when the unbridled development of the free marketbends to its iron law the production and consumption of food aroundthe world, pasta represents the ubiquitous foodstuff par excellence.Pasta could not fail to attract universal admiration: even when mass-produced by the ton, it remains, in the privacy of the kitchens of theworld, an unexpected resource and the ideal platform for individualcreativity The time has come to reject out of hand the idiotic slogan

“Basta la pastasciutta,” invented by the Italian poet Filippo TommasoMarinetti, founder of the Futurist movement, impatient to be donewith the old world and naively trusting that the power of incantationscould create a new future

Although the category of pasta products forms part of a greater tinuum between, on the one hand, preparations made of flour,semolina, or fragments of rolled grains, such as couscous, and, on the

con-other hand, such soft preparations as Alsatian spätzle or certain

Chi-nese pastas that are practically liquid, their shapes fixed only whenthey have been slipped into a broth, we must all the same select a def-inition for the object of our study And so, within the boundaries ofthe present work, we have adopted the following definition for pasta

products: “Pasta products” are understood to be the end product of a series of technical operations (on a domestic, artisanal, or industrial scale) applied to a mixture of soft wheat flour or durum wheat semolina with water or other substances, more or less liquid, making

it possible to obtain a kneaded dough that is subsequently cut into small regular shapes, which are then cooked in a moist environment This series of technical operations includes mixing of ingredients, kneading the resulting dough, cutting it into pieces, shaping them, possibly drying them, and possibly storing them The pasta shapes are then boiled, poached, or steamed.

N O T E C O N C E R N I N G A D E F I N I T I O N

O F PA S TA P R O D U C T S

This book could never have been published without the generous help

of many friends and colleagues, and without the assistance of manyexperts on pasta who willingly supported our project We would like

to express our profound gratitude to Alberto Capatti, who allowed usaccess to his personal library, who provided a steady stream of invalu-able information throughout the research process, who read a num-ber of passages while we were writing the book, and who even kindly

translated into Italian a version of the Ode to Bing by the Chinese

poet Shu Xi, which opens chapter 9, devoted to the history of pasta inChina We are also deeply grateful to Schmuel Bunim for havingbrought to our attention—and translated—a number of passages of atext in Yiddish concerning the subject in question Had it not been forhim, we would have overlooked an unexplored chapter of the history

of pasta in the Mediterranean and in France We are also very ful to Maurice Kriegel and Sylvie-Anne Goldberg, both scholars ofJewish history and culture, for having enlightened us concerning var-ious matters about which we knew virtually nothing To MaximeRodinson, pioneer of historical research on pasta, we are grateful for

grate-a number of observgrate-ations tgrate-aken from his writings, grate-and especigrate-allybecause, with a simple phone call, he provided us with bibliographicreferences concerning Syriac literature We owe a debt of gratitude,which has been accumulating for years, to Philip and Mary Hyman,

A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S

who have shown unfailing generosity in sharing with us their edge and bibliographic patrimony on the history of food As always,

knowl-we would like to express our heartfelt thanks to Charlotte von schuer for having checked on our behalf a few pieces of crucial infor-mation on Japan We also offer our sincere appreciation to Bruno Lar-ioux, Allen Grieco, Bernard Rosenberger, Martin Bruegel, MassimoMontanari, François Sigaut, and Alain Thote, who provided us withreferences, obtained and lent us documentation, and read some chap-ters of our volume as we were preparing it The help and encourage-ment of Mary Louise Galloway and Jean-Luc Degonde have alwaysbeen of vital assistance and have meant a great deal to us; the samegoes for Solange, Alexandra, and Renato Cavaciuti, always willing tocome to our help, especially when we had problems with our comput-ers Nor could we forget the loyal friendship of Paola Paderni andGiulio Machetti, who helped in our research in the sacred sites ofpasta during each one of our trips to Naples, providing assistance inour investigations down to the tiniest details They mobilized on ourbehalf their entire family, and especially Leonardo and Tali Del Gia-como, their friends and acquaintances, who had some ties to the world

Ver-of the production Ver-of dried and fresh pasta Thanks to Leonardo we

were able to visit the little Rustichella factory of fresh pasta run by

Antonietta De Cristoforo at Montemiletto (Avellino) AlessandroPallari obtained a rare statistical document for us, which would havebeen impossible for us to obtain without his help Giuseppe de Rinaldihelped us in every way possible at the Archivio di Stato of Naples.Our thanks go to Raimondo Di Maio, bookseller (Libreria Dante &Descartes, in Naples), who helped us to make very useful contactswith various people: Antonio Marchetti, chairman of the SocietàCooperativa Pastai Gragnanesi, generously spoke with us at greatlength, showed us around the headquarters of the cooperative, andgave us a tour of the Valle dei Mulini of Gragnano, a legendary site inthe history of pasta in southern Italy; Senator Angelo Abenante, whodescribed for us the recent and complex history of the production ofpasta at Torre Annunziata, a city of which he served as mayor for anumber of years

We are of course grateful as well to the professionals of the pastaindustry who lent their assistance, especially those who allowed us tovisit their production facilities: Lucio Garofalo and Alessandro Parisi,

of the Pastificio Lucio Garofalo in Gragnano, and Francesca Tauriello,for the Buitoni Company in Sansepolcro (Nestlé Italiana S.p.A.,

Export and Buitoni Pasta Division), where we had an expert guide inthe person of Roberto Radi Also in Sansepolcro, moreover, ChiaraBertelli opened the doors of Casa Buitoni to us, where Signora Zanellishowed us the workshops and equipment Without the assistance ofArmando Marchi, who was then in charge of Public Affairs at BarillaAlimentare S.p.A., we would not have been allowed access to theArchivio Storico Barilla in Parma, where we were permitted to workfreely and to enjoy the invaluable advice of Giancarlo Gonizzi More-over, it was only through the intercession of Raffaello Ragaglini andGiuseppe Menconi—at the time, respectively, Director and Chairman

of the Unione Industriale Pastai Italiani—that we were able to contactthe various Italian pasta manufacturers; they also supplied us with anup-to-date documentation on the statistical data of production Like-wise, Justo Bonetto, Secretary of the Associazione Nazionale Produt-tori di Pasta Fresca, was extremely helpful in responding to our ques-tions, as were Carla Latini of the Azienda Agraria Latini, CristianoCieri of the Rustichella d’Abruzzo, Antonio Morelli of the AnticoPastificio Morelli, and Roberto Caponi of the Pastificio Caponi SergeAndré Mouzay, Délégué Général du Comité Français de la SemoulerieIndustrielle Française, provided us with information about the Frenchpasta industry, as did Philippe Braun of the Institut Technique desCéréales et des Fourrages in Nîmes, and Jean Claude Nabet of theOffice National Interprofessionel des Céréales, who all sent us essen-tial technical information concerning durum wheat, semolina, andpasta products

Lastly, we are grateful to Antony Shugaar, our translator, who cessfully gave the lie to the old Italian adage “traduttore/traditore.”His skill and the understanding and determination of our copyeditor,Sarah St Onge, greatly improved our original text Our heartfeltappreciation goes to them both

suc-ac k n ow l e d g m e n t s xxi

PA S TA : T H E S T O R Y O F A U N I V E R S A L F O O D

Without wheat, there would have been no pasta Nor could there havebeen bread, much less cakes or other pastries While it is true thatmost of the leading cereals can be used to make a dough that can to agreater or lesser degree be shaped in various ways, wheat, of all theseedible plants, is the one that best lends itself to this type of prepara-tion Ground kernels of wheat, in fact, produce a powdered substancethat, when mixed in certain proportions with water, creates an exceed-ingly malleable dough, perfect for forming into any shape imagina-ble This interesting property, the result of the presence of gluten, wasnot lost on enterprising humans This edible raw material made itpossible not only to create new foodstuffs but also to indulge themore playful side of human imagination.

t h e k i n g o f c e r e a l s o f t h e m e d i t e r r a n e a n

To speak of wheat, in any case, is reductive, because the genus

Triticum, which includes all plants that can be described as “wheat” in

I N T R O D U C T I O N

In the Beginning Was Wheat

everyday language, is exceedingly rich, the product of a long history.The specific characteristics of the plants are the result of a complexdevelopment over the years, largely guided by humans, and involving

a long process of domestication of wild species with subsequent tion and hybridization

selec-The progressive development of agriculture—thought to have inated about 10,000 b.c in the Fertile Crescent, an area that extendsfrom eastern Palestine to the westernmost slopes of the Persian high-lands—coincided with the domestication of such cereals as barley andwheat and of legumes such as peas, lentils, and beans Modern geneticsconfirms what was long suspected: Certain strains of wild wheat found

orig-in the mountaorig-ins orig-in the far southeastern section of Turkey are orig-indeedancestral to the species of wheat now commonly cultivated Some ofthese strains spread slowly westward into Europe and eastward intoAsia.1Wheat is one of the earliest cereals to have been domesticated,

harvested, and consumed by humans The genus Triticum, represented

by the various species and varieties now under cultivation, truly stitutes the cereal of civilization in this geographic area

con-The first wheats were einkorn (Triticum monococcum, L.), emmer wheat (Triticum turgidum, L dicoccum), and spelt (Triticum aes- tivum, L spelta).2At first, people roasted ears of wheat and ate thekernels without further preparation, probably because these earlywheats, known as “dressed wheats,” produced kernels whose pericarp,made up of various layers much like the “naked wheats,” were alsosurrounded by sticky husks that could not be eliminated by merethreshing during harvest The easiest and quickest way of reachingthe edible core of the kernel was to rid it of at least some of its thickcovering by the application of flame Quite soon, however, according

to the scholars of prehistoric times, these dressed wheats were alsoground into more or less imperfect flours and kneaded into flatbreadsand rough loaves, which were baked on hot stones Occasionally wefind remains of these early breads, dating from 4000 to 3000 b.c.—forexample, at Twann, in Switzerland.3

This was the first appearance of kneaded dough, an invention thatwas soon followed or else coincided with that of gruel, made out ofwhole grains or either crushed or ground And so even before historictimes we find evidence of the two fundamental preparations of the

most important cereals of the Triticum genus: kneaded dough baked

in dry heat, and whole grain or crushed grain cooked in a boiling uid to obtain a gruel or mush, fluid, thick, or pasty

liq-In the Greco-Roman classical world, these two methods of

prepar-ing Triticum products were well documented by a vast terminology

for the different species cultivated, the various products derived fromtheir grains in accordance with their use, and even the dishes thatwere prepared It is difficult to identify these foodstuffs in the various

texts, but specialists believe that ancient Roman alica was a relatively

fine semolina, derived from emmer wheat,4 according to Pliny the

Elder; alica was used to prepare the renowned puls, a mush eaten by

the ancient Romans, long considered the staple of the Roman diet; and

farina, a word that indicated the entire product of milling, was what

we now know as flour, a powder of greater or lesser whiteness ing on how finely it was sifted, that was used in the preparation of

depend-gruel, loaves, or flatbreads; finally, amylum5 was a starch (fecula)

obtained through a technique invented by the Greeks and

trans-formed into refined pastries Amylum was the universal binding

agent in the fine cuisine described in the first ancient Roman culinarytreatise, a collection attributed to Apicius dating from the fifth cen-tury a.d.6

From the end of the fifth century b.c., naked wheat grew gressively more popular It was easier to process and therefore usedalmost exclusively to make flour for use in kneaded doughs, elbow-ing aside the dressed grains, which were thereafter used only in thepreparation of gruels.7 Rotating millstones also began to becomecommon throughout the Mediterranean basin, tools used specifi-cally for the grinding of naked grains.8Among the limited number

pro-of species pro-of wheat that became important, two were pro-of particular

note: Triticum aestivum, L aestivum, known in Latin as siligo and

to modern English-speaking consumers as common wheat or softwheat, which yields a fine flour perfectly suited for making bread;

and Triticum (turgidum), L durum, generally known in Latin simply as triticum and now widely known as durum wheat, the raw material used in the modern pasta industry In ancient times, triticum

was prized for its semolina, and in the first century a.d it wasimported to Italy from North Africa and Sicily.9 The ancient

Romans understood what distinguished hard wheat, or triticum, from the softer siligo that yielded white flour, and they knew that these two wheats flourished in different climates, triticum thriving

in dry, sunny conditions and siligo under the humid skies of central

and northern Italy.10

These two wheats dealt a tremendous blow to the cultivation of the

ancient far, the emmer wheat of the ancient Romans, which had been

the source of the flour used in making bread The culinary practicesdocumented in the treatise by Apicius as well as in other Latin textsattest to how well the Romans knew specific uses that would bestexploit the respective properties of soft wheat flour and durum wheatsemolina.11

Given the resources and technical possibilities available, there is noreason that pasta products should not have been invented at this time:both fine flour and excellent semolina were available, produced inconsiderable quantities thanks to rotary millstones, even thoughenormous labor was required to operate them And yet, although cer-tain specialists claim to have identified pasta colanders in archaeolog-ical digs of ancient sites,12it does not appear that the pasta products

we know today existed in the ancient world A careful analysis of therecipes of Apicius reveals not a trace of pasta.13

w h e at i n c h i na , a l at t e r- day u s e

Europeans invented pasta late, even though conditions favored them.The Chinese, in contrast, found themselves in a totally opposite situ-ation Despite an agricultural environment that was anything butfavorable to the manufacture of wheat-based pasta, they were famil-iar with wheat-based pasta long before the Europeans

Many Westerners believe that Chinese pasta products are for themost part based on rice or the starch of the mung bean—often mis-taken for the soybean—and that the bright white color of rice-flournoodles and the transparent appearance of bean-starch vermicelli rep-resent the full extent of Chinese accomplishment in this area Butthey have been deceived by the limited menus, heavily adapted toWestern tastes, they find in Chinese restaurants In truth, in China,just as around the Mediterranean, the history of pasta productsbegins with wheat and therefore with wheat pasta Pasta made fromother grains comes only much later The similarities between Chinaand the Mediterranean basin end there, however In terms of grains,the two civilizations of food are virtual opposites in every way, even

if the great Han Empire (206 b.c.–a.d 220) and ancient Rome werenot entirely unaware of each other and were linked by indirect rela-tions (Didn’t Seneca lash out at the excessive love of luxury thatdrove wealthy Roman patricians to dress in silk, the threads of which—

he believed—had been harvested from certain trees in the far-off land

of the Seres by inhabitants of Thinae, also known as China?)14TheChinese, or at least the more well-to-do Chinese, already enjoyed din-

ing on laowan, ravioli—descriptions of the making of which, dating

back to the third century a.d., still make our mouths water—whentheir contemporaries on the far end of the Eurasian continent were asyet unacquainted with stuffed pasta

Yet, in an interesting paradox, while northern China was the place and site of the early cultivation of the two leading species of mil-

birth-let, Panicum and Setaria, which constituted the subsistence staple of

the entire population through prehistory, antiquity, and for a longtime thereafter, wheat was a little-known foreign plant It was sounfamiliar, in fact, that the earliest sources do not distinguishbetween wheat and barley; both grains were described with the same

term, mai Furthermore, it is difficult to reconstruct the various

phases of the acclimatization of wheat along the middle and lowercourse of the Yellow River, a region long considered as the cradle ofChinese civilization We do know that around 3000 b.c wheat wascertainly grown in the far northwestern part of Gansu, since frag-

ments of Triticum aestivum were found in 1985 in a Neolithic cave in

the district of Minle.15 The earliest written documentation—turtleplastron and oracle-bone inscriptions, dating to around 1300 b.c.—provide further evidence of its presence These remains constitute theearliest evidence of human use of common soft, naked-grain wheat in

an outlying region of the Chinese world, though there is almost noindication of its use as a foodstuff The wheat is hexaploid—that is,already the product of previous domestication and a long series ofselections and hybrids—proving that it was not native to northernChina It was a newcomer, especially in comparison with millet, agrain clearly of Chinese origin Indeed, when wheat arrived from theWest, it crossed paths with various types of millet, which were intheir turn spreading westward

All indications tell us that the acclimatization of the new grainoccurred with considerable difficulty in the Chinese region, as practi-cally no factors favored its adaptation, in terms of both the ancientChinese agricultural system and dietary customs At the very begin-ning of the second century b.c., when the plant had long been famil-iar, Dong Zhongshu, loyal adviser to Emperor Wu of the early Han,urged his sovereign to issue a decree encouraging the cultivation ofthis cereal in the region of the capital, Chang’an.16 The peasants

seemed reluctant to obey the decree, not knowing how to cultivate,harvest, and use the grain During the same period, Fan Shengzhi,author of a treatise on agriculture, explained in great detail how and

when to sow the cereals mai in order to obtain a good harvest.17Theseinstructions were probably useful, since the growing season of barleyand wheat was not compatible with the climate of northern China.The grains had to be sown in fall or winter, the driest seasons inChina’s continental climate, since they germinated best with only amoderate amount of water Millets, on the other hand, were perfectlysuited to the climatic cycles of the region, since the sowing season wasmuch more flexible, extending from spring to the beginning of sum-mer, in the heart of the rainy season.18This agricultural disadvantage,which obliged the peasants to lavish great care on their crops ofwheat, at times irrigating them, was counterbalanced by a felicitouscircumstance: the ears of wheat would ripen and be ready to harvest

at the same time that the stores of millet were beginning to run out(if they had not already done so)

But there was one more problem with using wheat as a food Notonly were the environmental and weather conditions of northernChina ill suited to wheat as a crop, the technical context suitable forthe processing of millet was equally inhospitable We know rela-tively little about the earliest uses of wheat as a foodstuff in China

Naked wheat, Triticum aestivum, did not need to be hulled the way

millet did, but its kernels did have to be treated, in one way oranother, to eliminate, at least in part, the pericarp (or bran), made up

of numerous layers of coating, adhering tightly to the grain itself.Throughout antiquity, the Chinese had only one tool available forthe processing of cereals: the mortar and pestle, an instrument thatwas perfectly suited to milling rice and shelling millet (Once millethas been shelled, it can be consumed immediately, as it emerges fromits hull after steaming.) When wheat and barley became more famil-iar in the Central Basin of the Yellow River, around 1300 b.c., theycould only be processed with the tools developed for millet It islikely that at first wheat was more or less completely husked, thencrushed in a mortar—a long process that could only be used to pre-pare small quantities at a time, given the nature of the tool—andfinally steamed like millet and made into gruels or mushes of vary-ing thickness In any case, the rare notations concerning the con-sumption of wheat suggest that this was the procedure (wheat dishes

do not appear to have been very highly regarded).19 This might

account for the minimal enthusiasm among Chinese peasants for thecultivation of wheat around the second century b.c., since the pro-duction of flour for use in preparations that were considered to bemore refined was certainly beyond their abilities.

With the appearance of the rotary mill around the fifth or sixthcentury b.c.,20about the same time as in the Mediterranean basin,21

it became possible to produce flour more quickly and in greaterquantities, and the situation rapidly began to change, even thoughsources document those changes only with considerable delay Over

a period of several centuries, before and after the turn of the tian Era, this population of farmers—previously entirely unaware

Chris-of the advantages Chris-of wheat, a cereal that had none Chris-of the prestige Chris-ofmillet, which was deified as the Lord of the Harvests with the name

of Prince Millet—grasped the remarkable potential of the elasticand malleable dough that could be created by mixing wheat flourand water

From consumers of boiled whole grains, the Chinese also becameeaters of pasta, flatbreads, and bread But unlike their Western coun-terparts, who long remained in thrall to the system of contrastingstructures in their food references—leavened dough versus unleav-ened dough, gruel cooked in moist heat versus flatbread or breadbaked in dry heat—the Chinese developed an overall concept of

bing, kneaded wheat dough, a category that could cover not only all

the edible products derived from this dough or paste but also themeans for processing this malleable material For more than ten cen-

turies, the term bing served not only to describe all the foodstuffs

made from kneaded wheat-flour–based dough but also other based dishes that resembled their wheat-flour counterparts inappearance, as well as the technical operations involved in agglom-erating certain malleable substances into specific shapes (usuallyround and flat).22

cereal-Comparison of these two civilizations of pasta is instructive,because it shows that there is no single path of development, based onthis or that necessary factor In radically different environments,rather hostile in China’s case and quite favorable in the Mediter-ranean, each civilization developed its own culture of pasta according

to quite distinct concepts and at its own pace China was far ahead ofItaly, but since it never had durum wheat, it remained a civilization offresh pasta, made by artisanal methods, expanding the repertory bytransforming other cereals into pasta products Italy, in contrast, hav-

ing reached the production of pasta products only after a series ofbreakthroughs, over the course of time perfected its mastery andunderstanding of wheat, developing at the same time a highly diver-sified production of fresh pasta and a civilization of dry pasta based ondurum wheat, culminating in a highly specialized industry.

Despite the simplicity of its composition and fabrication, pasta hasnot always existed In contrast with bread—certain forms of whichare documented in Neolithic archaeological digs, especially inSwitzerland—pasta products have left no traces Their origin there-fore remains the subject of speculation This odd gap in the ancienthistorical record of cereal-based preparations in Europe has encour-aged the spread of gastronomical legends but also led to the develop-ment of more serious hypotheses by some scholars These scholarssurmised that, if the Greeks and Romans had no familiarity withthese dishes, nowadays so fundamental, they must have come fromelsewhere From China, thanks to Marco Polo, according to some;from the East, according to others, brought by the Arabs who origi-nally invented them, driven by the need to develop foods that wouldkeep during their nomadic wanderings In reality, the situation is farmore complex, and it cannot be explained by the simple movement

of objects or people

C H A P T E R O N E

The Infancy of an Art

The first concrete information concerning pasta products in Italydates from the thirteenth or fourteenth century The question of theirorigin continues to evoke speculation Following in the footsteps ofmany authors, beginning with Giuseppe Prezzolini,1who in the 1950squestioned the legend of Marco Polo’s importation of pasta fromChina, let us repeat that the Venetian merchant could not have hadanything to do with the birth of this culinary tradition in Italy Wellbefore his return from his great voyage, in 1296, the Mediterranean

basin was the setting for a prosperous trade in obra de pasta, as pasta

products were at that time known in Cagliari, Sardinia This indicatesthat pasta had long formed part of the diet of certain Mediterraneanpeoples The time has come to debunk once and for all this promo-tional invention, sprung fully formed from the fertile imagination of

the editors of the Macaroni Journal, the newsletter of the National

Macaroni Manufacturers Association, an association of Americanpasta makers.2

Let us also discard the idea that an inventor might have beenresponsible for cooking up pasta, so to speak, creating vermicelli, mac-aroni, lasagne, and ravioli in a sudden stroke of genius Even so, we aregrateful to the ingenious and imaginative Ortensio Lando, friend andadmirer of Pietro Aretino, for having credited women with the inven-tion of pasta, thus displaying his gratitude to the other half of human-ity, too often overlooked where great inventions are concerned To ourgreat regret, then, we must say that it is unlikely that the Lombardpeasant woman Libista was the inventor of ravioli or that “lasagne,lasagnuole e altri pinzocheri” (terms for types of pasta) were the felic-itous creations of Meluzza Comasca, another great inventor accord-ing to Lando, who was given a celebrity’s funeral after she died ofpleurisy.3Sadly, there is no answer to the question, “Who inventedspaghetti?” which already smacked of irony when the historianRoberto Lopez used it as the title for a short essay in which he refutedthe fable of Marco Polo after an American colleague tried to convincehim that it was true.4 Pasta products are undoubtedly the result ofhuman intelligence, but Libista, Meluzza, and Marco have nothing to

do with it

Still, the fact that no single individual can claim to have tributed to this fine invention does not force us to search for its ori-gins outside Europe Roberto Lopez was right to lighten the cultural

con-baggage of Marco Polo, removing a weight that was admittedly bolic, representing the collective ingenuity of the Chinese people in asingle foodstuff But Lopez refused to follow certain of his colleagueswho limited the imaginative dimension of their explanations, simplyreplacing the Chinese with the Arabs These scholars, arguing thatnomadic peoples need to provide themselves with a supply of pre-served foods, put forth the hypothesis that the Arabs had inventeddry pasta made of durum wheat semolina,5subsequently introducing

sym-it to Italy All studies of the consumption of cereals by nomadic orpastoral populations show, however, that when they travel they gen-erally reduce their intake to whole grains or toasted flours, materialsfar less perishable than pasta products and far easier to use; they gen-erally eat flatbreads or simple breads as their daily fare when travel-ing.6Ease of use is a relative notion, of course The large, very fineflatbreads made by bedouins in Jordan7 or by the peasants of theLebanese hinterland are anything but easy to make, requiringremarkable manual dexterity, especially considering that they aremade in exceedingly primitive conditions But the situation appearsrestrictive to us only because of cultural norms, which vary from onesociety to another

Nowadays it seems difficult to attribute full credit for the tion of pasta to the Arabs, but this does not mean that they played norole in the spread of certain types of pasta products, especially begin-ning in the High Middle Ages, when the Arabs began their westwardexpansion All the same, making pasta products requires access to areliable supply of flour or fine semolina, which entails the existence

inven-of regular harvests inven-of wheat and milling equipment Thus the theorythat a nomadic lifestyle might have driven the Arabs to invent pasta,seductive though it may seem at first, does not withstand a cold analy-sis We would have to suppose, then, that the Arabs at some pointlived near cereal farmers—and millers as well, unless they were able

to devote much of their energy to milling, whether with little handmills or with larger mills

In contrast, the fact that the Greeks and later the Romans, wellknown as great farmers of wheat and refined consumers of its prod-ucts, should have failed to invent pasta products is even more sur-prising and deserves close examination Is it possible that these twopeoples bequeathed nothing in this context to the medieval and mod-ern cultures of the West? What reasons might explain this absence inthe classical world?

Though it may be somewhat naive for a historian to wonder about thereasons leading to a phenomenon’s failure to appear even though allthe conditions for its existence seem to have been in place at one point

or another—as if to say that the same causes always produce the sameeffects—the absence of pasta products in the classical world stilldeserves our attention, if for no other reason than to understand bet-ter how the concept of pasta has developed slowly over the course oftime The first explanations offered are generally economic in nature.One could argue that the Greco-Roman world had no need for pastaproducts, since its inhabitants survived quite well on a diet of breadand mush But then why weren’t the Greeks and Romans satisfiedwith a single way of preparing cereals, such as turning them intogruel, the cheapest and easiest method in those times? The answer isthat food is not merely a matter of subsistence and economics, andnecessity and need are not the only indicators that allow us to under-stand culinary choices While a considerable share of the Roman pop-ulation was content with a very frugal diet,8things were quite differ-ent for certain patricians whose refined tastes and excessive gluttonywere roundly decried by the moralists of the time We must look else-where, then, and refrain from considering decisions about foods to bethe simple result of economic determinism In this area, ideology andsymbolism count every bit as much as straightforward economics Wemust explore and analyze the categories of foodstuffs of antiquity,especially evidence concerning the preparation of cereals In order to

do this properly, we must look beyond modern categories of food,which are largely inherited from the Greco-Roman world via theJudeo-Christian tradition

This task is not easy, since we have internalized these categories sothoroughly that we think of them as a natural reflection of the verystructure of reality We tend to accept unquestioningly our receivedhistory of food, modeled on the progress of cereal farming The greatPolish botanist Adam Maurizio, in his monumental 1926 work enti-tled “Die Geschichte unserer Pflanzennahrung von den Urzeiten biszur Gegenwart” (History of vegetal foodstuffs from prehistory to thepresent day) attempted to provide a systematic framework for thisview, without going into its foundations People continue to believethat flour and its use are signs of the progress of human techniques inthe preparation of foodstuffs, considering the history of cereal-based

nutrition as a one-way march from kernel to flour That implies, ofcourse, that leavened bread is the natural culmination of a lengthydevelopment, the stages of which, according to Maurizio, punctuatethe progressive perfection of cereal-based nutrition, from gruel tobread, by way of flatbread.9A belief in the supremacy of leavenedbread over all other cereal-based dishes remains solidly anchored inthe conceptions and credos of Western societies, impregnating theJudeo-Christian culture and featured in depictions of the classicalworld By this reasoning, it follows that gruels and mushes represent

a first stage of cereal-based diets

This hierarchy of values, still in force today, originated in theGreco-Roman world, where gruels and breads were never consideredequals Bread was a noble foodstuff, the product of a long and complexseries of operations, in contrast with gruel, so simple to prepare Still,although bread wound up triumphing over all other cereal-basedpreparations in the slow development of the culinary customs of theclassical world, gruels were never entirely supplanted as a staple inthe diet of the poor and the peasant.10The respective values attached

to these preparations reflected a social hierarchy as well,11 breadbecoming a culinary ideal to which everyone aspired

Adam Maurizio made an initial distinction between bread cerealsand gruel cereals, followed by a further distinction between breadeaters and gruel eaters Though excessively simplistic, this distinctionreigns in the major territories of Europe In the Mediterranean area,from antiquity to the Middle Ages, gruels and breads (including flat-breads) were certainly the two fundamental cereal-based dishes, theirtechniques of production constituting two basic models correspon-ding to two main culinary categories:

1 Preparations based on wheat flour, the raw material forwhich is a kneaded dough, always cooked with dry heat (in

an oven, on a grill, over an open fire, etc.)

2 Gruels or polenta (made of various cereals), produced bymixing liquid (usually water) with flour or whole or crushedgrains and always cooked by boiling in moist heat

In this context, pasta products were unthinkable, because they dled both categories and therefore belonged to neither: they weremade of a kneaded dough, like unleavened bread, but, in commonwith gruel cereals, were cooked in moist heat

strad-This ancient culinary model, based on two preparations of trasting nature, endured for many centuries and was later enshrined

con-in Judeo-Christian tradition.12Indeed, the term enshrined is

particu-larly apt, since bread became for Christians a metaphorical substitutefor the body of Christ and thus a particularly noble food, in contrastnot only with gruels, considered strictly profane, but also with theunleavened bread of Jewish ritual

f i rst wo r d s, f i rst h y p ot h e s e s

It is not until the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries that sources begin

to mention specific pasta products by name—seventeen of them,according to a recent inventory, certain of which are still familiartoday But even though medieval cookbooks contained many recipesfor lasagne, gnocchi, ravioli, macaroni, vermicelli, and so on, thesedishes were not thought to represent a single culinary category.13Indeed, the authors of medieval cookbooks and their readers ate pastaproducts in much the same way that Molière’s M Jourdain (protago-

nist of Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme) wrote prose, that is, without

being fully aware of it or, in any case, without feeling the need to egorize all the various dishes under a single generic rubric

cat-In the body of texts that survive from late antiquity to the teenth and fifteenth centuries, numerous terms—apparently synony-mous to a greater or lesser degree and concurrent in different culturalareas—refer to pasta products in the sense we understand today.Emilio Sereni was the first to try to establish a connection betweencertain of these terms and the foods of the ancient world, in the hope

four-of reconstructing an ancestry for the pasta that appeared in the

Mid-dle Ages He began with two terms found in medieval texts—lasagne and tri (or tria)—that were used to indicate pasta products of the

period.14 Bruno Laurioux reexamined and expanded Sereni’s work,leading to the hypothesis that fresh pasta, in the form of rolled-out

sheets called lasagne, descends directly from the Greco-Roman lagana, while dried, stringlike pasta, long or short, according to pres-

ent-day terminology, made in a radically different manner was rowed from the Arab world and spread throughout the Mediter-ranean basin (All this, of course, does not jibe with the fact that the

bor-Arab term itriyya, subsequently corrupted into tri or tria in Latin texts, probably derives from the Greek word itrion, which is men-

tioned in Galen’s treatise De alimentorum facultatibus.) According to

Laurioux, the spread of dried pasta, which he distinguishes from freshpasta such as lasagne or ravioli, began in Muslim Sicily and moved upthe Tyrrhenian coast, from Naples to Genoa—all this only after mak-ing its way to the Iberian world, then under the influence of a brilliantArabic civilization It was not until the fourteenth and fifteenth cen-turies that the two categories of pasta—fresh and dry—began to bethought of as belonging to the same set of cereal-based foods.15According to these two historians, then, the Arabs introduced pastaproducts into southern Italy, as is often claimed, but the only pastainvolved was string-shaped pasta, generally made of durum wheatsemolina and not flour, dried for storage and for sale

Were Sereni and Laurioux—who followed in the footsteps ofMaxime Rodinson, the first to set forth this hypothesis—correct?16Tofind out, we will examine the documentation concerning the question,beginning with the teachings of philology, and then go on to showthat full understanding of this matter must take into account bothtechnical and religious parameters, aspects that our predecessorsfailed to consider, which, in our estimation, greatly condition therecognition of pasta per se and, of course, its distribution Let us begin

by finding out whether there are any possible links between the sical Greco-Roman world and the medieval culture of pasta

where the terms itrion and tri or tria are concerned What is more, it

is difficult to establish a direct relationship between the Greek term

itrion and the Latin word tria without involving the Arabic term itriyya Besides, we do not even know what the Greek word meant.

In contrast, we find the word laganum used in many ancient Latin

texts to describe a thin sheet of dough.17But while the link between

laganum and lasagne seems apparent, the words describe two

differ-ent contexts that have only the basic ingredidiffer-ent—and probablyshape—in common In the first century b.c., according to Horace,

laganum was the name of an everyday food In his Deipnosophists,