Has this ever happened to you? You’re walking through a grocery store and end up in the Italian food section. Right beside you is what seems to be an enormous wall, constructed entirely of blue boxes of pasta. All different shapes, sizes, and even colors, have you ever wondered why there is such a variety of food that is essentially all the same substance? Let’s explore the history of pasta, and maybe learn a few things about your favorite dishes.
First, let’s clarify what we are talking about. Pasta Asciutta is the official term for pasta that is boiled, drained, and served with sauce. The most common pasta dish for most people would of course be spaghetti and meatballs. An iconic Italian dish, right? Well, spaghetti hasn’t always existed the way it does today. In fact, tomatoes weren’t brought to Europe until the 16th century. Instead of a typical tomato sauce, spaghetti noodles were served with raisin wine. Spaghetti’s historical origin is mostly unknown because multiple sources claim to have created it. The word means little strings, and it turns out that spaghetti is the plural of the singular spaghetto.
When looking at the shelf of pasta, it might seem like some of the pastas are eerily similar, and pointless to have both. For example, why use spaghetti instead of fettuccine noodles? In practice, heavier noodles like fettuccine are used for dishes with heavier sauces. If you tried to make spaghetti noodles with alfredo sauce, the sauce would overwhelm the noodles, and vice versa.
Speaking of heavy dishes, Lasagna is another incredibly popular dish across the globe. Pasta al forno is the name of any type of baked pasta, including Lasagna. It is not a light dish, full of meat, cheese, and heavy sauce, so it utilizes larger noodles to structurally support the food when served. This wider type of pasta is similar to the first pastas ever created, originally from ancient Rome through ancient Greek tradition.
What about the different shaped smaller pastas like rotini, penne, or even macaroni? The structures of pastas are made for distinct sauces or toppings, each one specifically designed to trap in sauce in different ways. For example, there is Cavatappi. It is objectively the best pasta ever created, but it didn’t exist until the 1960s. It was originally named after the Italian pop singer Adriana Celentano because his nickname was “springs” after his eccentric movements while performing. The pasta was named after him because of its visual similarity to a coiled spring.
