Pasta: The Story of a Universal Food 9780231519441

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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

arts and traditions of the table

arts and traditions of the table: perspectives on culinary history 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

Pasta

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

columbia university press

new york

columbia university press 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) 1. Cookery (Pasta) 2. Pasta industry. I. Sabban, Françoise. II. Title. III. Series. TX809.M17 S4713 2002 641.8'22—dc21 2002073840

Columbia University Press books are printed on permanent and durable acid-free paper. Printed in the United States of America c 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

CONTENTS

Series Editor’s Preface

ix

Preface

xi

Note Concerning a Definition of Pasta Products

xvii

Acknowledgments

xix

Introduction: In the Beginning Was Wheat the king of cereals of the mediterranean wheat in china, a latter-day use

9

going back to the myths

10

pasta, an unthinkable food source first words, first hypotheses 15

the sacred space of pasta the primordial shape

1

4

1. The Infancy of an Art

the classical heritage

1

22

19

14

12

lasagne: the original dough sheet the family of vermicelli dry pasta, fresh pasta

24

28

32

later developments of two traditions recognition of a culinary category

34

38

2. The Time of the Pioneers

41

sicily, the cradle of dry pasta

42

sardinia and other centers of production an article of mass trade

48

the market for dry pasta

50

the fresh pasta shop

44

53

rolling pins, blades, and brakes

56

3. From the Hand to the Extrusion Press the routes of wheat

63

64

the emancipation of the pasta makers the triumph of the brake

70

77

the revolution of the extrusion press

83

portrait of the modern pasta manufacturer

87

4. The Golden Age of the Pasta Manufactory the birth of manufacturing artisanal manufacturing

93

98

the hand that makes: the role of women natural drying

91

102

108

a short guide to italian manufacturers

115

macaroni from naples and fine pasta from genoa

5. The Industrial Age

127

the momentum of modernity the mechanics of progress

119

128 133

vi contents

the bronze man; or, the automated dough kneader the triumph of the machine drying without sunlight

136

142 150

the splendor and misery of a world in transformation 157 from the industrial revolution to the food revolution 162

6. Pasta Without Borders

169

the new horizons of pasta

170

from germany to the land of the cossacks transatlantic migrations french traditions

172

175

176

alsace and the passion for egg pasta

184

pasta from the new world: the example of the united states 188

7. The Time of Plenty the world of pasta

197 199

the thwarted ambitions of french industrialists the italian reconquest american lessons

201

203

208

victories and defeats in the regulation of raw materials 212 the return to favor of artisans the empire of fresh pasta

216

222

8. The Taste for Pasta

227

a tradition that comes from faraway the gastronomy of fresh pasta

230

233

stuffed pasta: shapes, colors, and flavors dry pasta as an architecture for the mouth

238 243

from pasta that melts in your mouth to pasta al dente

contents vii

253

pasta and its companions pasta on the menu

257

267

9. China: Pasta’s Other Homeland

271

of pasta, breads, and flatbreads: the

BING

paradigm

the distinguishing features of a civilization favorite food of scholarly society the worshipful BING

279

286

294

the allure of pasta and the original form the first recipes

276

297

304

the popularity of BING throughout china

311

pasta products of the north spread to the south exotic flavors, methods, and preparations

315

325

the end of a history, the richness of a heritage

333

10. The Words of Pasta

345

pasta: the gluttony of the land of cockaigne pasta and temperance a whiff of cinnamon

346 347

in search of italian pasta service italian-style

348

349

the macaronic cademy

350

“spiked” macaroni casanova-style neapolitan folklore

345

350

352

conviviality around the

TAVERNA

the dandy at the manufactory

353 356

behind the scenes in the pasta industry the dreams of the hand

357

358

Notes

361

Bibliography

391

Index

413 viii contents

S E R I E S E D I T O R ’ S P R E FAC E

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 stretched out 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 more than a little comforting to reiterate what turns out to be a fable. I earnestly want to lend credence to Marco Polo’s mission to Venice in 1296 as an emissary of pasta from a culinarily advanced China, importing that future staple of la cucina italiana to the peninsula and coinciding chronologically with the “creation” of the Italian language and literature by Dante’s Commedia. A fable it is, alas. Nor, as is often suggested, did these cereal-based preparations migrate to Europe to accompany nutritively the westward wanderings of nomadic Arab tribes. To make pasta would have required access to a reliable supply of flour or semolina, to harvesters and millers—hardly the wherewithal of the nomad! These legends are the stuff of which gastronomic dreams of simplicity and unity are made. The demonstrable truth is far more complex.

The two models of cereal-based dishes are (1) gruel or polenta (flour or crushed grains boiled in moist heat) and (2) breads (kneaded dough cooked in dry heat). Apparently, they held sway from antiquity to the Middle Ages. The newly prominent pasta products in the early Italian 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 its essential 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-Ji wrote 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 from cocoons floating in boiling water. That malleability is the characteristic essence of fresh pasta. Without durum wheat, however, industrial pastasciutta (dry pasta), the most popular form in the West, is impossible. Although the authors show themselves to be fully aware of the richness of pasta-associated vocabulary in the languages of Eastern Europe, Turkey, Arabia, and Persia, their focus is on the two greatest pasta civilizations: Italy and China. In this monumental, always fascinating story of a universal food, Silvano Serventi and Françoise Sabban also demonstrate the universality of culinary history as a cultural interdiscipline. Their parallel studies of Italy and China draw on linguistics, economics, literature, philology, theology, anthropology, folklore, and political and religious history in a dazzling and immensely readable virtuoso display of genuine erudition. Albert Sonnenfeld

x preface

P R E FAC E

“The world of pasta is essentially a working-class place,” an Italian writer pointed out almost half a century ago.1 He was referring to Italian pasta, but the observation can safely be generalized to include all pasta, a food that originated in China and from there spread to Japan, Korea, most of Southeast Asia, and the rest of the world. Pasta perhaps epitomizes food as daily fare. Its preparation, essentially a household activity, is both easy and quick, and this probably explains, at least in part, why pasta is one of the most widespread pleasures of the world’s table. Another reason for this simple food’s popularity is its versatility. An immense body of recipes can be found in every corner of the planet, from the simplest dishes to intricate and sophisticated preparations suitable for the most extraordinary occasions and the most elegant repasts. Pasta is always affordable, even for the tightest household budgets. A trickle of olive oil and a pinch of chopped garlic and parsley are enough to make a plate of spaghetti irresistible, and a few ladlesful of fish broth, a few drops of lemon juice, a handful of fresh julienned carrots, and a few slices of cucumber are all that is required to create a savory Vietnamese noodle salad. Pasta has also long been one of the ingredients of the most refined cuisine. The world’s great chefs have no misgivings about featuring ravioli or cannelloni—dressed formally, of course—on the menus of their five-star restaurants. Anyone at all can be inventive with pasta,

and the creations of amateur chefs can be every bit as delectable as the most sophisticated culinary preparations. Whether they are fresh or dried, made of durum wheat semolina or wheat flour, bound with eggs or simply kneaded with water, Italian and Chinese noodles provide a remarkable platform for flavors of all sorts. Once you have mastered the 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 and neutral, it places no restrictions on the search for new combinations of textures 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. In Asia, 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 infinitely varied, from the Far East to the Far West. Many Eurasian countries have a long and rich culinary tradition of pasta. There is historical evidence from Germany to Iran, from Greece to Russia, from Turkey to Poland, not to mention the countries of Central and Eastern Asia or, for that matter, the Western Mediterranean and the Middle East (probably the source of the earliest recipes for dried pasta). But the true homelands of pasta have been Italy and China, which evolved two different and complementary culinary traditions that have spread throughout their respective worlds, gaining admiration and influence over the centuries. This book will present the history of those two traditions, and we regret only that we are unable to offer a link between the two culinary universes. In fact, the turbulent and fascinating history of the middle land bounded by these two gastronomic territories has yet to be written. This area extends from Central Asia to the westernmost boundaries of China, stretching toward Turkey and right up to the gates of Europe. The vocabulary of a great many languages in Eastern Europe and in the Turkish, Arabic, and Persian spheres clearly indicates that pasta has traveled widely, leaving traces in some cases difficult to follow, hinting at complex events that, for now, remain enigmatic. Dough, the raw material of both bread and noodles, is the first malleable material from which humans were able to make artificial foodstuffs, entirely distinct from the products of the natural environment. It was precisely this quality that so fascinated the Chinese. When the xii preface

Chinese discovered wheat, several centuries before Christ, its potential quickly became apparent: when mixed with water, it produced a material that was as malleable as clay—and the Chinese had long been familiar with the properties of clay. The Chinese developed what became a full-fledged civilization of fresh pasta, the underlying model of which remained for many centuries the use of wheat flour in the preparation of products with a specific shape: pasta products, breads, and flatbreads. Observant from the earliest times of the specific physical and chemical nature of foodstuffs, especially cereal flours and starches, the Chinese became masters at transforming a great variety of starchy species of plants into pasta products. At the same time, they learned to make every possible use of soft wheat flour. They quickly understood that the component parts of soft wheat flour—starch and gluten—had sharply differing properties and could be put to exceedingly interesting uses. They were probably the only people in history to develop a cuisine based on gluten, an elastic and almost viscous substance that in the West was considered a useless by-product of the manufacture of starch until the end of the eighteenth century. Processing gluten by cooking or fermentation, the Chinese created a new artificial foodstuff, a raw material whose texture and flavor resembled those of meat. Gluten was used brilliantly in China’s vegetarian cuisine, which continues to be of great importance, in both Buddhist temples and the shrines of fine dining. Chinese noodles derive from a tradition based equally in the home and in the artisan’s workshop, relying on hand processing of the pasta. Complex technical procedures for the manufacture of Chinese noodles have never come into common practice. They are fresh products, susceptible to the passage of time, and to ensure freshness 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 in the north of China, the wheat pasta products that over the centuries have won the praise and admiration of princes and men of letters have spread throughout China and into every social class and level. Though they are eaten everywhere and by everyone, they are still considered primary and daily fare in the provinces of China, where they are thought to have originated, and the variety of formats, basic ingredients, and methods of preparation and cooking found in these regions is unrivaled elsewhere. China is now fully in step with the pace of the modern world, at preface xiii

least in the big cities, and it is Asia’s leading manufacturer of instant noodles. This industrial product is the best artificial substitute for the fresh noodles that are impossible to manufacture industrially—hence its unprecedented success. Instead of the immense body of knowledge that was traditionally required for the production of fresh pasta, instant noodles require only the addition of hot water at the last moment. The entire long and complex process of the original culinary undertaking has been reduced to this isolated gesture. In Italy, ancient land of wheat farming, the flour made from that grain held no secrets. All the same, awareness of pasta products as a distinct category of foodstuff developed slowly. For many years, in fact, pasta products were overshadowed by bread, a noble and sacred food, and consigned, because of how they are cooked, to the profane and humdrum world of gruel and mush. That is probably why Italian written sources make absolutely no mention of the existence of pasta products before the Middle Ages, even though there was a lexical connection with the Greek and Roman world and even though evidence from as far back as the fifth century in Palestine suggest that people ate what seem to have been pasta products. (Indeed, pasta was a subject of some concern for the Jewish community, as it constantly strived to obey divine commands in even the smallest arenas of everyday 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 indicates the Italian origin of the food in question.) Once pasta was finally recognized as a distinct category, its growth knew no limits. Traded internationally in the Mediterranean basin from the twelfth century on—in the dry form—pasta also won a place in the finest kitchens, finding its way onto the dining tables of kings, princes, and high prelates, made by hand by their personal cooks. There evolved a high culinary art of fresh pasta, in all its forms, simple and stuffed. The cooks in princely and papal courts 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 texture and their taste, enhanced by the sauces with which they were served. Pasta was preferred soft, melting; indeed, in that period the practice was to cook pasta for relatively long periods of time, in contrast to modern practice. Cheese was a constant companion from the

xiv preface

very beginning of pasta’s reign as a foodstuff, sometimes accompanied by a sprinkle of cinnamon. In parallel with this essentially private and to some degree aristocratic cuisine, there developed in certain regions—in Genoa, for instance, and along the Ligurian coast, as well as throughout southern Italy, all the way down to Sicily—a production of dried pasta made of durum wheat, at first artisanal and in time preindustrial. As the production of pasta became increasingly industrialized, especially in Naples and the surrounding region, the consumption of pasta extended to the lower classes of the population. The dried form of pasta became the basic staple of Naples by the eighteenth century. In this huge southern Italian city, however, pasta products were to become more than a basic subsistence food; in time they became a symbol of Naples, gobbled ostentatiously to impress the passing bumpkin. The Neapolitans became advocates of pasta, and in the end they imposed their love of it on the rest of the Italian peninsula. And in spreading this love, they encouraged their compatriots to cook their pasta for 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 the model that had dominated until the very end of the nineteenth century. This triumph marks the unusual adoption of a working-class model of consumption by all the classes of a larger population. Thus pasta products, both in Italy and in China, are not merely an unassuming form of nourishment intended merely to satisfy a physiological need. And while we need not ponder its history each time we sit down to eat, the popularity of this food appears to be the result of a lengthy process of cultural construction. Unlike very few other manufactured food products that emerge from a time-honored tradition, today’s pasta is the culmination of a wide array of bodies of knowledge and the end product of a series of specific forms of know-how, skills, and techniques. Its very history is multiform. A historian must certainly account for the ways in which pasta products have been integrated into culinary practices and trace the development of their standing within the context of the various categories of foodstuffs and the various classes of consumers. That same historian, however, must also make clear the stages of development of the everyday and industrial techniques involved in the production of those foodstuffs and, to the same degree, explore the representations that have accrued in connection with the dominant cultural models proper to each era. preface xv

Nowadays, when the unbridled development of the free market bends to its iron law the production and consumption of food around the world, pasta represents the ubiquitous foodstuff par excellence. Pasta could not fail to attract universal admiration: even when massproduced by the ton, it remains, in the privacy of the kitchens of the world, an unexpected resource and the ideal platform for individual creativity. The time has come to reject out of hand the idiotic slogan “Basta la pastasciutta,” invented by the Italian poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, founder of the Futurist movement, impatient to be done with the old world and naively trusting that the power of incantations could create a new future.

xvi preface

NOTE CONCERNING A DEFINITION O F PA S TA P R O D U C TS

Although the category of pasta products forms part of a greater continuum between, on the one hand, preparations made of flour, semolina, or fragments of rolled grains, such as couscous, and, on the other hand, such soft preparations as Alsatian spätzle or certain Chinese pastas that are practically liquid, their shapes fixed only when they have been slipped into a broth, we must all the same select a definition for the object of our study. And so, within the boundaries of the 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.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book could never have been published without the generous help of many friends and colleagues, and without the assistance of many experts on pasta who willingly supported our project. We would like to express our profound gratitude to Alberto Capatti, who allowed us access to his personal library, who provided a steady stream of invaluable information throughout the research process, who read a number 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 in China. We are also deeply grateful to Schmuel Bunim for having brought to our attention—and translated—a number of passages of a text in Yiddish concerning the subject in question. Had it not been for him, we would have overlooked an unexplored chapter of the history of pasta in the Mediterranean and in France. We are also very grateful to Maurice Kriegel and Sylvie-Anne Goldberg, both scholars of Jewish history and culture, for having enlightened us concerning various matters about which we knew virtually nothing. To Maxime Rodinson, pioneer of historical research on pasta, we are grateful for a number of observations taken from his writings, and especially because, with a simple phone call, he provided us with bibliographic references concerning Syriac literature. We owe a debt of gratitude, which has been accumulating for years, to Philip and Mary Hyman,

who have shown unfailing generosity in sharing with us their knowledge and bibliographic patrimony on the history of food. As always, we would like to express our heartfelt thanks to Charlotte von Verschuer for having checked on our behalf a few pieces of crucial information on Japan. We also offer our sincere appreciation to Bruno Larioux, Allen Grieco, Bernard Rosenberger, Martin Bruegel, Massimo Montanari, François Sigaut, and Alain Thote, who provided us with references, obtained and lent us documentation, and read some chapters of our volume as we were preparing it. The help and encouragement of Mary Louise Galloway and Jean-Luc Degonde have always been of vital assistance and have meant a great deal to us; the same goes for Solange, Alexandra, and Renato Cavaciuti, always willing to come to our help, especially when we had problems with our computers. Nor could we forget the loyal friendship of Paola Paderni and Giulio Machetti, who helped in our research in the sacred sites of pasta during each one of our trips to Naples, providing assistance in our investigations down to the tiniest details. They mobilized on our behalf their entire family, and especially Leonardo and Tali Del Giacomo, their friends and acquaintances, who had some ties to the world of the production 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). Alessandro Pallari obtained a rare statistical document for us, which would have been impossible for us to obtain without his help. Giuseppe de Rinaldi helped 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 contacts with various people: Antonio Marchetti, chairman of the Società Cooperativa Pastai Gragnanesi, generously spoke with us at great length, showed us around the headquarters of the cooperative, and gave us a tour of the Valle dei Mulini of Gragnano, a legendary site in the history of pasta in southern Italy; Senator Angelo Abenante, who described for us the recent and complex history of the production of pasta at Torre Annunziata, a city of which he served as mayor for a number of years. We are of course grateful as well to the professionals of the pasta industry who lent their assistance, especially those who allowed us to visit 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., xx acknowledgments

Export and Buitoni Pasta Division), where we had an expert guide in the person of Roberto Radi. Also in Sansepolcro, moreover, Chiara Bertelli opened the doors of Casa Buitoni to us, where Signora Zanelli showed us the workshops and equipment. Without the assistance of Armando Marchi, who was then in charge of Public Affairs at Barilla Alimentare S.p.A., we would not have been allowed access to the Archivio Storico Barilla in Parma, where we were permitted to work freely and to enjoy the invaluable advice of Giancarlo Gonizzi. Moreover, it was only through the intercession of Raffaello Ragaglini and Giuseppe Menconi—at the time, respectively, Director and Chairman of the Unione Industriale Pastai Italiani—that we were able to contact the various Italian pasta manufacturers; they also supplied us with an up-to-date documentation on the statistical data of production. Likewise, Justo Bonetto, Secretary of the Associazione Nazionale Produttori di Pasta Fresca, was extremely helpful in responding to our questions, as were Carla Latini of the Azienda Agraria Latini, Cristiano Cieri of the Rustichella d’Abruzzo, Antonio Morelli of the Antico Pastificio Morelli, and Roberto Caponi of the Pastificio Caponi. Serge André Mouzay, Délégué Général du Comité Français de la Semoulerie Industrielle Française, provided us with information about the French pasta industry, as did Philippe Braun of the Institut Technique des Céréales et des Fourrages in Nîmes, and Jean Claude Nabet of the Office National Interprofessionel des Céréales, who all sent us essential technical information concerning durum wheat, semolina, and pasta products. Lastly, we are grateful to Antony Shugaar, our translator, who successfully 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 heartfelt appreciation goes to them both.

acknowledgments 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

INTRODUCTION

In the Beginning Was Wheat Without wheat, there would have been no pasta. Nor could there have been bread, much less cakes or other pastries. While it is true that most of the leading cereals can be used to make a dough that can to a greater or lesser degree be shaped in various ways, wheat, of all these edible plants, is the one that best lends itself to this type of preparation. Ground kernels of wheat, in fact, produce a powdered substance that, when mixed in certain proportions with water, creates an exceedingly malleable dough, perfect for forming into any shape imaginable. This interesting property, the result of the presence of gluten, was not lost on enterprising humans. This edible raw material made it possible not only to create new foodstuffs but also to indulge the more playful side of human imagination.

the king of cereals of the mediterranean To speak of wheat, in any case, is reductive, because the genus Triticum, which includes all plants that can be described as “wheat” in

everyday language, is exceedingly rich, the product of a long history. The specific characteristics of the plants are the result of a complex development over the years, largely guided by humans, and involving a long process of domestication of wild species with subsequent selection and hybridization. The progressive development of agriculture—thought to have originated about 10,000 b.c. in the Fertile Crescent, an area that extends from eastern Palestine to the westernmost slopes of the Persian highlands—coincided with the domestication of such cereals as barley and wheat and of legumes such as peas, lentils, and beans. Modern genetics confirms what was long suspected: Certain strains of wild wheat found in the mountains in the far southeastern section of Turkey are indeed ancestral to the species of wheat now commonly cultivated. Some of these strains spread slowly westward into Europe and eastward into Asia.1 Wheat 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 constitutes the cereal of civilization in this geographic area. The first wheats were einkorn (Triticum monococcum, L.), emmer wheat (Triticum turgidum, L. dicoccum), and spelt (Triticum aestivum, L. spelta).2 At first, people roasted ears of wheat and ate the kernels without further preparation, probably because these early wheats, known as “dressed wheats,” produced kernels whose pericarp, made up of various layers much like the “naked wheats,” were also surrounded by sticky husks that could not be eliminated by mere threshing during harvest. The easiest and quickest way of reaching the edible core of the kernel was to rid it of at least some of its thick covering by the application of flame. Quite soon, however, according to the scholars of prehistoric times, these dressed wheats were also ground into more or less imperfect flours and kneaded into flatbreads and rough loaves, which were baked on hot stones. Occasionally we find remains of these early breads, dating from 4000 to 3000 b.c.—for example, at Twann, in Switzerland.3 This was the first appearance of kneaded dough, an invention that was soon followed or else coincided with that of gruel, made out of whole grains or either crushed or ground. And so even before historic times 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 liquid to obtain a gruel or mush, fluid, thick, or pasty. 2 introduction

In the Greco-Roman classical world, these two methods of preparing Triticum products were well documented by a vast terminology for the different species cultivated, the various products derived from their grains in accordance with their use, and even the dishes that were 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 depending on how finely it was sifted, that was used in the preparation of gruel, loaves, or flatbreads; finally, amylum5 was a starch (fecula) obtained through a technique invented by the Greeks and transformed into refined pastries. Amylum was the universal binding agent in the fine cuisine described in the first ancient Roman culinary treatise, a collection attributed to Apicius dating from the fifth century a.d.6 From the end of the fifth century b.c., naked wheat grew progressively more popular. It was easier to process and therefore used almost exclusively to make flour for use in kneaded doughs, elbowing aside the dressed grains, which were thereafter used only in the preparation of gruels.7 Rotating millstones also began to become common throughout the Mediterranean basin, tools used specifically for the grinding of naked grains.8 Among the limited number of species of wheat that became important, two were of particular note: Triticum aestivum, L. aestivum, known in Latin as siligo and to modern English-speaking consumers as common wheat or soft wheat, 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 was imported 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 introduction 3

ancient far, the emmer wheat of the ancient Romans, which had been the source of the flour used in making bread. The culinary practices documented in the treatise by Apicius as well as in other Latin texts attest to how well the Romans knew specific uses that would best exploit the respective properties of soft wheat flour and durum wheat semolina.11 Given the resources and technical possibilities available, there is no reason that pasta products should not have been invented at this time: both fine flour and excellent semolina were available, produced in considerable quantities thanks to rotary millstones, even though enormous labor was required to operate them. And yet, although certain specialists claim to have identified pasta colanders in archaeological digs of ancient sites,12 it does not appear that the pasta products we know today existed in the ancient world. A careful analysis of the recipes of Apicius reveals not a trace of pasta.13

wheat in china, a latter-day use Europeans invented pasta late, even though conditions favored them. The Chinese, in contrast, found themselves in a totally opposite situation. Despite an agricultural environment that was anything but favorable to the manufacture of wheat-based pasta, they were familiar with wheat-based pasta long before the Europeans. Many Westerners believe that Chinese pasta products are for the most part based on rice or the starch of the mung bean—often mistaken for the soybean—and that the bright white color of rice-flour noodles and the transparent appearance of bean-starch vermicelli represent the full extent of Chinese accomplishment in this area. But they have been deceived by the limited menus, heavily adapted to Western tastes, they find in Chinese restaurants. In truth, in China, just as around the Mediterranean, the history of pasta products begins with wheat and therefore with wheat pasta. Pasta made from other grains comes only much later. The similarities between China and 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 were not entirely unaware of each other and were linked by indirect relations. (Didn’t Seneca lash out at the excessive love of luxury that drove wealthy Roman patricians to dress in silk, the threads of which— 4 introduction

he believed—had been harvested from certain trees in the far-off land of the Seres by inhabitants of Thinae, also known as China?)14 The Chinese, or at least the more well-to-do Chinese, already enjoyed dining on laowan, ravioli—descriptions of the making of which, dating back to the third century a.d., still make our mouths water—when their contemporaries on the far end of the Eurasian continent were as yet unacquainted with stuffed pasta. Yet, in an interesting paradox, while northern China was the birthplace and site of the early cultivation of the two leading species of millet, Panicum and Setaria, which constituted the subsistence staple of the entire population through prehistory, antiquity, and for a long time thereafter, wheat was a little-known foreign plant. It was so unfamiliar, in fact, that the earliest sources do not distinguish between 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 lower course of the Yellow River, a region long considered as the cradle of Chinese civilization. We do know that around 3000 b.c. wheat was certainly grown in the far northwestern part of Gansu, since fragments of Triticum aestivum were found in 1985 in a Neolithic cave in the district of Minle.15 The earliest written documentation—turtle plastron and oracle-bone inscriptions, dating to around 1300 b.c.— provide further evidence of its presence. These remains constitute the earliest evidence of human use of common soft, naked-grain wheat in an outlying region of the Chinese world, though there is almost no indication of its use as a foodstuff. The wheat is hexaploid—that is, already the product of previous domestication and a long series of selections and hybrids—proving that it was not native to northern China. It was a newcomer, especially in comparison with millet, a grain clearly of Chinese origin. Indeed, when wheat arrived from the West, it crossed paths with various types of millet, which were in their turn spreading westward. All indications tell us that the acclimatization of the new grain occurred with considerable difficulty in the Chinese region, as practically no factors favored its adaptation, in terms of both the ancient Chinese agricultural system and dietary customs. At the very beginning of the second century b.c., when the plant had long been familiar, Dong Zhongshu, loyal adviser to Emperor Wu of the early Han, urged his sovereign to issue a decree encouraging the cultivation of this cereal in the region of the capital, Chang’an.16 The peasants introduction 5

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.17 These instructions were probably useful, since the growing season of barley and wheat was not compatible with the climate of northern China. The grains had to be sown in fall or winter, the driest seasons in China’s continental climate, since they germinated best with only a moderate amount of water. Millets, on the other hand, were perfectly suited to the climatic cycles of the region, since the sowing season was much more flexible, extending from spring to the beginning of summer, in the heart of the rainy season.18 This agricultural disadvantage, which obliged the peasants to lavish great care on their crops of wheat, at times irrigating them, was counterbalanced by a felicitous circumstance: 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. Not only were the environmental and weather conditions of northern China ill suited to wheat as a crop, the technical context suitable for the processing of millet was equally inhospitable. We know relatively 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 or another, 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 for the processing of cereals: the mortar and pestle, an instrument that was perfectly suited to milling rice and shelling millet. (Once millet has been shelled, it can be consumed immediately, as it emerges from its hull after steaming.) When wheat and barley became more familiar in the Central Basin of the Yellow River, around 1300 b.c., they could only be processed with the tools developed for millet. It is likely that at first wheat was more or less completely husked, then crushed in a mortar—a long process that could only be used to prepare small quantities at a time, given the nature of the tool—and finally steamed like millet and made into gruels or mushes of varying thickness. In any case, the rare notations concerning the consumption of wheat suggest that this was the procedure (wheat dishes do not appear to have been very highly regarded).19 This might 6 introduction

account for the minimal enthusiasm among Chinese peasants for the cultivation of wheat around the second century b.c., since the production of flour for use in preparations that were considered to be more refined was certainly beyond their abilities. With the appearance of the rotary mill around the fifth or sixth century b.c.,20 about the same time as in the Mediterranean basin,21 it became possible to produce flour more quickly and in greater quantities, and the situation rapidly began to change, even though sources document those changes only with considerable delay. Over a period of several centuries, before and after the turn of the Christian Era, this population of farmers—previously entirely unaware of the advantages of wheat, a cereal that had none of the prestige of millet, which was deified as the Lord of the Harvests with the name of Prince Millet—grasped the remarkable potential of the elastic and malleable dough that could be created by mixing wheat flour and water. From consumers of boiled whole grains, the Chinese also became eaters of pasta, flatbreads, and bread. But unlike their Western counterparts, who long remained in thrall to the system of contrasting structures in their food references—leavened dough versus unleavened dough, gruel cooked in moist heat versus flatbread or bread baked 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 the means for processing this malleable material. For more than ten centuries, the term bing served not only to describe all the foodstuffs made from kneaded wheat-flour–based dough but also other cerealbased dishes that resembled their wheat-flour counterparts in appearance, as well as the technical operations involved in agglomerating certain malleable substances into specific shapes (usually round and flat).22 Comparison of these two civilizations of pasta is instructive, because it shows that there is no single path of development, based on this or that necessary factor. In radically different environments, rather hostile in China’s case and quite favorable in the Mediterranean, each civilization developed its own culture of pasta according to quite distinct concepts and at its own pace. China was far ahead of Italy, but since it never had durum wheat, it remained a civilization of fresh pasta, made by artisanal methods, expanding the repertory by transforming other cereals into pasta products. Italy, in contrast, havintroduction 7

ing reached the production of pasta products only after a series of breakthroughs, over the course of time perfected its mastery and understanding of wheat, developing at the same time a highly diversified production of fresh pasta and a civilization of dry pasta based on durum wheat, culminating in a highly specialized industry.

8 introduction

CHAPTER ONE

The Infancy of an Art Despite the simplicity of its composition and fabrication, pasta has not always existed. In contrast with bread—certain forms of which are documented in Neolithic archaeological digs, especially in Switzerland—pasta products have left no traces. Their origin therefore remains the subject of speculation. This odd gap in the ancient historical record of cereal-based preparations in Europe has encouraged the spread of gastronomical legends but also led to the development of more serious hypotheses by some scholars. These scholars surmised that, if the Greeks and Romans had no familiarity with these dishes, nowadays so fundamental, they must have come from elsewhere. From China, thanks to Marco Polo, according to some; from the East, according to others, brought by the Arabs who originally invented them, driven by the need to develop foods that would keep during their nomadic wanderings. In reality, the situation is far more complex, and it cannot be explained by the simple movement of objects or people.

going back to the myths The first concrete information concerning pasta products in Italy dates from the thirteenth or fourteenth century. The question of their origin continues to evoke speculation. Following in the footsteps of many authors, beginning with Giuseppe Prezzolini,1 who in the 1950s questioned the legend of Marco Polo’s importation of pasta from China, let us repeat that the Venetian merchant could not have had anything to do with the birth of this culinary tradition in Italy. Well before 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 indicates that pasta had long formed part of the diet of certain Mediterranean peoples. The time has come to debunk once and for all this promotional 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 American pasta makers.2 Let us also discard the idea that an inventor might have been responsible for cooking up pasta, so to speak, creating vermicelli, macaroni, lasagne, and ravioli in a sudden stroke of genius. Even so, we are grateful to the ingenious and imaginative Ortensio Lando, friend and admirer of Pietro Aretino, for having credited women with the invention of pasta, thus displaying his gratitude to the other half of humanity, too often overlooked where great inventions are concerned. To our great regret, then, we must say that it is unlikely that the Lombard peasant woman Libista was the inventor of ravioli or that “lasagne, lasagnuole e altri pinzocheri” (terms for types of pasta) were the felicitous creations of Meluzza Comasca, another great inventor according to Lando, who was given a celebrity’s funeral after she died of pleurisy.3 Sadly, there is no answer to the question, “Who invented spaghetti?” which already smacked of irony when the historian Roberto Lopez used it as the title for a short essay in which he refuted the fable of Marco Polo after an American colleague tried to convince him that it was true.4 Pasta products are undoubtedly the result of human intelligence, but Libista, Meluzza, and Marco have nothing to do with it. Still, the fact that no single individual can claim to have contributed to this fine invention does not force us to search for its origins outside Europe. Roberto Lopez was right to lighten the cultural 10 the infancy of an art

baggage of Marco Polo, removing a weight that was admittedly symbolic, representing the collective ingenuity of the Chinese people in a single foodstuff. But Lopez refused to follow certain of his colleagues who limited the imaginative dimension of their explanations, simply replacing the Chinese with the Arabs. These scholars, arguing that nomadic peoples need to provide themselves with a supply of preserved foods, put forth the hypothesis that the Arabs had invented dry pasta made of durum wheat semolina,5 subsequently introducing it to Italy. All studies of the consumption of cereals by nomadic or pastoral populations show, however, that when they travel they generally reduce their intake to whole grains or toasted flours, materials far less perishable than pasta products and far easier to use; they generally eat flatbreads or simple breads as their daily fare when traveling.6 Ease of use is a relative notion, of course. The large, very fine flatbreads made by bedouins in Jordan7 or by the peasants of the Lebanese hinterland are anything but easy to make, requiring remarkable manual dexterity, especially considering that they are made in exceedingly primitive conditions. But the situation appears restrictive to us only because of cultural norms, which vary from one society to another. Nowadays it seems difficult to attribute full credit for the invention of pasta to the Arabs, but this does not mean that they played no role in the spread of certain types of pasta products, especially beginning in the High Middle Ages, when the Arabs began their westward expansion. All the same, making pasta products requires access to a reliable supply of flour or fine semolina, which entails the existence of regular harvests of wheat and milling equipment. Thus the theory that a nomadic lifestyle might have driven the Arabs to invent pasta, seductive though it may seem at first, does not withstand a cold analysis. We would have to suppose, then, that the Arabs at some point lived near cereal farmers—and millers as well, unless they were able to devote much of their energy to milling, whether with little hand mills or with larger mills. In contrast, the fact that the Greeks and later the Romans, well known as great farmers of wheat and refined consumers of its products, should have failed to invent pasta products is even more surprising and deserves close examination. Is it possible that these two peoples bequeathed nothing in this context to the medieval and modern cultures of the West? What reasons might explain this absence in the classical world? the infancy of an art 11

pasta, an unthinkable food source Though it may be somewhat naive for a historian to wonder about the reasons leading to a phenomenon’s failure to appear even though all the 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 same effects—the absence of pasta products in the classical world still deserves our attention, if for no other reason than to understand better how the concept of pasta has developed slowly over the course of time. The first explanations offered are generally economic in nature. One could argue that the Greco-Roman world had no need for pasta products, since its inhabitants survived quite well on a diet of bread and mush. But then why weren’t the Greeks and Romans satisfied with a single way of preparing cereals, such as turning them into gruel, the cheapest and easiest method in those times? The answer is that food is not merely a matter of subsistence and economics, and necessity and need are not the only indicators that allow us to understand culinary choices. While a considerable share of the Roman population was content with a very frugal diet,8 things were quite different for certain patricians whose refined tastes and excessive gluttony were roundly decried by the moralists of the time. We must look elsewhere, then, and refrain from considering decisions about foods to be the simple result of economic determinism. In this area, ideology and symbolism count every bit as much as straightforward economics. We must 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 the Judeo-Christian tradition. This task is not easy, since we have internalized these categories so thoroughly that we think of them as a natural reflection of the very structure of reality. We tend to accept unquestioningly our received history of food, modeled on the progress of cereal farming. The great Polish botanist Adam Maurizio, in his monumental 1926 work entitled “Die Geschichte unserer Pflanzennahrung von den Urzeiten bis zur Gegenwart” (History of vegetal foodstuffs from prehistory to the present day) attempted to provide a systematic framework for this view, without going into its foundations. People continue to believe that flour and its use are signs of the progress of human techniques in the preparation of foodstuffs, considering the history of cereal-based 12 the infancy of an art

nutrition as a one-way march from kernel to flour. That implies, of course, that leavened bread is the natural culmination of a lengthy development, the stages of which, according to Maurizio, punctuate the progressive perfection of cereal-based nutrition, from gruel to bread, by way of flatbread.9 A belief in the supremacy of leavened bread over all other cereal-based dishes remains solidly anchored in the conceptions and credos of Western societies, impregnating the Judeo-Christian culture and featured in depictions of the classical world. 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 the Greco-Roman world, where gruels and breads were never considered equals. Bread was a noble foodstuff, the product of a long and complex series of operations, in contrast with gruel, so simple to prepare. Still, although bread wound up triumphing over all other cereal-based preparations in the slow development of the culinary customs of the classical world, gruels were never entirely supplanted as a staple in the diet of the poor and the peasant.10 The respective values attached to these preparations reflected a social hierarchy as well,11 bread becoming a culinary ideal to which everyone aspired. Adam Maurizio made an initial distinction between bread cereals and gruel cereals, followed by a further distinction between bread eaters and gruel eaters. Though excessively simplistic, this distinction reigns in the major territories of Europe. In the Mediterranean area, from antiquity to the Middle Ages, gruels and breads (including flatbreads) were certainly the two fundamental cereal-based dishes, their techniques of production constituting two basic models corresponding to two main culinary categories: 1. Preparations based on wheat flour, the raw material for which 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 by mixing liquid (usually water) with flour or whole or crushed grains and always cooked by boiling in moist heat. In this context, pasta products were unthinkable, because they straddled both categories and therefore belonged to neither: they were made of a kneaded dough, like unleavened bread, but, in common with gruel cereals, were cooked in moist heat. the infancy of an art 13

This ancient culinary model, based on two preparations of contrasting nature, endured for many centuries and was later enshrined in Judeo-Christian tradition.12 Indeed, the term enshrined is particularly apt, since bread became for Christians a metaphorical substitute for the body of Christ and thus a particularly noble food, in contrast not only with gruels, considered strictly profane, but also with the unleavened bread of Jewish ritual.

first words, first hypotheses 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 familiar today. But even though medieval cookbooks contained many recipes for lasagne, gnocchi, ravioli, macaroni, vermicelli, and so on, these dishes were not thought to represent a single culinary category.13 Indeed, the authors of medieval cookbooks and their readers ate pasta products in much the same way that Molière’s M. Jourdain (protagonist of Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme) wrote prose, that is, without being fully aware of it or, in any case, without feeling the need to categorize all the various dishes under a single generic rubric. In the body of texts that survive from late antiquity to the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, numerous terms—apparently synonymous to a greater or lesser degree and concurrent in different cultural areas—refer to pasta products in the sense we understand today. Emilio Sereni was the first to try to establish a connection between certain of these terms and the foods of the ancient world, in the hope of reconstructing an ancestry for the pasta that appeared in the Middle 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 present-day terminology, made in a radically different manner was borrowed from the Arab world and spread throughout the Mediterranean basin. (All this, of course, does not jibe with the fact that the Arab term itriyya, subsequently corrupted into tri or tria in Latin texts, probably derives from the Greek word itrion, which is men14 the infancy of an art

tioned in Galen’s treatise De alimentorum facultatibus.) According to Laurioux, the spread of dried pasta, which he distinguishes from fresh pasta such as lasagne or ravioli, began in Muslim Sicily and moved up the Tyrrhenian coast, from Naples to Genoa—all this only after making its way to the Iberian world, then under the influence of a brilliant Arabic civilization. It was not until the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries that the two categories of pasta—fresh and dry—began to be thought of as belonging to the same set of cereal-based foods.15 According to these two historians, then, the Arabs introduced pasta products into southern Italy, as is often claimed, but the only pasta involved was string-shaped pasta, generally made of durum wheat semolina and not flour, dried for storage and for sale. Were Sereni and Laurioux—who followed in the footsteps of Maxime Rodinson, the first to set forth this hypothesis—correct?16 To find out, we will examine the documentation concerning the question, beginning with the teachings of philology, and then go on to show that full understanding of this matter must take into account both technical and religious parameters, aspects that our predecessors failed to consider, which, in our estimation, greatly condition the recognition of pasta per se and, of course, its distribution. Let us begin by finding out whether there are any possible links between the classical Greco-Roman world and the medieval culture of pasta.

the classical heritage While a relationship between the Greek word laganon and the Italian term lasagne, via the Latin laganum, might seem obvious, and while we can even demonstrate that the objects of the Italian and Latin terms share several features, the matter is far less straightforward 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.17 But while the link between laganum and lasagne seems apparent, the words describe two different contexts that have only the basic ingredient—and probably shape—in common. In the first century b.c., according to Horace, laganum was the name of an everyday food. In his Deipnosophists, the infancy of an art 15

Athenaeus of Naucratis18 provides a recipe for lagana that he claims to have taken from a work on the art of baking by Chrysippus of Tyana, a first-century Greek author.19 This establishes a direct lineage from the Greek laganon and the Roman laganum. The dish in question, according to the recipe transcribed by Athenaeus, who lived in the second century a.d., consisted of very fine sheets of a dough made of wheat flour and the juice of crushed lettuce, flavored with spices, and then deep-fried in oil. Obviously, the method of cooking this Roman laganum does not correspond to our definition of a pasta product. But the fact that the dough was kneaded and formed into a thin sheet suggests it is a forebear. A later recipe found in a culinary anthology dating back to the beginning of the fifth century and attributed to Apicius describes a dish called lagana that consisted of several layers of rolled-out dough alternating with meat stuffing and baked in an oven, unquestionably recalling what we all know now as oven-baked lasagne, although it is also possible to conclude that this is a very primitive form of meat pie. Certainly, it is true that the layers of dough in this lagana were not boiled in water before being included in the final dish, and this excludes them from the category of pasta product in our sense of the term. Still, we cannot entirely rule out methods of cooking lagana different from the traditional baking in dry heat typical of kneaded doughs, since the medical classification established by Celsus in the first century a.d. had already placed lagana with the “sweet foods,” a category that also included beverages (sorbitio), gruels (pulticula), thick barley infusions (ptisana), and the sticky foods (glutinosa),20 all of which are foods produced by cooking in moist heat that have the property of melting in one’s mouth. We find the word lagana used by the church fathers, in particular, Saint Jerome (ca. 331–420), who used the term laganom to translate in the Vulgate the name of the offerings used in certain Hebrew rites. Lagana, according to the Old Testament, were made of soft wheat flour and unleavened; once they were cooked, they were dripped with oil for the ritual.21 These lagana closely resemble unleavened bread and are generally associated with other doughs or breads of the same type, also unleavened, which apparently shared the feature of being cooked in dry heat, that is, in an oven, in a pan, or on a grill, as the Bible states,22 or else under ash.23 This is still quite a long way from our present-day notion of pasta products. It is not until the sixth and seventh centuries that we find in the 16 the infancy of an art

writings of Isidore of Seville a definition of lagana similar to our present-day idea of pasta products. In his Etymologiae, the Sevillian theologian describes laganum as “a broad, flat bread, which [is cooked] first in water and then fried in oil.”24 Heir to the Judeo-Christian tradition of commentary, Isidore could not conceive of lagana outside the sacred context of offerings, but his definition probably reflected the general practice of the time. And if we interpret the word bread as used by Isidore to mean “kneaded dough,” then the way is certainly blazed for lasagne as we eat them nowadays: whether the pasta, cooked in water, is subjected to a second cooking or simply seasoned with oil, nothing substantially changes. Even if the laganum thus defined by Isidore of Seville could still be considered an unleavened bread in its composition, it differs sharply in terms of its cooking. We must wait many centuries before medieval sources describe the consumption of lasagne in the form we now know. It is an irony of history that this dish appears in the literature of the second half of the thirteenth century as a stock theme in the culinary fantasy world of the Italians even before the first collection of traditional Italian recipes, which was put together at the beginning of the fourteenth century and described its shape and makeup. As far as tri or tria are concerned, we find the term itrion (translated into Latin as itria) in the works of Galen; it generically indicates all homogeneous compounds made up of flour and water (including lagana).25 More commonly, however, tri and tria as used in medieval texts appear more to be approximate phonetic transcriptions of the Arabic term itriyya, much closer in time than the remote Greek itrion, even though the Arabic word certainly descended from the Greek. It seems likely that the Greek word spread throughout the eastern Mediterranean region beginning with the turn of the Christian era, since there is reference to a Greco-Latin form, itrium, used to indicate a kind of boiled dough, in the Jerusalem Talmud, which dates back to the fifth century a.d.26 A Syriac commentary regarding itriyya or a closely related word in Syriac, written by the Syrian physician Jesu Bar Ali in the ninth century, indicates that the word referred to stringlike pasta shapes made of semolina that were dried before cooking.27 In the heart of Western Christendom, the words tri and tria only appear in documents much later, and—outside certain parts of Italy or areas that remained within the Greek cultural sphere—they were confined to the specialized vocabulary of physicians, who were basithe infancy of an art 17

cally rediscovering the Greek medical tradition through the works of their Arab predecessors, thanks to translations from the original Greek into Syriac, done by Syrian physicians. Western physicians tried for many years to identify itriyya, and they were especially perplexed as to its meaning because of its corruption into the term tri. Chiefly concerned with dietetic issues, they focused more on the nature of these foods than on their shape, being interested primarily in establishing prescriptions. The important thing for them was the knowledge that these dough-based foods, made without yeast, in the same way as unleavened bread, were difficult to digest, whatever their appearance. To be easily assimilated, they required the presence of adjuvants such as sugar. Nothing they encountered in their everyday lives allowed them to draw a connection between any dishes they ate on a daily basis and the tri mentioned in Arabic medical treatises. It was not until the end of the twelfth century that the scholarly world clearly established what was meant by tri or tria as used in texts translated from Arabic. The groundbreaking translation, of Avicenna’s Canon, was done by Gerard of Cremona. (Avicenna was a renowned Arab sage of Persian origin who lived in the eleventh century.) Another important document was the Christian physician Simon of Genoa’s Clavis sanationis, written between the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, which offered the following definition of tri: “an unleavened dough shaped like a long string.” During this same period, Western culinary treatises presented the first recipes for pasta food products, bearing the Italian name vermicelli, indicating stringlike noodles. The words tri and tria, of scholarly origin, preserved their bookish connotation and were used little in the culinary sphere.28 When the Emilian physician Barnabas of Reggio wrote a popularizing work of dietetics in 1338, he glossed the meaning of tri by stating that this food was called by various names in the vernacular, according to region: tria by the inhabitants of Ancona, vermicelli by the Tuscans, orati by the Bolognese, minutelli by the Venetians, fermentini in Reggio (Emilia), and pancardelle in Mantua.29 Note that in Ancona the word tria used in scholarly speech had made its way into vernacular use, suggesting that, in this case, it derived from Greek, not Arabic, since this region remained within the Greek sphere of influence throughout the High Middle Ages, far from the limits of the spreading Arabic civilization. In brief, one might say that between the beginning of the Christ18 the infancy of an art

ian Era and the sixth and seventh centuries a.d., the lands of the eastern and western Mediterranean, steeped as they were in Greek and Latin culture, were familiar to greater and lesser degrees with the two Latin terms derived from Greek. Words derived from them would later be identified in the culinary treatises and medical works of the Low Middle Ages. In the East, on the other hand, the words itrium, found in the Jerusalem Talmud, and itriyya in Arabic or Syriac, according to Bar Ali, were particularly present, while in the West lagana seemed to be favored by the church fathers. It is astonishingly difficult to reconstruct that relationship and the slow spread of these cereal-based foods in the center of the Mediterranean basin. Earlier, we suggested that there was a conceptual obstacle to the idea of pasta products, in both the Greco-Latin world and the Judeo-Christian tradition. Perhaps it is necessary— the better to understand the mechanisms involved—to analyze the highly unusual nature of the kneaded dough produced by the mixture of wheat flour and water that, in the Judeo-Christian world, was always highly valued and triggered debates up until the heart of the Middle Ages. Paradoxically, it may have been precisely the high value placed on this substance that slowed the spread of pasta as a separate food category.

the sacred space of pasta The considerations of Isidore of Seville and his predecessors fit into a very long tradition of commentary, and their interest in lagana was prompted by concerns that were more spiritual than material. Thus the words laganum and lagana prompted an endless series of quibbles among the church fathers over the type of bread that should be used in the Eucharist. Some supported the Eastern view; others favored the use of leavened bread, which was thought to contain the soul of Christ; the Latins preferred unleavened bread (the Host), based on the First Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Corinthians: “Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened.”30 It is difficult to obtain any concrete information from these theological debates, in which all references to foodstuffs focus primarily on their symbolic values, leaven representing the soul of Christ, unleavened bread representing purity, and oil representing unction with divine grace. Yet every so often the world of ordinary the infancy of an art 19

objects seems to have influenced these highly abstract speculations. That seems to have been the case with Isidore of Seville. Christian theologians were not alone in worrying about what kinds of bread to use in their services. The Jews, who devoted so much time and effort to understanding the text and the meaning of the Hebrew Bible, had already produced a considerable body of commentaries and continued to do so throughout the Middle Ages and even afterward. Some of those commentaries had to do with offerings of flour and other preparations involving kneaded dough. In the French Rabbinate’s translation of the Pentateuch into French, passages mention unleavened flatbreads, to which St. Jerome referred using the word lagana. Rashi (1040–1105), the renowned Jewish sage of Troyes, in France, specifies that a “a cake of oiled bread” mentioned in Leviticus had been “blanched.”31 This sort of commentary, more than a thousand years later, tells us nothing about matters when the original text was written. But it does tell us that it was normal for a Jew in northern France to boil kneaded dough as early as the eleventh century, a time for which we have no other documentation from Western Christendom, and especially not for northern Europe. In fact, this custom can be found in Jewish communities of the Middle East more than five centuries earlier. The treatise on hallah in the Jerusalem Talmud, which concerns the portion of dough that, according to the Torah, should be given to the priests before the baking of the loaf, considers whether dough that is first cooked in water and then coated with oil should also be subject to the tithe. While the circumstances of the tithing are pretty clear where ordinary bread, leavened or unleavened, is concerned, the commentators on the Talmud are in disagreement on what should be done when the dough is not going to be used for a loaf of normal baked bread, in cases in which, for instance, the dough is enriched with other ingredients (honey, milk, etc.) or subjected to boiling in water. That is doubtless why the French translator of the Jerusalem Talmud translated as “noodles” the Latin term itrium that appears in a discussion in the Gemara, the heart of the Talmud.32 (This body of discussions of Jewish oral law [Mishnah] that took place in the rabbinical academies of Palestine from the third to the fifth centuries a.d. and were then transcribed into Western Aramaic [Galilean] includes words in Hebrew, Latin, and Greek in corrupted forms.)33 Making reference to a casuistry that is difficult to follow, a woman asks the rabbi whether, having made a dough for itrium, she can then use the rest of the dough to make bread and 20 the infancy of an art

whether, in that case, she can be exempted from the tithing usually required in the making of all bread. Her question suggests that itrium was not customarily subject to the hallah, a supposition borne out in other teachings further on in the text that state: “That which is cooked in an oven is subject to hallah, while dishes that are cooked in a pan or a pot are exempt.”34 This confirms that itrium was in fact a dough “cooked in a pan” and, in any case, in moisture, not baked in an oven or grilled. These teachings were to be the subject of discussion for centuries to come. This surprising debate over a strictly domestic matter, which nevertheless had to be settled by the highest rabbinical authorities, is instructive in many ways. First of all, it demonstrates the everyday existence in the eastern Mediterranean—beginning in the third century a.d. and therefore well before the Arab conquest—of a type of food paste, whose shape remains unknown to us, described by a word of Greco-Latin origin. Second, it is emblematic of the religious and symbolic importance given to kneaded dough in the Jewish tradition. As the Old Testament attests, flatbreads and breads (leavened or unleavened, according to circumstances), invariably cooked in dry heat and often covered with oil, appear among the offerings meant for the Everlasting. Likewise, the Talmud, basis of the authority of Jewish law and tradition, recognizes what we might call a sacralization of kneaded doughs cooked in dry heat, since they alone require the taking of the hallah. In other words, they alone are worthy of being offered to a priest.35 According to Rabbi Yohanan Bar Nappaha (185–279), one of the supervisors of the compilation of the Jerusalem Talmud, “all dough upon which fire passes directly (such as bread) is subject to the hallah; it is the object of the blessing ‘blessed be he who produces the bread of the earth,’ and it serves as the unleavened bread for Passover.”36 This clarification has as its corollary the expulsion of boiled doughs from the space of the sacred. They are not excluded from everyday use, but they have no application in the obligations imposed by liturgy. If by chance we know about them through the Talmud, this is because that body of work was created precisely to offer advice on the proper way to live one’s life, down to the smallest physical details. It had certainly not been such trivial concerns that gave the church fathers such strong interest in kneaded doughs cooked in dry heat. While they subscribed to the Hebrew dictum concerning the sacredness of kneaded, baked dough, they radicalized it, elevating their speculathe infancy of an art 21

tions to another level, making the bread of the Eucharist the physical body of Christ and daily bread the receptacle of his soul, in the form of yeast.37 These debates profoundly shaped Christian depictions for many centuries. The Christian imagination in the area of wheat-based foods was thus structured around two fundamental and parallel contrasts: first, the contrast between leavened and unleavened breads; second, the contrast between gruels and mushes, on the one hand, and preparations made with kneaded dough, on the other. These two basic contrasts were to exert an overwhelming influence on the slow and grudging recognition of pasta products as a special category within the context of the grain-based system of foods in the Western world.

the primordial shape The distinction between leavened dough and unleavened dough, which derives directly from a Hebrew taxonomy, reinterpreted and rendered concrete by Christian liturgy, is so deeply rooted that it is still considered fully legitimate in the present day, to the point of being accepted widely and unquestioningly in most modern scientific or scholarly classifications. It rules out the possibility of thinking of kneaded dough as a specific material before it has been processed into one of its end products, whether leavened or made unleavened. A second overriding distinction was between, on the one hand, bread in the generic sense of the term, made from kneaded dough and baked, considered so sacred that a loaf could not be eaten until it had been blessed and the sign of the cross made over it, and, on the other hand, gruels made from whole or crushed grains, which were considered to be entirely profane. This absolute line of division between the highly regarded kneaded dough, which moreover contained the seeds of the Divine through the intermediary leavening yeast, and everyday gruels and mushes made it inconceivable that one might break down the same material to make either bread or a vulgar gruel, tantamount to unmodified kernels. Kneaded doughs were also developed from a noble preliminary material, flour, which itself was the product of the long process required to transform the raw kernels to a powder. The fragmentation of a dough into smaller elements resembling the kernels that were customarily cooked in water might have resulted in making profane a material that initially had had a sacred end use.

22 the infancy of an art

We may suppose, then, as is suggested by the evidence of some of the older Greek and Latin texts, that the final shape of the dough considerably affected the representation it received. Given the basic counterpoint between gruel and bread, cooking kneaded dough in boiling water was inconceivable unless that dough could be made to resemble the basic ingredients of gruel. This meant breaking the dough into small pieces. It is less conceivable to boil large pieces of dough in water than small fragments more or less imitating the kernels of grains, such as what we call short vermicelli or fine soup pasta. Now, the shape of the various types of pasta is a result of the techniques of production employed. All pasta shapes are essentially the product of one of two techniques. The first entails making a sheet of dough, while the second involves the production of strands of dough. The sheet of dough is made by stretching out a variable amount of dough with one’s hands or else by rolling it out with a rolling pin; the strands are shaped and rolled out of small chunks of dough with one’s fingers or palms. Beginning from these two methods of working dough, a great number of other pasta shapes have developed, dating back to the earliest recipes known to us. The technique that produces a sheet of dough yielded lasagne and all the pastas related to lasagne, while vermicelli are a large family resulting from the technique that makes strands of dough. The latter technique led to the creation of smaller units of size, all the way down to tiny fragments of pasta that could easily be incorporated into the category of gruel grains. The Jews probably assimilated itrium into the category of gruel easily because its shape no longer evoked leavened bread, while the first Western Christians, who apparently had no reference other than the laganum sheet (still thought of by Isidore of Seville as a thin bread) with which to conceive of pasta, were unable to fit it into this category that was not only profane but also characterized by the smallness of its component parts, similar to kernels of grain. It was not until the lagana had been cut up into regular units, squares, strips, ribbons, and strings, that they were able to attain full-fledged standing as a pasta product, freed from the ambiguous and long-standing connotation of all-purpose sheets of pasta. The earliest Italian culinary treatises bear the marks of this slow conceptual evolution of the laganum in a particularly interesting manner, as do certain treatises from outside the Italian area, such as England.

the infancy of an art 23

lasagne: the original dough sheet The earliest documentation of lasagne in the West at the turn of the fourteenth century, in the Liber de coquina, refers to contrasting culinary situations. The word is used in the different recipes to describe a paste cooked in water and then seasoned with cheese or else one or more sheets of dough used in the composition of cakes that were probably cooked in an oven. In these different contexts, lasagne in fact indicates a special shape given to the dough: that of a sheet, with the added detail, for the first recipe, that the sheet is cut into square pieces that are three fingerbreadths wide.38 These definitions that have more to do with a generic shape than a type of food would remain constant in most Italian recipes from the fourteenth to the fifteenth centuries,39 to the point that there are repeated mentions of a dish called “lasagne of capon skin,” consisting of a broth in which capon skin is cut up “as is done with other lasagne,” that is, imitating the shape of lasagne.40 When lasagne were documented outside Italy, as far away as England, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, they were identified with the term loscyns, losens, or losyngys, words that designated considerably different preparations with one point in common: a specific shape. These included a cheese paste made of a “sheet of dough, thin as paper”; “fine sheets in lozenges the size of a hand,” fried as fritters; and pastry made of (paste) lozenges and almond paste.41 How can we explain the apparent contradiction between the variety of preparations that bear this name and the semantic stability of the word lasagne, which always seems to refer to a fine sheet of dough, often square? If we keep in mind that lasagna derives from the Latin laganum, the meaning “fine sheet of dough” becomes clear. In Horace, the lagana were fine sheets of dough that one fried. One of the three English recipes was a direct descendant, in a sweet version. The early English word losens, very close to the French losange, also hints at the geometric shape indicated by the French word, a sense that is absent in the Italian word lasagna. Maxime Rodinson, who has delved into the mysterious etymology of this French word, tried to establish a link to the Arab-Persian term lawsinag, indicating an almond cake, numerous recipes for which are found in medieval Arab culinary treatises.42 Rodinson worked to reestablish the culinary meaning of the word losange in French; given that the heraldic meaning (coat-of-arms–shaped, like a lozenge) is attested from an earlier 24 the infancy of an art

date, he believed that there exists “a bundle of suppositions that tend to link the French word ‘losange’ with the Eastern cake lawzinag.”43 In truth, however, it is the concept of shape, and therefore the heraldic sense—exactly the reverse of what Rodinson supposed—that prevailed in relation to lawzinag, because the cakes in question, as one can still see with most so-called eastern cakes, baked in large round pans, are cut into small lozenge shapes. It was the shape more than the nature of the object that counted in this first designation, which appears evident for the coats of arms. That there might have been a convergence between lawzinag and lagana at some later date, inasmuch as both words described paste-based dishes that could be cut into lozenge shapes, as Alice Vollenweider suggested,44 is not unreasonable. The final confluence occurs with the English term losens, used to describe at the same time a square shape and a dish made with a thin sheet of paste. And so, as late as the turn of the seventeenth century in France, we find in the Thresor de santé a description of the preparation of a lozans, a type of paste that is “cut up into lozenges to dry.”45 This etymological contamination that one can hypothesize for the word lozenge, heir at the same time to the Persian-Arab term lawzinag and to the Greco-Latin lagana, demonstrates the degree to which culinary vocabulary is sensitive to the spirit of the time and to fashions that arrive from far away. For the English, in fact, Italian lasagne were probably just as exotic as the Persian-Arab lawzinag. Over time, what one might call the multifunctionality of lasagna, a bequest of its long-ago ancestor laganum, dwindled. Beginning in the fifteenth century, lasagna, in Italian culinary treatises, began to appear as a pasta product in the way that we understand it nowadays, which is to say, essentially boiled in water. And so ordinary fritters made of a simple sheet of dough were no longer called lasagne, as they had been in the past, but now became just frittelle.46 In any case, a sheet of pasta dough considered as the transitional product of a preliminary process can be used to create many other pasta shapes. Cut into various forms, that dough becomes the pasta that we cook in boiling water and flavor with grated cheese. The dough can also be thought of as an envelope to be used to protect a purée or a fine stuffing. In such a function, the pasta is still a descendant of the original lagana in which layered sheets separating as many layers of chopped meat formed a sort of cake. The innovation brought about in the Middle Ages in this sort of preparation is found in the miniaturization of what was originally a dish meant to be cut the infancy of an art 25

into separate portions when eaten. The stuffed pastas of the Middle Ages were considered as little, bite-sized cakes, hence the name tortelli, or little cakes. This explains why those Lilliputian cakes, known variously as tortelli and ravioli (though the etymology of this last is far less clear),47 were not always cooked in broth throughout the fourteenth century, as one might expect; often they were pan-fried, instead, much like larger cakes, which were oven-baked in dry heat. And so, in the Italian culinary treatises of the period, ravioli and tortelli were sometimes classed as fritters48 and sometimes treated as stuffed pasta products, cooked in moist heat. Beginning in the fifteenth century, according to Master Martino, chef at the Sforza court of Milan and later at the palace of the patriarch of Aquilea, ravioli had become stuffed pasta in their own right. They were no longer fried. Things had become perfectly clear: fifteenth-century Italy was the realm of “His Majesty the Raviolo,” the size of a walnut, a chestnut, or perhaps half a chestnut, and always cooked in broth.49 The wrapping was supposed to be especially delicate, sometimes so fine that it became invisible, replaced by a sprinkling of flour. In this case, the ravioli were naked, “without their wrapping,” changing shape at the same time, taking the form of little sticks of dough, “the length of a good-sized finger,”50 resembling some present-day gnocchi. So close was the tie between ravioli and the larger family of pasta that the author of the recipe would refer to the pasta wrapping even when there was none! The pasta wrapping, too thick for this dish, was replaced by its principal ingredient, flour, which was thus endowed with an essential metonymic role. This logic, when pushed to extremes, eliminated the very object of the definition, since the sheet of pasta, the lasagna matrix, no longer existed. In other dishes, lasagne preserved its age-old role as a source shape. This was true for croseti, a recipe for which dates back to the turn of the fourteenth century,51 as well as for longeti or longite, which date from the end of the same century.52 We know nothing about the exact shape of longeti, which were simply “cut out of a thin sheet,” but croseti were described with considerable precision: small oblong shapes, the size of a thumbnail, cut out of a lasagna and slightly marked with the imprint of a finger. It was not until the fifteenth century that lasagne was cut in shapes other than lozenges (as was the case with croseti) and that one of the now-classic shapes of pasta emerged: a strip or ribbon of variable width, down to the very narrowest, almost threadlike. It was discovered that when one rolled one 26 the infancy of an art

or more sheets of pasta over on themselves, it was possible to cut the roll of dough so as to obtain regular strips. This was the method recommended by Master Martino to make what he called “macharoni alla romana,” strips of flat noodles cut into ribbons “as wide as one’s little finger,”53 as well as to make “macharoni alla genovese, also known as tagliarini,” cut so fine that their width was comparable to that of a needle,54 and also called triti or formentini.55 This is the earliest appearance of the word macharoni (in modern Italian, maccheroni, which gave French and English the term macaroni) in a culinary context—already with two connotations. In fact, in Martino’s manuscripts, the word macharoni was used to describe two very different types of pasta: the first definition referred to pasta with a flat cross-section, shaped like relatively broad strips or ribbons, obtained from a sheet of dough, while the second referred to pasta with a round cross-section but hollowed out lengthwise, the product of shaping the pasta into little rolls and then piercing them from end to end with a metal wire. The latter were called “macharoni alla siciliana” by Martino. We know that Sicily was the center of trade in dry pasta, with documentation dating back to the twelfth century. Did Martino use the term macharoni to designate the same dry-pasta specialties that the geographer Idrisi called itriyya? It seems likely, but in the fourteenth century the word maccheroni was apparently generic, as it could also be used to indicate a type of gnocchi that was made by pressing a pellet of dough against a grater, at least according to the poet Tivi degli Odasi.56 This may shed some light on the mysterious shape of the famous macaroni that rolled down the slopes of a mountain of grated parmesan cheese in the land of Bengodi, the land of Cockaigne described by Boccaccio.57 Without a doubt, the author of the Decameron was thinking of gnocchi-shaped macaroni, but in that period Tuscan trattorias also served stringlike macaroni. In any case, certain macaroni were already sufficiently long to be eaten with a fork, which was used to “gather them and roll them up,” as the foodloving Noddo d’Andrea, hero of a story narrated by the Tuscan author Franco Sacchetti, was described doing so skillfully, afterward gobbling them down so rapidly that he came close to leaving his unfortunate fellow diner without food. His tablemate, fearing that he would never be able to taste a bite when he saw the noodles being depleted so rapidly, preferred to quickly give his remaining share to the dog.58 The many meanings of the word macharoni or maccheroni, beginning in the fourteenth century and found later in the work of Master the infancy of an art 27

Martino in the technical descriptions offered in the recipes, show that the far boundary of the exploitation of the sheet of dough had been reached. It no longer constituted the sole matrix for the preparation of a great variety of pasta shapes. Now it was in competition with another technique that involved modeling little fragments of dough with one’s fingers or palms and rolling it on a surface to obtain what would from now on be described with the generic term vermicelli. But while the words macharoni and vermicelli are attested in Italy as early as the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, as indicated by certain sources from Italy’s Jewish communities,59 it took the culinary texts of the fifteenth century to confirm the existence of these two shaping techniques, which tended to merge into a shared heritage. Genoese-style macaroni represented the epitome of this technical syncretism since, though they were made from a single sheet of dough, they wound up resembling threads or needles.

the family of vermicelli The relatively late appearance of vermicelli in the sources of the Italian area, considering the extremely early use of the lasagne-type sheet of pasta, has led numerous food historians to hypothesize that stringlike pasta was not native to the central Mediterranean basin and was instead of Arab origin, as we mentioned at the beginning of this chapter. The question bears further examination. As we have noted, the link between the Greek term itrion and the word tri or tria documented in medieval medical texts was lost to memory during the High Middle Ages, and it was not until Arab and Greek treatises were translated by Christian physicians beginning in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries that the two latter terms were used to describe a type of pasta. The earliest Italian culinary treatises mention tri in the sense of vermicelli, as is shown for instance by a recipe entitled “tria of vermicelli” in a fourteenth-century manuscript published at the end of the nineteenth century.60 All the same, vermicelli and tri or tria appeared only rarely in these culinary texts, compared with other preparations made from sheets of dough. This might well lead us to think that this type of pasta was not yet very widely known. In contrast, itriyya pastas, under various names, are documented in the Arab-Andalusian world and in the Far East at least as far back as 28 the infancy of an art

the thirteenth century, if not much earlier, especially in the eastern Mediterranean. As early as the ninth century, people knew what itriyya was, as is shown by the Syriac dictionary of Bar Ali, and it was remembered, thanks to the Jerusalem Talmud, that a kind of pasta known as itrium was common in Palestine from the third to fifth centuries. The earliest culinary works to mention these pastas under the name itriyya, a few centuries later, all come from the Arab-Andalusian world or the Far East.61 These texts contain numerous recipes for these stringlike pastas. It is difficult to say how they were made, however, even if we read recipes explaining the process: was this a type of pasta shaped like vermicelli, rolled between the fingers, or was this instead a type of thin tagliatelle, cut out of a sheet of kneaded dough? The texts are anything but clear. Bernard Rosenberger, who has studied them closely, tends to favor the second solution, because he has also found regular mentions, alongside the word itriyya, of another term. In Arab texts, the word fidaws indicates a type of paste that Rosenberger compares with vermicelli, made by rolling between one’s fingers fragments of dough in the shape of tiny grains, more or less tapered. Less common, but similarly well attested, are the words mhammis and sa’iriyya; the former indicates a small grain-shaped paste, about the size of a peppercorn, while the latter, synonymous with fidaws, is a small pasta, likewise grain-shaped, but more tapered, like a grain of wheat. The term fidaws, which gives Spanish the word fideos, the present-day name for vermicelli, was to become quite widespread, even outside the Iberian peninsula. Rosenberger notes that, parallel to these terms, in a treatise written in Baghdad dating from the thirteenth century, the word rista also indicated pasta similar to itriyya. The great eleventh-century physician Avicenna (Ibn Sina), commenting on the dietetic properties of itriyya, pointed out that “in [his] country, it was known as ‘rechta’ (‘rista’).”62 Avicenna was born in faroff Khorasan, which means that the term might well have derived from the Persian word rista, as certain specialists seem to think. Should we surmise that these two words represent the same thing? That seems to be the view of Rosenberger, who feels that rista was used more commonly in the East to describe this sort of pasta, as it is to the present day, while itriyya was preferred in the Maghreb and in Spain. This is not entirely certain, since some tagliatelle-shaped noodles are still called rechta in Algeria, in both Arabic and in Judeo-Arabic,63 where one might well expect an appellation derived from itriyya. the infancy of an art 29

This wealth of terminology concerning small stringlike pasta products in the Arab-Andalusian area between the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries suggests that each name must have been the product of interactions between various tribes and ethnic groups and their emigrations according to various paths that are difficult to reconstruct. In this connection, Rosenberger comments on the regional variations of vocabulary in Spain, where the Castilian tongue integrates, for instance, on a regional basis, including closely neighboring regions, the words fideos and alatria, probably the product of a corruption of the Arabic word itriyya, to indicate the same types of pasta that we call vermicelli. Likewise, the word fideos, which probably derives from the term fidaws, of unknown etymology,64 is, according to a recent study, the term most commonly used throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries to describe the pasta products that were exported in substantial quantities from Cagliari and largely destined for Barcelona and Majorca but also Valencia and such major Italian cities as Genoa, Naples, and Pisa. This might suggest that the word had a generic connotation in that period.65 Laura Galoppini, the author of the study in question, notes that the records of Sardinian customs offices also note rarer occurrences of the words macaroni and alatria, and she expresses no doubt that in the late fourteenth century these three types of dry pasta were sold in the marketplace of Cagliari.66 For that matter, we find mention of the term alatria in two recipes in a renowned Catalonian culinary treatise dating from the turn of the fourteenth century.67 Without question, fideos is the source of a number of words that have entered numerous languages to describe vermicelli: fidelli in Liguria, fidiaux in Provence in the late sixteenth century, and fidés in present-day Savoy.68 Is it possible that the Spanish were familiar with vermicelli-type pasta at least a century before the Italians, as the culinary texts suggest? If we rely solely on the information provided by this literature, that would seem to be the case. We know, however, from the geographer Idrisi, that Sicily was already in the twelfth century a major exporter of pasta, which he called itriyya, throughout the Mediterranean basin. Likely these were noodles similar to vermicelli or others that were subjected to a drying process so that they could be traded.69 Even more interesting is the fact that vermicelli were probably well known as early as the twelfth century to the Jewish settlers in northern France. According to Mordecai Kosover, the author of a linguistic 30 the infancy of an art

study of Jewish foods,70 the nature of vermicelli worried certain members of the Ashkenazi and French communities, who wondered whether this category of foodstuff should be subjected to the “deduction of the hallah,” a debate that had already been waged among their ancestors in Palestine during the earliest centuries of the Christian era.71 In the commentaries on the Babylon Talmud that complete the commentary of Rashi, Kosover has found documentation of two terms—trijes and vermishelsh—clearly related to tri and vermicelli, especially if we accept the definition given for the first of the two terms, “foods made of crushed wheat.”72 A twelfth-century disciple of Rashi, who came from Germany, completed the commentary by adding that vrimzlish belonged to the same family of foods that required blessing and there was no reason not to bless them as well.73 Discussions of this question and the divergent opinions that ensued evidently did not cease after the compilation of the Talmud, and they continued right up to the nineteenth century, as Kosover suggests. The terminology of pasta products would even become a criterion allowing one to determine the geographic origin of a speaker. The word vrimzlish (in a number of geographic variants), common to the vocabulary of the western Yiddish spoken by the Jews of Germany, was gradually to disappear, replaced by lokshen, a word that was probably of Persian origin transmitted through Ukrainian,74 indicating the eastern descent of certain Jewish speakers.75 The fact that the two terms were synonymous, however, is attested by a nursery rhyme sung in certain Jewish schools in Paris in the 1930s: “Les lokshen ça s’appelle / Des vermicelles / Pour danser la Scottish / Gefillte fish.”76 It is easy to recognize in the Yiddish transcriptions provided by Kosover imitations of the words tria and vermicelli during a period roughly two centuries earlier than the latter word’s earliest documentation in the Mediterranean world. This presence of vermicelli in French and German Jewish culture as far back as the twelfth century, with mentions as well of the learned name tria, when so far no one has found any documentation mentioning them by their Italian name, proves that these types of fine pasta spread very rapidly through much of Europe, beginning with Italy, well before they appeared in recipes in the various European culinary treatises of the late Middle Ages77—all this probably simultaneous with their spread through the western Mediterranean. This likely involvement of the Jews in the spread of vermicelli toward northern Europe should be considered as a parallel development to the existence in Italy of Jewthe infancy of an art 31

ish pasta makers.78 An Arabic text written in the fifteenth century in Morocco states that the Jews of Fez were specialized in certain trades and professions, among them the cooking of fidaws and sa’iriyya, which were also types of vermicelli or at least stringlike fine pasta.79 (We do not know when this specialization of Moroccan Jews began. The establishment of Jewish communities in the Maghreb dates to well before the Arab conquest, since St. Jerome, in the fourth/fifth centuries, was already worried about it, fearing that the church might be threatened by the flourishing of local Judaism.) There is no reason to doubt that these Jews would have had the same concerns as their Ashkenazi brethren concerning the problem of hallah, especially if pasta of the vermicelli variety was a long-standing Jewish specialty. This would imply that each community of Jewish emigrants brought with it the concept of vermicelli-style pasta, subsequently adapting it linguistically to the influence of the cultures to which they had been more or less assimilated. If vermicelli are attested in ancient times in Italy, especially in Sicily, it comes as no surprise that the earliest Italian culinary texts scarcely use the term tria to describe them. One may safely assume that the Italian word, which literally means “little worms” and clearly refers to the specific shape of these pasta preparations, became current at almost the same time as the origin of the process of making those foods and as a direct result of that process, so there was no need to use tria, a scholarly word that might also have been perceived as foreign. As for Idrisi, while he uses the term itriyya while speaking of Sicily, he does so because he was writing in his native language. It remains to be explained why vermicelli make such a timid appearance in the earliest Italian culinary treatises at the turn of the fourteenth century, when fidaws, itriyya, and other sa’iriyya were cited so regularly in Arabic-Andalusian treatises as early as the thirteenth century.

dry pasta, fresh pasta While the earliest Italian recipes for vermicelli tell nothing about their nature, Andalusian-Arabic culinary literature leaves no doubt at all that these pasta shapes were small stringlike or grainlike pasta shapes that were dried after being made and that therefore they were a preserved product, ready to cook. This is confirmed by the data on trade in the Mediterranean in the fourteenth century,80 though it 32 the infancy of an art

could have been guessed at from the numerous mentions made by the twelfth-century Arab geographer Idrisi concerning the specialized production of itriyya in Trebbia, Sicily, destined for sale throughout the Mediterranean basin. The Arabic culinary texts studied by Rosenberger show that this type of pasta constituted a staple foodstuff found in every kitchen and notes that “if it happen[ed] that one [could] not find itriyya,” one could easily make it on one’s own, by “knead[ing] some semolina (smida) or some flour (daqiq) with some water and a pinch of salt into a dough.”81 The text goes on to explain that fidaws were made with a firm dough rolled between the fingers to the size of kernels of wheat and then sun-dried.82 Thus, in contrast with lasagne, which were consumed immediately after they were made, vermicelli, which were generally subjected to a drying process, could be preserved at length, and their consumption could be deferred for some time. Only a well-dried product that could withstand transport undamaged could become the stuff of long-distance trade. It was therefore as a commercial product that vermicelli slowly made their way into culinary tradition. The earliest Italian recipes of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries describe how they were made with some precision, stipulating that they had to be exposed to sunlight in order to dry them and to give them the qualities needed for long-term preservation. This is the method described by Master Martino, who claimed that dry pasta could be preserved for two or three years, especially if it had been made under an August moon.83 As if that left any doubt, with the phrase “and when you decide to cook them,” the recipe further avers that vermicelli could be made well in advance and served at one’s convenience. It should be noted, however, that Martino did not purchase his vermicelli, which indicates something of a contradiction. We shall return further to this question in chapter 8; for now, we simply observe that this wellrespected court chef preferred to make his own pasta and then dry it for use later rather than purchase it. Practices such as this might explain why mentions of vermicelli are so rare in treatises dating back to before the fifteenth century. These texts were produced in aristocratic and court circles, and they described only the noblest and most sophisticated activities of the master chefs; no doubt, the professional cooks of the great houses were reluctant to purchase manufactured foodstuffs and the preserved products of trade, with the exception of spices. This would hold for the vermicelli made in the workshops of Sicily and the southern Italian peninsula. the infancy of an art 33

In the Arab-Andalusian area, vermicelli were basically considered ingredients for stews, mixed with the other components used in the preparation of these dishes and cooked along with them. This was also true in Italy, where vermicelli were grouped in the category of ingredients used to make gruels and mushes. The majority of the halfdozen recipes that have survived from the fourteenth century call for cooking them in almond milk, with plenty of sugar, and coloring them with saffron,84 because it was necessary for “this dish to be yellow and thick in consistency.”85 According to most of the recipes from this early period, these preparations of vermicelli, more refined than mushes and gruels, were served especially to the sick, who needed more delicate nourishment than usual. While it was occasionally necessary to make a distinction between fresh pasta and dried pasta as far back as the Middle Ages, particularly in connection with long-distance trade, there was no real difference between the two categories in culinary terms. Indeed, while medieval cooks may have prepared their own vermicelli, they clearly took inspiration from the formats and models used in trade, though they appear to have cast a somewhat mistrustful eye on preserved foods. In other words, the existence of large-scale manufacturing and long-distance trade did nothing to hinder the development of either the domestic preparation of vermicelli and other stringlike pasta shapes or the consumption of these pasta products in a fresh or semidried state. Dried pasta was often linked to the use of durum wheat semolina, as if pasta that was going to be dried necessarily required the use of semolina as a basic ingredient. Practical use in the kitchen, however, as documented by culinary treatises, made no distinction between semolina and flour, either in the Andalusian-Arab world, or in Christian Spain, or—most important—in Italy, where flour remained the basic ingredient in the home preparation of pasta, whether in strings or in sheets. The factor that truly distinguished fresh pasta from dried pasta was the method of preparation, and these two different methods gave rise to sharply differing traditions in Spain and in Italy in the centuries that followed.

later developments of two traditions While the ancient methods of working rolled-out pasta, in the form of kneaded dough or sheets, remained widespread in the central Mediterranean—that is, Italy and Sicily—cooks in the region also 34 the infancy of an art

made early use of techniques that involved shaping fragments of dough into vermicelli by hand. Proof of this is the greater occurrence in the vernacular of the term vermicelli (in Latin, vermiculi) in contrast with use of the scholarly term tria; this indicates that vermicelli was, if not native, at the very least rapidly assimilated into the culture. Further evidence of this is the constant presence in commentaries on the Talmud by the Tosafists in twelfth-century France and Germany of debates concerning the true nature of vermishelsh that echo those of their fellow Jews in Palestine who first drew up the Talmud in the very first centuries of the Christian era. Probably the technique of manufacturing this kind of pasta early on reached as far as Sicily, the center of an immense trade network and the capital of Jewish culture in the Middle Ages, where a tradition of cultural exchanges with Palestine, Provence, and the Rhineland had been established.86 The Italian encounter between the sheet of fresh pasta and the string of pasta, often dried, resulted in the progressive foundation of a tradition unrivaled in its wealth that went on to engender a multiform culture of pasta, probably without an equivalent in other areas. It is likely that the encounter took place well before the arrival of the Arabs in the Mediterranean, though there is little doubt that the latter went on to play a decisive role as middlemen and popularizers, distributing string pasta all the way to Spain. Is it possible they met Jews who manufactured fidaws? Might this explain the simultaneous existence in Arab-Andalusian culinary treatises of the two words fidaws and itriyya to describe the same type of pasta? This history still influences the conflicting traditions of Italy and Spain: the two civilizations of pasta of the western and central Mediterranean, which developed from diverse foundations beginning in the Middle Ages, have produced customs, tastes, and cuisines that are sharply distinct. Spain, faithful to its medieval tradition, favors small pasta of the vermicelli category as a complement to soup or stew and as a substitute for rice. Italy has developed a full-fledged gastronomy of pasta in all its transformations. In Italy, pasta was and still is cooked for its own sake and properly appreciated for its special texture and substance.

Stringlike and Granular Pastas in Northern Africa and Spain. While Spain is well known for its flavorful and distinctive cuisine—its tapas, the infancy of an art 35

its fish, and its incomparable way of preparing rice—its renown in the preparation of pasta products has not survived the centuries. A careful reading of the culinary treatises of the thirteenth century tells us a great deal about the role played by pasta in Spanish recipes. As numerous specialists have noted, stringlike or grainlike pasta was generally cooked in rich broths, in meat sauces, and even occasionally with legumes or rice, and its role seems to have been to give a substance to a dish as a whole.87 Recipes document the tireless effort taken to reproduce faithfully or simply imitate kernels of cereals. In some ways, pasta represented an idealized version of cereal, inasmuch as it is artificially created by the hand of man. In societies in which the making of pasta was considered as a sort of creation of grains, pasta products fit into a continuum ranging from couscous to vermicelli. There was a progressive development from the rolling of couscous in tiny kernels to the manufacture of vermicelli and on to larger grainlike foods such as mhammis. This continuity in the manufacturing techniques finds its equivalent in the methods of cooking and presentation of the various foodstuffs. In North Africa, cereal transformed into couscous is cooked separately from the broth, but it remains a form of backup, since broth and meat are poured on the already cooked couscous. Rechta, a modern Algerian preparation of stringlike fresh pasta steamed like couscous, is also served like couscous, with a meat stew poured over it. The Spanish dish paella de fideria features tiny vermicelli in place of rice. It comes as no surprise that in this area, heir to the tradition of pasta conceived as a substitute for kernels of cereal, there is a total absence of stuffed pasta, a specialty that is fully developed in Italy and China.

Italy and Pasta in Sauce. Italy has developed an entirely different approach to pasta. While we should not overlook the importance of small, fine, or soup pasta, the descendants of vermicelli, cooked in broths or almond milk much like a gruel or mush, Italy distinguished itself primarily with a cuisine of pasta cooked on its own and prepared in thick sauces that lives on in the Italian tradition under the name pastasciutta. Although we have documented mentions of losens or macrows in a few medieval English texts,88 allowing us to suppose that certain preparations of pasta products (of Italian origin?) enjoyed popularity 36 the infancy of an art

in aristocratic circles in Britain in the period, Italy is the only country in Europe that developed as early as the Middle Ages a full-fledged cuisine of pasta. No longer limited to the category of gruels and mushes, pastas were now dishes in their own right, enjoyed for their own sake, for their texture in the mouth, their chewiness, or, to the contrary, their softness, characteristics that change with the array of formats and the ingredients, each enhancing the pasta in its own way. Pasta’s starring role in Italy is emblematically represented in the structure of the modern Italian menu, which features pasta as the first dish, classing it as a primo. Italian pasta, as a foodstuff and as a culinary category, has acquired a status as a proper component of any menu. And it seems that this status is found only in Italian cuisine, where pasta is eaten on its own, whereas in many other countries it serves merely as a side dish for meat, in much the same way that other starches are served. The Italian taste for pasta, which is epitomized in the term pastasciutta, opposed in culinary taxonomy to the term pasta in brodo (literally, pasta in broth), was the product of a slow evolution. The tradition of lasagne led even before the Middle Ages to an exploration of the interesting potential of sheet pasta, which could be exploited equally well in culinary and in gastronomic terms. Italian creativity was brought to bear in both the manufacture of pasta and its culinary exploitation. Innovations of the material never seem to end. One of the very first probably entailed rolling dough into little strands between the fingers, which enriched the age-old tradition of rolling dough into sheets. This resulted, beginning in the fifteenth century, in a mixed array of techniques ideally suited to the production of a great variety of formats, indicated by the wealth of names: croseti, formentine, maccaroni, quinquinelli, ravioli, tortelli, vermicelli, and so forth.89 The recipe for macaroni Sicilian-style—pasta shaped like straw, pierced one by one with a metal wire—found in one of the manuscripts of Master Martino constitutes an important innovation in the long history of pasta-making techniques. The elaborations that followed, as we shall discuss in chapter 3, were marked by a constant determination to consolidate and enrich production. The activity of making pasta became a profession, and, as consumption increased, it contributed to the development of a genuine technical, cultural, and gastronomic heritage, founded on the use of durum wheat semolina and the custom of creating dried pasta for the preparation of pastasciutta. the infancy of an art 37

recognition of a culinary category As we have already noted, in the Middle Ages, pasta did not represent a clearly defined category of cuisine and foodstuffs, at least according to the evidence of culinary treatises. In the earliest culinary texts, dating back to the fourteenth century, which feature names of pasta products, the recipes are not grouped together, and there was no generic term to designate them collectively as the Italian term pasta is used nowadays. Of course, the word pasta was not unknown, and it was used in many expressions that might have indicated groups of dishes including pasta products, but the pasta whose names we have identified in the Middle Ages did not constitute, as they would today, a category of cuisine. A question arises, however, as to the double meaning of the term and the objects that it describes. Throughout the Middle Ages and after, to the end of the sixteenth century, the word pasta in the expressions lavori di pasta (creations in paste) in the writings of Scappi, sixteenth-century chef to the pope, and cibi di pasta (paste dishes) in the later writings of Tommaso Garzoni, seems to refer to all sorts of dough-based preparations or preparations containing paste. In Scappi’s Opera, the fifth book, entitled Libro delle paste (Book of pastes), was devoted to pies and all manner of tarts, including such sugary cakes as fritters, marzipans, and waffles, while Tommaso Garzoni, writing at the same time, classified among the lavori di pasta macaroni, vermicelli, lasagne, tagliatelle, gnocchi, tortelli, ravioli (with or without dough), and even flaky pastries, pie and tart doughs, and fritters.90 Although these classifications do not correspond to our modern notion of pasta—even though the Italian word still preserves numerous meanings and connotations—they do show that these authors were aware of a consistency among the dishes listed: all contained flour mixed with other ingredients in such a way as to create an amalgamated paste, which corresponds to the meaning of the Greek original of the word pasta. Their classifications, however, did not take into account the method of cooking applied to the foods in question, while nowadays cooking in a moist environment is a defining feature of the culinary and nutritional category of pasta. Despite this lack of a specific pigeonhole in the general alimentary taxonomy for preparations made with kneaded dough and boiled in water, we are not all that far from a recognition of pasta products (or alimentary pastes) in the sense that we have defined. Master Martino 38 the infancy of an art

certainly came quite close. After setting forth one after another of his recipes for macaroni and other vermicelli, he describes them as “vivande di pasta,” literally pasta dishes.91 With this concluding phrase, Martino shows that he thought of these dishes, if not as belonging to a well-defined category, at least as representing a single family of foodstuffs. In fact, the first people to conceive of pasta as a food category all its own were physicians. Early medical art was equally devoted to preserving health and developing remedies for illness and considered diet an essential factor in a healthy equilibrium.92 Dietetics, the art of proper nutrition, explored in a flourishing body of popularizing literature beginning in the thirteenth century, was based on the classification of all foods in terms of their nature (warm-dry, warm-moist, cooldry, cool-moist), linking them to the complexion or temperament of the eater. As we have said, at the turn of the fourteenth century, the word tri was used by certain physicians to indicate an unleavened dough in the shape of long strings, with reference to the Greco-Arab scholarly tradition. The word pasta appeared in medical language around the turn of the fifteenth century, when certain physicians began writing about ferculis de pasta. The expression was translated a little later into Italian with the phrase manzare de pasta (pasta dishes), and was used to describe dishes such as lasagne and macaroni that were eaten with cheese and believed to generate “viscous humors.”93 The physician Michele Savonarola criticized “lasagnole, menudelli,” which were “especially made with an unleavened dough,” for having too little warmth, remaining too long in the stomach, producing flatulence, and therefore being difficult to digest. He recommended eating them with sugar, in order to reduce their “viscosity.”94 Analyses and judgments of the physical nature of these dishes agree that their viscosity, considered so harmful, came both from their composition—an unleavened, and therefore heavier, dough—and from the way in which they were cooked, which contributed to their “cool moistness,” whereas cooking in dry heat would have given them the warmth they lacked. Thus, unlike chefs, in order to do their work properly, physicians needed to have a precise concept of what pasta was. Likewise, merchants operating in Cagliari were compelled by the necessities of trade to find a term for this food, and in the fourteenth century the expression obra de pasta came into use to describe, apparently in a generic manner, certain export products including pasta, also referred to more commonly as alatria and macaroni. the infancy of an art 39

Over time, culinary treatises came more to recognize the unity of the alimentary and culinary category of pasta in the sense that we understand today, considering it, much as Master Martino did, as a family of foodstuffs sharing the same basic nature, but it would not be until several centuries later, as we shall show in chapter 3, that pasta became a menu heading in its own right. This was to be one of the essential contributions of the pasta industry that was to develop in certain centers along the Mediterranean coastline.

40 the infancy of an art

CHAPTER TWO

The Time of the Pioneers Beginning as a simple product, made as needed in individual kitchens, pasta soon had to be produced intensively and quickly to feed the channels of small- and large-scale commerce. This craft activity, carried on by a specific professional group, whose production capacity often reached a level that could qualify as industrial, was divided into two rival and complementary sectors: dried pasta, made of durum wheat semolina, and fresh pasta, usually made of soft wheat flour. Manufacturers of dried pasta, forerunners of the future pasta industry that Italy would practically monopolize for years to come, were from the outset concentrated primarily in the south, especially in Sicily, which, as early as the twelfth century, was the most important center of production. The producers of fresh pasta were, in contrast, scattered throughout the peninsula, and generally responded to local demand. Known as lasagnari (manufacturers of lasagne), they were the distant ancestors of the commerce in fresh pasta that thrived primarily in the cities of central and northern Italy, where they are still numerous today, as they are in the major cities of the Western world, to which they spread.

sicily, the cradle of dry pasta We know very little about the hand making of dried pasta in the Middle Ages, but the few known sources indicate that Sicily was the cradle of the art. The Arab geographer Idrisi (ca. 1100–1165) observed pasta making on the island, describing it as the center of major maritime trade: “To the west of Termini there is a town called Trabìa [the square], an enchanting place to live, abounding in streams that drive numerous mills. Trabìa sits in a vast plain with many great estates, where great quantities of pasta are made and exported everywhere, especially to Calabria and other Muslim and Christian lands; many shiploads are sent.”1 This brief commentary, often cited, is interesting not only for what it says explicitly, but also for what it implies. It is the only passage in Idrisi’s monumental work that makes any reference to the production of pasta, even though the author traveled through nearly all the realms of Christendom and the Muslim world. We are inclined to think that as careful an observer as this author would not have failed to note other places where pasta was made if he had learned of them during the course of his travels from England to the Maghreb, from France to the Middle East, travels that allowed him to form a very accurate picture of the world of his time. If, as is so commonly reported, the Arabs really did introduce the technique of drying pasta into Sicily, it would appear that the Sicilians quickly surpassed their teachers, and developed the art as it had been developed nowhere else. It is anything but surprising that intensive pasta production should have developed first in Sicily, since the island had all the appropriate characteristics for its pursuit. Always considered a breadbasket for its wheat harvests, in the Middle Ages Sicily was, along with Apulia, one of the great producers of durum wheat in the Mediterranean world and Western Christendom in general. This abundance, which so excited the admiration of the Arab geographer, was already present in antiquity, as evidenced by agronomists’ calling the island a land of durum wheat (Triticum).2 (Like all the agronomists of his time, Pliny preferred durum wheat [tritico] over the varieties of soft wheat [siligo] and considered Sicilian wheat to be the best in the empire.)3 In Idrisi’s time, the production of pasta in Sicily seems to have been the prerogative of the great landed estates, whose owners also very probably owned mills. In other words, the makers of dry pasta in Sicily found themselves in the singular situation of control42 the time of the pioneers

ling the entire chain of production, from the cultivation of the wheat all the way down to the production of the finished product, including the transformation of raw material into semolina. These were businessmen with considerable financial resources, as well as the commercial expertise to make the most of their activities. The island’s geographic situation, moreover, at the intersection of the Christian and Muslim worlds, placed it at the crossroads of trade. Finally, and most important, the Sicilians, whether they lived in cities or in the countryside, were consumers of wheat, in a world where most Westerners ate rye, barley, and other poor cereals. “Separated from the land, a day-worker more often than a farmer of his own land, resident of a large town with several thousand inhabitants, or even a rural city, the Sicilian peasant was an urban consumer,” wrote Maurice Aymard and Henri Bresc in their study of consumption on the island from the Middle Ages to the modern era.4 Like citydwellers, rural Sicilians purchased bread and sometimes pasta, foodstuffs that were certainly not cheap, to which they apparently had easier access than most European peasants, thus creating a demand that did not exist elsewhere. We are convinced, in fact, that the commercialization of pasta could only have developed in a strongly urbanized society, and thus the remarkable expansion of pasta in Italy from the twelfth to the fifteenth century was by no means an accident. We must presume that the consumption of pasta enjoyed a broader and earlier diffusion in Sicily than elsewhere, since, beginning in 1371, the authorities of Palermo regulated the retail sale of “white semolina macaroni and semolina lasagne” and of “flour macaroni and lasagne,” establishing a maximum price of, respectively, thirty and twenty denari per rotolo (32 ounces), and it is well known that price controls are instituted primarily for staple goods. (The same document distinguishes between two types of pasta—axutta, dry, and bagnata, wet, that is, fresh5—although without specifying their respective prices.) Note the significant difference between the price of semolina-based pasta and flour-based pasta, of course, a result of the difference in the cost of raw materials, but also a reflection of the greater commercial popularity of semolina pasta. According to certain authors, an equally early center of production, possibly dating back two centuries before those in Sicily, had been established on the Amalfi coast in conjunction with a milling trade that is said to have developed there between the ninth and eleventh centuries. Some of these mills, it would appear, had rooms equipped the time of the pioneers 43

for the production of dough on the ground floor.6 We do not know if these workshops date back to the era when the first mills were established, and we cannot safely say that the existence of rooms devoted to making dough are proof of pasta production (for all we know, the dough may have been used to make bread). But we do know that the region became a major and respected center of the production of dry pasta long before Torre Annunziata and Gragnano became famous for their pasta industry beginning in the eighteenth century.

sardinia and other centers of production Sicily’s only serious rival during the Middle Ages was Sardinia, the other major island in the Mediterranean. There were other centers of production in a few major Italian cities, but they seem still to have been underdeveloped. In Pisa the manufacture and sale of vermicelli were well documented as early as the late thirteenth century, but the activity seems to have been quite modest in scale, inasmuch as it was assigned to the bakers’ guild, no specific guild having yet been founded for the manufacturers of pasta. An apprenticeship agreement, signed in February 1284, between a young boy and a baker, stipulated that the apprentice should assist his master in the baker’s art and in the fabrication and sale of vermicelli (“in faciendis et vendendis vermicellis”).7 Nothing explicitly indicates that the pasta in question was dried. And if the vermicelli were sold to a local clientele, as might safely be supposed, it may not have been necessary to dry them thoroughly. Still, we cannot rule out entirely that Pisa developed a small-scale production of dry pasta, if only to ensure a supply for the crews of its fleet (the city was one of the main players in Mediterranean trade). As we shall see, this foodstuff was in some cases used in conjunction with, or in place of, the traditional hardtack as food for ships’ crews. In Naples manufacturers of macaroni were listed as purveyors in the accounts of the house of Anjou as early as 1295.8 The capital of what was then and would long remain the greatest kingdom in Italy, however, did not truly gain stature as a manufacturer of dry pasta until several centuries later, and then primarily with its satellite cities in the Gulf of Naples and on the Amalfi coast. The situation is a bit more complex in Genoa. This republic, a great maritime and financial power, appears to have been deeply involved in 44 the time of the pioneers

the pasta trade as far back as the twelfth century. Oddly enough, however, there is not the slightest trace in medieval sources of any pasta manufacturing activity. The research performed as of this writing in the archives of the Republic of Genoa, as well as the research carried out under the supervision of Professor Nilo Calvini of the University of Genoa, shows evidence only of the presence of lasagnari, such as, for instance, a certain Maria Borgogno, owner of a house in which lasagne was made, or “Gualtiero lasagnarius,” who lived in the Prione quarter of Genoa; she and he were mentioned, respectively, in notary documents dated 1316 and 1329.9 We know that in general, lasagnari produced fresh pasta rather than dry pasta. Could Genoa have been the marshaling yard of trade for a foodstuff that the city did not even produce? It seems unlikely, and yet Genoa does not seem to have been, at least at this point, a major manufacturing center. This is in direct contrast to what has been asserted by many authors on the basis of a single source: a reference to a “barrel full of macaroni” in an inventory drawn up after the death of the Genoese miles (soldier) Ponzio Bastone in 1279.10 Can this truly prove that the macaroni in question were made in Genoa? In any case, the question is an intricate one, since it would appear that the capital of Liguria had acquired, as early as the end of the thirteenth century, a certain reputation in the making of pasta, as is documented by the earliest cookbook in the Italian culture, compiled in circles close to the Anjou court of Naples. The author of this work suggests a recipe for Tria ianuensis, meaning Genoese-style,11 without however specifying how they were made; this indicates that it was possible to buy them in the local marketplace, ready to consume. This Genoese specialty, called variously tri, tria, macharoni, and taglierini, is thoroughly documented in other culinary texts of later date from central and northern Italy. This confirms the long-standing reputation of the Genoese specialty, as well as its spread over this geographic area.12 There is no evidence of shops engaged in the production of tri in the city any earlier than the sixteenth century, a period when the pasta makers of Genoa became well known under the name fidelari because of the establishment of a guild by that name, but this probably means that either the shops that produced pasta in those earliest times were located elsewhere on the Ligurian coast, or else, more probably, Genoa simply lent its name to pasta products that were purchased in Sicily and Sardinia and then resold throughout the Mediterranean basin. It is quite common for a product to be known the time of the pioneers 45

by the name of the port or city that markets it, as is the case with the wines of Bordeaux, the wines of Port (Oporto), and the wheat of Taganrog, named after the port on the Sea of Azov where the market was held for durum wheat from the Ukraine, that was imported by Italian and French pasta makers in the nineteenth century. It was not until the turn of the fifteenth century that the production of dried pasta became visible in Apulia. But it seems to have already been quite well articulated at that point, which leads us to believe that it must have dated back to an earlier period. The accounts book of the University of Molfetta, an administrative entity located in the small town of that name in the province of Bari, mentioned expenses for the years 1442–1443 related to vermicelli, and by a royal decree dated 1472, the manufacturers of that town received exemption from the tax normally levied on “such pasta products as vermicelli and other similar items that are made in the town in question and are shipped by sea to Venice and other places for sale,” a tax that, according to the plaintiffs, had never been a custom in the town, and for which they demanded reimbursement.13 In the same period, the statutes of Bisceglie, a small town close to Bari, provided that makers, merchants, and retailers of vermicelli and other pasta products were exempt from all taxes.14 If the civil authorities were taking measures of this sort, it must have been to encourage the activities of the pasta makers, and this fit into the logic adopted by the cabinet of the king, who supported the manufacturers of Molfetta and worked to favor their trade. After Sicily, the most dynamic center of production developed in Sardinia, another renowned source of durum wheat and an island that similarly occupied a strategic position at the crossroads of the trade routes in the Mediterranean. Here, once again, sources offer no specific information on pasta makers, but we have some excellent reasons to think they were already present in considerable number in the fourteenth century. A painstaking study of the Aduanas sardas (customs records of the port of Cagliari), covering the periods 1351–1397 and 1427–1429, shows that there was a substantial traffic in pasta to various Mediterranean ports.15 This pasta is registered only as an export product, which proves that it was made on the island. The pasta is registered under three different terms: fideus, maccarons (or macharons), and obra de pasta. It is difficult to identify with precision the pasta shapes and sizes that were covered by this Catalonianinspired terminology (the island came under Aragon rule in 1326), 46 the time of the pioneers

but if we give credence to the nomenclature documented in the recipe collections of medieval cuisine, we might think that macarons was used by Sardinian customs officials to indicate stringlike pasta, similar to taglierini or hollow Sicilian-style macaroni. The term fideus is reminiscent of the Italian term fidelli or fidelini, used especially along the portion of Ligurian coastline ruled by Genoa, which in time gave its name to the guild of specialists in the making of dry pasta in that region, the fidelari. This word, as we have noted, traces its origin to the Arabic term fidaws, and is found in cognate forms in numerous Romance languages, though the words do not necessarily designate the same type of pasta, especially in Italian and Catalonian. To Pegolotti, the fourteenth-century author of the renowned Pratica della mercatura, “fideus are similar to vermicelli, which is to say, tria,” while a Spanish manual of commercial practice compares them instead to tagliatelle.16 A century later, in his Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, Sebastian Covarrubias states that fideus or fideos are macaroni, specifying that “they are like strings, or slender threads, and they intertwine in a similar manner,”17 a description that evokes vermicelli. As for the term obra de pasta, we have already noted that it was used as a generic term by the customs officials of Cagliari to describe cargoes made up of various types of pasta but also possibly containing other cereal-based foodstuffs. In October 1351, there are notations of two cargoes loaded by Jewish Sardinian merchants, comprising, respectively, eleven quintars (roughly 1150 pounds) of “obra de pasta co es sober, fideux, macarons, alatria, e bescuytelles” and thirteen quintars (around 1350 pounds) of “obra de pasta, which is to say, macaroni, fideus, and semolina.”18 This is undoubtedly why obra de pasta is by far the largest category of dry pasta exported from Sardinia. Outside Italy, Provence alone seems to have had a production of dry pasta. In 1397 the tax rolls of Avignon made mention of menudez, a variety of pasta that must have been quite popular in medieval Provence, since it was also manufactured in Grasse, where in 1428 the bakers were threatened with a fine of five sous if they were caught selling their menudeda at a price of more than eight deniers a pound.19 These pasta products, whose name is reminiscent of minutelli, described by Barnabas of Reggio in the first half of the fourteenth century as a Venetian specialty, were listed in the Thresor de santé, published at the turn of the seventeenth century, along with lozans, crozetz, vermiceaux, macarons, and fidiaux—all Provençal the time of the pioneers 47

terms for pasta in which we can recognize the crozetti, vermicelli, maccheroni, fidelini, and fideus of Italy.20 The same 1397 tax roll also included under the category of “grains” semola de fideis, that is, semolina to make fideis,21 which seems to indicate that in the city of popes there was an artisan’s workshop making pasta of durum wheat semolina. Oddly enough, considering that the Spaniards and especially the Catalonians were quite active in trading dry pasta, we have been unable to identify any center of production in the Iberian peninsula. Our information on the matter is certainly scanty, but it may be reasonable to surmise that if this region did, like Provence, house any pasta workshops, production never really experienced any large-scale expansion, and this for the very good and simple reason that the court of Aragon already controlled the two most important centers of pasta production of the Middle Ages: Sardinia and Sicily, the latter conquered in 1282 following what is known to historians as the “Revolt of the Sicilian Vespers,” against French domination. Some evidence seems to point to a small-scale production in the Maghreb. On February 20, 1345, Peter IV of Aragon wrote to the governor of Majorca demanding that he restore to a Muslim merchant the goods he had ordered confiscated from him; among this merchandise were fifteen kilograms of pasta (macharonum). The merchant had loaded his foodstuffs at Hunayan, the port of the kingdom of Tlemcen, and he was planning to ship them to Almeria when his vessel was detained in the Balearic Islands. Bernard Rosenberger, in his report of this incident, correctly observed that one should not infer from this that the port of embarkation was the site of manufacture.22 Nevertheless, this trade, which seems to have flowed from south to north, from Maghreb toward Al Andalus, and which was under the control of a resident of the Muslim kingdom of Grenada, does at least suggest the existence of a supply and therefore a source of production within the Arab world of the western Mediterranean.

an article of mass trade Trade between the two shores of the Mediterranean, in the heart of the Muslim world, seems, however, to have been quite limited. Fifteen kilograms of macaroni is a very small quantity. In any case, if during the Middle Ages there were workshops for the production of dry 48 the time of the pioneers

pasta in the Maghreb, their development was neither contemporary with nor certainly prior to that of the Sicilian pasta makers. For that matter, one might point out that Idrisi paid attention only to the pasta trade emanating from Sicily, which suggests that the trade operating out of that island was the most substantial in the entire Mediterranean basin. The Arab geographer mentioned as the destination of this trade the south of the Italian peninsula and, with no further details, certain “Muslim lands,” among which we may safely include, considering their proximity, North Africa and Andalusia. Trade flowed toward Genoa in this period as well. There is documentation in the archive of the notary Giovanni Scriba of numerous contracts drawn up between 1157 and 1160 establishing the commercial terms of operation between the Ligurian Republic and Norman Sicily. The Genoese exported various goods produced in northern Italy and imported primarily wheat and other foodstuffs, among them pasta products.23 We should mention the barrelful of macaroni listed in the inventory drawn up after the death of the Genoese miles (or soldier) Ponzio Bastone; packed as they were in a barrel, they might well have been imported. Examination of the tax rolls of the Banco di San Giorgio, covering the period 1497–1535, shows a considerable continuity and regularity in both commercial relations with Sicily and the nature of Sicilian exports from the milling industry, such as wheat, flour, semolina, pasta products, and biscuits, all derived products that came from what would later be called in Italy l’arte bianca, literally the “white art” or “white industry,” referring to both baking and pasta making. The Genoese, however, were also exporters of pasta products, as is shown by the “licentia extrahendi pastillos,” which means, as Sereni points out, “permission to export pasta products,” issued on a regular basis. And they were not satisfied with supplying their own state with them but also supplied pasta to Naples, Rome, and Piombino and were players in the markets of other western Mediterranean ports, including Barcelona and Marseilles.24 We also find the Genoese hard at work selling Sardinian pasta, in which activity they must have encountered fierce competition from Pisans and especially from Catalonian merchants, who also enjoyed considerable fiscal advantages. Ever since the beginning of the conquest of Sardinia in 1326, the Aragonese sovereign Alphonse IV worked to encourage Catalonian merchants to establish a foothold in Cagliari, with a view to maintaining and developing the activity of the port, especially the export of cereals and derived products such as the time of the pioneers 49

pasta, an enterprise that until then had been the monopoly of the Pisans and the Genoese. This is certainly the reason that more than 80 percent of the exports of Sardinian pasta recorded in Cagliari between 1351 and 1397 were heading for Catalonian ports, chief among them Barcelona. Studies of notary documents in the archives of Cagliari over a period ranging from 1423 to 1470 have uncovered numerous contracts for the exportation of fideus, including a barrel being sent to King John II of Aragon.25 Over this entire period, nearly half a century, the volume of pasta exported from Cagliari came to a total of 358 quintars (approximately 33,000 pounds), including all sorts of pasta. Other customs sources, covering the period from 1427 to 1429, recorded only exports of fideus, but in a quantity totaling 493 quintars (about 45,000 pounds), which represents a spectacular increase, if we consider that the research covered a period of only two years. As Laura Galoppini, who provided these data, remarked, the appearance of only fideus for this period might be explained in two ways, either by a concentration of production on it alone or, more plausibly, because the term fideus had taken on a generic meaning in commercial language, at this point describing all sorts of dry pasta.26

the market for dry pasta There can be no doubt as to the importance of the trade in dry pasta in the Middle Ages, and not only in the Italian territory. The fact remains, however, that these products, sold by grocers, were almost never mentioned in medieval culinary treatises, and therefore we might well wonder to whom they were sold. Only two recipes—for preparations of tri and tria, described as “Genoese”—might have called for the use of dry pasta sold by that city, since the inclusion of the ingredient in the titles of the recipes suggests it was assumed to be available.27 According to the authors of cookbooks, the chefs of the period, like those of the Renaissance later on, showed absolutely no interest in dry pasta, and they seemed disinclined to make use of the products of trade. Most recipes describe how to make the pasta before explaining how to make the dish proper, and there are instructions to set out the pasta to dry until it is time to use it. This is the case, for example, with macaroni Sicilian-style, whose hollow shape requires lengthy and troublesome handwork and which also demands—the only case known—a goodly period of drying to prevent damage dur50 the time of the pioneers

ing cooking.28 This attitude of the professional chefs indicates that the well-to-do clientele for whom they worked had no appreciation for this article of trade and so the status of dried pasta was not particularly high compared to fresh pasta. This question bears further examination, however, because the sources are contradictory on the matter. In the Middle Ages, preserved products did not enjoy very high esteem, at least in the higher ranks of society for which recipes were intended, which is the only segment of the society of that distant era about which we know anything. As is still the case today, everyone agreed on the superiority of fresh products, with only rare exceptions, and chefs, at least those about whom we know anything, followed the dominant pattern. But there may have been more concrete reasons for chefs’ resistance to this type of pasta, perhaps to do with the quality of preservation, indeed the edibility of the products. A Catalonian trade manual compiled in 1455 recommends double-checking fideus to make sure they are “quite white and healthy, and not eaten by worms, since spoilt pasta loses all its value.”29 That they were supposed to be “quite white” doubtless relates to the semolina used but also to the age and state of preservation of the fideus, which must have had a tendency to change color over time. This indicates that they must have been worth more the more recently they were manufactured. As for spoilage, this resulted from various factors: the use of poor-quality or already excessively old raw materials; poor conditions of preservation or rough conditions during transportation; bad manufacturing processes; inappropriate or excessively long storage. In this early period, the manufacturing techniques were not very advanced or well understood, especially the drying process, which was the most delicate phase of the production cycle. Even in the favorable climatic conditions of the Mediterranean south (an advantage that has often been adduced to explain the early development of the pasta industry in the Naples area), it requires great knowledge and experience to dry pasta properly outdoors, and this expertise still made the difference between good and less-good manufacturers in Torre Annunziata and Gragnano at the end of the nineteenth century, before the earliest experimentation with artificial drying. All the same, dried pasta is not entirely absent from the list of foodstuffs enjoyed by the powerful of the world at that time. Recall the barrel full of macaroni of the Genoese miles and especially the shipment of fideus from the town of Cagliari to King John II of Aragon that the viceroy of Sardinia paid for on February 15, 1467.30 the time of the pioneers 51

Rare though they might have been, fideus and macaroni appeared repeatedly among the purchases of the house of Aragon in the time of Peter the Ceremonious, and they continued to appear under the rule of Martin the Humane, who ordered the purchase of fideus in Barcelona for shipment to Zaragoza for the celebration of his coronation in 1395. If dried pasta could appear at the banqueting tables of high court society, it was not entirely subject to gastronomic disdain, despite what one might surmise from the culinary treatises of the time. For that matter, dried pasta was not cheap—quite to the contrary. The accounts of the Datini company of Valencia for 1404–1405 record the purchase of fideus in the city market at eleven denari the pound, a particularly high price when one considers that it was double the price of meat.31 The appreciation of dried pasta among the higher classes should be considered in the context of a complex view of food. We know that pasta was also used to feed ships’ crews, in place of, or in addition to, the more customary hardtack, a type of bread that lasted for especially long periods because it was double-cooked. A regulation decreed in the second half of the fifteenth century by the Sicilian authorities allowed owners of ships to draw off for their own personal use during the voyage (“extraer per uso suo”) between ten and thirty rotoli of “macaroni and vermicelli depending on the rank and condition of the owners.”32 The accounts of the Genoese galley Minerva show that in 1562 there was a purchase of fideli.33 The customs records of Cagliari show that in October 1351 a cargo of obra de pasta contained various types of pasta but also of hardtack. This link between dried pasta and hardtack shows that these two products were meant to be used as provisions for ships’ crews. Could there be an easier dish to prepare aboard a boat than a dish of pasta? Certain shipowners understood this perfectly and even had fresh pasta made onboard their ships. Thus, on May 31, 1351, the Genoese captain Paganino Doria signed on two professional lasagnari. What could such a decision mean, in a city that was already famed for its dry pasta? Did it mean that this shipowner wanted to vary the culinary routine of his crew, or had he decided to have pasta made onboard his ships so that the men would not have to consume the stock of dried pasta bound for market?34 Whatever the reason, this decision shows that pasta products were standard fare for the crews of ships trading in the Mediterranean. And, without a doubt, part of the cargo of pasta heading for market frequently wound up on the plates of the sailors. 52 the time of the pioneers

It would seem, then, that we must modify our notion that dry pasta was a luxury product, even though it had commercial value and sold at prices higher than the average cost of staple foods. In fact, the pasta trade prospered and developed primarily due to the demand of the moderately well-to-do in city markets. Otherwise, we could not explain the early establishment of price controls for pasta in Sicily. And we must also acknowledge that itriyya, that is, the macaroni of the Arabs, was a staple food sold regularly in thirteenth-century Morocco, since the author of a culinary treatise from that period states that “in case one should not happen to find any itriyya,” one can make it oneself by kneading some “semolina or flour with water and a little salt.”35 In the fourteenth and fifteen centuries, fideus were sold in the market of Cagliari; later on, measures were taken to limit export of this foodstuff in order to ensure that the town had an adequate supply and that disorders did not break out. These restrictions, ordered by the Spanish viceroy in 1554, did not, however, apply to those who took ship, who were authorized to carry with them “50 pounds of semolina and 50 pounds of fideus” for their own provisions.36 A Neapolitan chronicle describes a huge and memorable banquet served in 1546 where, among the various dishes, there were no fewer than “eighty rotola of vermicelli.”37 These scattered documents make us think that dried pasta must have evolved toward a greater popularity among the lower classes. In the light, however, of medieval sources, we can say that the dry pasta of trade was neither a luxury nor a staple but simply a popular food, used widely to entertain, frequently eaten at celebrations and feasts, and increasingly popular among the well-to-do and middle classes of the towns, who were glad to have a product that withstood storage and was easy to cook.

the fresh pasta shop In parallel with the concentrated production of dried pasta, basically limited to the islands, southern Italy, and possibly the Ligurian coast, there existed a widespread establishment of small manufactories of fresh pasta, or partially dried pasta, to meet local demand. In some places, they were called lasagnari and, more rarely, vermicellari, vermicelli makers; in some cities, their numbers were sufficient to justify the foundation of a guild. This was true in Florence, where, as early as 1311, the lasagnari joined forces with cooks to found the Arte dei the time of the pioneers 53

Cuochi e Lasagnari, literally, “Guild of Cooks and Lasagna Makers.” Later, the lasagnari separated from the cooks to join up with the cialdonai, makers of wafers.38 There is also documentation in the fourteenth century of the activities of numerous makers of lasagne in Genoa, as we have mentioned, and we cannot be sure that the macaroni for which the account books of the royal palace in Naples for the year 1295 show payment to the city purveyors were not dry pasta of the sort made in Sicily or Sardinia. We do know that even in Sicily, the birthplace of dry pasta, there was a parallel production of fresh pasta. And if Rome does not appear in the medieval sources as one of the markets for Genoese merchants, the vermicelli makers of that town were sufficiently well organized as early as the middle of the sixteenth century to pursue their interests in exchanges with the government. In 1439 the city of Perugia passed regulations forbidding Jews to sell lasagne to Christians, which indicates the presence in the city of both Jewish and Christian pasta makers and suggests that the latter, annoyed by the competition of the Jewish pasta makers, had appealed to the authorities for relief. Pasta makers are attested at the turn of the fifteenth century in Milan, a city whose culinary tradition has not had much use for pasta over the centuries.39 Finally, the notations of Barnabas of Reggio concerning the local names for varieties of pasta may indicate the presence of pasta makers in Padua, Reggio (Emilia), Venice, and even Bologna, a town that would later establish a reputation for its egg pasta specialties. This artisanal production of pasta has often been identified or confused with the production of dry pasta, as if the pasta used in trade could only be of one sort, always the same, that is, thoroughly dried and preserved. But it is hardly right to lump in the pasta makers of Sicily, Sardinia, and the Ligurian coast with the lasagnari of Florence and Milan. The latter were basically small shopkeepers who often worked as bakers at the same time and sold their wares to a local clientele. The former were obliged to master complex procedures, especially for the drying of the pasta, whereas the latter did work that was not much different from home production of pasta, though they might well have offered formats that were difficult to make. The manufacturers of dried pasta formed part of a chain of production that ultimately led to long-distance trade, while the manufacturers of fresh pasta sold, retail and immediately, the product of their daily work, thus pacing their production with demand and even producing on order. 54 the time of the pioneers

Whether they were called lasagnari or vermicellari, makers of fresh pasta were neighborhood shopkeepers in direct contact with their clientele. A fourteenth-century Florentine chronicle notes the presence in town of a Sicilian woman “who kept a lasagne shop.”40 In such shops, one could purchase the classical formats of pasta, as did the supervisor of the Mensa dei Priori (what we would call a cafeteria), whose account books record purchases of lasagne, or else one could make special orders of lasagne or other types of fresh pasta, providing the flour oneself.41 The sale of fresh pasta in the cities was strictly regulated to prevent fraud and spiraling prices. Thus in Milan the Statuta victualium civitatis of 1421 gave authority to the magistrate of staple foods to establish the “price of lasagne and formentine” and make that price public by proclamation. This magistrate was required to take any and all measures necessary to ensure that sellers and retailers would abide by the regulations, and he had the right to punish violators by imposing fines.42 A document from 1597 records that a certain Oliviero Minuto submitted a request to the proper authorities of the city of Cremona for authorization “to manufacture various sorts of pasta, specifically, macaroni, tagliatelle, formentine, and other such, and to sell them retail, [foodstuffs] that you may rest assured will be very useful to the public, in that they will provide daily nourishment with little bother and at small expense.”43 Pasta makers throughout the peninsula who worked for local trade did not all adhere to the same model, especially because they did not all produce the same types of pasta. In the sixteenth century, a powerful guild of vermicelli makers was established in Rome; their activity fell midway between the makers of preserved pasta and the neighborhood makers of fresh pasta such as the lasagnari of Florence. But even among the small-scale artisans specializing in making fresh pasta, the range of products varied from one town to another, according to local traditions. Fresh pasta was generally made of soft wheat flour. In the month of August 1325, the hospital of Santa Maria Nuova in Florence purchased a quantity of flour made from a variety of soft wheat known as calvello specifically meant for the production of pasta.44 Certain modern commentators have expressed surprise at this, thinking that macaroni and lasagne could only be made with durum wheat semolina. If, however, we rely on medieval culinary treatises, there is nothing surprising here. According to those texts, pasta made at home the time of the pioneers 55

at that time was almost exclusively made with flour, which we may suppose was of the soft wheat variety. Durum wheat semolina is specifically recommended in only one recipe of the Liber de coquina, for the vermicelli (vermiculi) described as anxia alexandrina.45 The same is true for the periods that followed. In light of what we have observed throughout the history of pasta outside the southern regions, the islands, and Liguria, it is exceedingly unlikely that the lasagnari of Florence or the pasta makers of Milan, Padua, Bologna, and Reggio had access to durum wheat as an ingredient. The use of soft wheat was the rule, and this custom persisted at great length, certainly up to the beginning of the nineteenth century, when an anonymous Milanese author wrote that he had “wasted a great deal of time to persuade the manufacturers of pasta in Milan to use durum wheat rather than soft wheat.”46 One need only think of the family tradition of fresh pasta still flourishing in regions of Italy such as Emilia and recently revived in certain others to see that homemade pasta is made, with the rare exception, with soft wheat flour, not durum wheat semolina. This explains the popularity of eggs in the basic compound, whose role has developed from minimal to increasingly substantial, to the point where they sometimes replace the water entirely, not to mention the fact that sometimes yolks alone are used, in a proportion of forty per kilogram of flour for certain Piedmontese pastas. Even though they were fresh, these types of pasta were still subjected to a short drying period. This superficial drying, which corresponded to the first phase of intensive drying referred to by professionals as incartamento (stiffening, making similar to cardboard) was unavoidable because of the requirements of trade—temporary storage, weighing, packing, transport—even though they were usually sold retail. This leads us to wonder about the manufacturing processes used in this early era, both in the vermicelli maker’s small neighborhood shop and in the workshop of the maker of dry pasta, at the threshold of industrial production.

rolling pins, blades, and brakes We know almost nothing about the procedures and knowledge, the structures and equipment used by the first generation of pasta makers, those working in the earliest and least documented period in the 56 the time of the pioneers

history of pasta. All the same, the domestic traditions described by the chefs and the few available sources tell us something of the art of the medieval pasta maker. Once again, our investigation turns to Italy, not only because the very few sources available to us have to do with this country but because the artisanal activity of makers of pasta both fresh and dry developed earliest and most intensely there. Italian manufacturers were likely already ahead of their neighbors in terms of techniques, as they were to be in the centuries that followed. In fact, when we compare the Arab sources being studied today with Italian sources of the same period, we see that in the Muslim world the production of pasta was exclusively manual,47 while in the south of the Italian peninsula we find some evidence of an archaic form of mechanization of the kneading process beginning in the fifteenth century and possibly even at the end of the fourteenth century. All the same, production by hand remained the rule in Italy as well, according to the series of illuminated Tacuina Sanitatis that began to circulate in Italy in the last decades of the fourteenth century, some copies of which have survived. These tacuina, a word derived from the Arab taqwîm (disposition, arrangement), were illustrated “tables of health” intended to popularize, through images, the medical knowledge of antiquity promulgated by Arab masters and their students at the School of Salerno.48 In a succession of short articles—each presented as the caption to an illuminated image illustrating the subject treated—were condensed the judgments and advice of physicians, of antiquity and the Middle Ages, concerning foods, drinks, plants, spices, and so on. Four of these manuscripts, purportedly authored by Ibn Butlan, a Christian physician who studied in Baghdad and later became a monk in Antioch, where he died in 1068,49 features illustrations of the making of tri (tria), also known as pasta, referred to by their Latin name in keeping with medical tradition. The illustrations were the work of Italian artists from Lombardy and the Venetian region, some of whom were renowned in their time and are well known to art historians today. That is why the depictions of everyday life shown in the tacuina do not represent the world of Ibn Butlan, as some have written, but rather Italian society of the late fourteenth century. This is apparent in the manuscript of Liège, illuminated by the Milanese painter and architect Giovannino de’ Grassi (d. 1398), who included in his illumination a portrait of the client who commissioned the work, Gian Galeazzo Visconti (1351–1402), duke of Milan (rendered as the illustrious personage strolling in a garden, surthe time of the pioneers 57

rounded by lovely ladies).50 The contrast between the medical information and the accompanying drawing is also quite flagrant; in this case, vermicelli, whose dietetic characteristics were clearly delineated in the original Arabic under the category of itriyya, are shown being made according to the methods current in Italy at the time. In three manuscripts, the scenes depicting the making of pasta differ only slightly in detail: in one room, two women are hard at work, one kneading the dough by hand on a table, while the other drapes the vermicelli over a wooden rack (fig. 1).51 In the Liège manuscript, the second woman is about to place the rack against a wall in the courtyard alongside two other racks, already in place. In this manuscript, the proliferation of racks festooned with very long, stringlike bunches of pasta, clearly set out to dry, is proof that this is the workshop of a manufacturer, not just a private home. All four artists chose to depict the two extreme phases of the production cycle—the kneading of the pasta and the finished vermicelli, set out to dry—in a strikingly foreshortened view, impressive in visual terms but not particularly revealing of how the work was done. All the same, these depictions do clear up a number of points. First of all, these Lombard artists present pasta making as women’s work, which jibes with the testimony of the Florentine chronicler of the same years who speaks of a Sicilian woman “who ran a lasagne shop.” Moreover, they show that the production of this foodstuff implied the coordinated activity of two people, which suggests organized professional production based on a division of labor. Last, the illuminations depict pasta being made by hand in relatively modest quantities. All this leads us to think that the artists portrayed what they knew best, the model in place in their region: small-scale neighborhood merchant-craftsmen, found both in Milan and Padua, in whose shops women held the most important roles. Concerning the actual shaping of the pasta, we have only accounts from cooks, especially that of Master Martino, an Italian chef of the fifteenth century, who describes in detail how macaroni (Sicilian-, Genoese-, and Roman-style) were fashioned at home. For Sicilianstyle macaroni, by far the most difficult to make, Martino used flour but—an exception to normal practice—he added egg whites to the water. After kneading, the dough was split into small lumps, which were then rolled out and formed into tubes about the length of a palm by pressing a piece of stiff wire into the flat lump of dough, wrapping the dough around it, and then removing the wire. After explaining 58 the time of the pioneers

FIGURE 1

Kneading and hanging out to dry: the first and the last operation in the process of making pasta by hand. Tacuinum Sanitatis, late-fourteenth-century manuscript, Vienna.

how the pasta was shaped, the author points out: “These macaroni must be dried in sunlight, and they will last two or three years, especially if they are made under the August moon.”52 We believe this is a direct reference to the macaroni made in Sicily. Genoese-style and Roman-style macaroni, in contrast, were made from a sheet of dough rolled over onto itself with the help of a rolling pin, which was then removed; the tube thus created was then cut into spiral rings of variable width. When these were stretched out, they took the form of nice long taglierini or tagliatelle.53 Is it likely that in Sicilian and southern Italian workshops, pasta was also shaped according to this process? The sources currently known to us make no mention of any machinery or other device for shaping pasta. It was not until the end of the sixteenth century that the extrusion press made its appearance, revolutionizing the pace and volume of production. On the other hand, long before the time of Master Martino, there were indications of the existence of a device that helped with the long and fatiguing task of kneading the dough. This was the brake (brie in French, gramola a stanga in Italian), a three-sided table with a long wooden pole or bar attached by a hinge at one end to one of the sides of the table, which allowed for considerable swing and up-and-down motion so that the baker could exert great force on a ball of dough placed on the table. Originally conceived to crush hemp and linen fibers, the brake was adopted by bakers and pasta makers for kneading dough. Mentioned as early as 1215 in the Codice Diplomatico Barese, the brake regularly reappeared in sources of the period. A document dated 1285 mentioned a brigam unam pro planca, and a chartularium dated 1269 makes reference to gramola cum brigone.54 Later sources provide more details as to the nature, size, and operation of this contraption. The brake operated on the very simple principle of the scissors. A dough ball was placed beneath the raised bar, very close to the fastened end; the worker would then repeatedly lower the bar from the other end, crushing the dough, pivoting the bar ever so slightly each time so as to crush the dough in another spot. After a while, the worker folded the dough and started over again. Later the system was improved, but the basic principle remained the same. In medieval sources, the brake was never mentioned except with reference to bread: “a wooden brake to make bread,” as a document dated 1314 specified; while an inventory, prepared in Bari in 1465, mentions a “brake for making bread.”55 In the fifteenth century, it 60 the time of the pioneers

seems to have been commonly used for this purpose “in Bologna, Venice, and in nearly the entire territory of Lombardy and Romagna [where] it is normal to work and knead dough with the help of a special tool called the brake, which is why in these places bread is called brake bread.”56 In the following century, its use spread even to private homes, if we believe Giovanvettorio Soderini (1526–1597), who explained the entire cycle of the transformation of wheat in this elliptical formula: “Let the wheat be sent to be milled, and then let bread be made by kneading the dough with a brake or vigorously with the fists, and then let it be cooked to the right point, and it will be excellent.”57 The brake was also used by Jewish families and bakers, as we learn from illustrated texts from the middle of the sixteenth and the turn of the seventeenth century that depict the making of unleavened bread (fig. 2).58 It seems inconceivable that pasta makers would not have used this tool for their work, especially if we consider that bakers often also made vermicelli; the two professions were closely tied, considered part of a single activity of the same nature: the “white industry.” The hemp brake appears to have developed earlier than its bakeryrelated cousin. The Bolognese agronomist Pietro de’ Crescenzi (1230– 1310) was acquainted only with the hemp brake,59 and the transfer of the technology appears very clearly in the development of the French terminology. In the fifteenth century, broye, or broie, was used only for the tool used to crush linen or hemp fibers. With the spread of the pasta maker’s art around the turn of the eighteenth century, French professionals began to use the word broie or brie for what the Italians called the gramola a stanga, creating in the process the verb brier, to press, the exact equivalent of the Italian gramolare, although the latter was used only to describe the kneading of dough.60 Invented in the Middle Ages for an entirely different use, the brake signaled the beginning of mechanization. The era of innovation dawned, transforming production of dry pasta completely and making possible a full-fledged protoindustry.

the time of the pioneers 61

7 1

B B 10 11

15

1

FICURE 2

A screw press and a hand-operated brake, elevation (top) and cross-section (bottom): (:1) windlass, (2) pole, (3) wooden upper counter, (4) wooden column, (5) iron "lantern" wheel, (6) wooden lower counter, (7) bar, (8) bronze mainscrew threading, (9) bronze mainscrew, (10) wooden piston with bronze heel, (:1:1) bronze bell, (:12) hotboxes, (:13) dough, (:14) bronze die plate, (:15) kneading table. Paola Gargiulo and Lea Quintavalle, 'Tindustria della pastificazione a Torre Annunziata c Gragnano," in ,vlanifallure ill Campallia, Dalla prodliZiollc artigiana alill grallde indllstria (Naples: Guida, 198}), T,)2-249.

CHAPTER THREE

From the Hand to the Extrusion Press Medieval Italy, including the islands that formed part of its traditional territory, was the only region in the Mediterranean world that experienced the simultaneous development of the two types of pasta, dry and fresh. Both were cultivated and developed, giving Italy the position of leadership it still possesses in this field. It is no accident that Italian terminology soon came to dominate around the entire perimeter of the Mediterranean and even in northern France and England. The term “Italian macaroni,” which was later replaced by the more common “Italian pasta,” was used as early as the fifteenth century to define the learned and more abstract term tri/tria.1 At the dawn of modern times, most of the work involved in making pasta was still done by hand, and machinery was used only in a very few instances. In the little shops of pasta makers in most cities, the equipment was often limited to a table, a rolling pin, a drying rack, and a few knives, with the occasional macaroni iron. Between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a major change

took place. The early establishment of centers of intensive production that linked up with a network of small manufacturers scattered over almost the entire territory, along with a culture of pasta that was already quite well developed, put Italy in a favorable position for a new phase of expansion. Breaking free of the imperious guardianship of the bakers, pasta makers organized themselves in independent guilds and set out to harvest the fruit of the new economic deal that they themselves had helped to bring about. The partial modernization of the system of production first with the progressive integration of the brake and later with the extrusion press made it possible to manufacture much, much faster and at much lower cost, which led to the expansion of pasta to much less well-to-do sectors of the population. In the meanwhile, pasta had come to be considered a category of food all its own. Driven by a growing demand, the manufacture of pasta became a lucrative business, and this in turn triggered an increase in consumption, expanding the array of pasta products and popularizing the better qualities of pasta. The use of high-quality durum wheat semolina, gains in knowledge and technical skill, and the aggressive sales tactics of the merchant class blazed the path to future industrial development. More than growing pains, the world of pasta experienced a full-fledged, if minor, revolution.

the routes of wheat One of the decisive factors in the growing popularity, at first in Italy and later throughout Europe, of dry pasta certainly had to do with the properties of durum wheat semolina. Contrary to what is often stated, however, dry pasta was not always made exclusively with durum wheat semolina, even in the regions traditionally producing this raw material. For a long time, pure semolina was used only in the very best varieties of pasta, while the average preparations were made with mixes of flour and semolina or with flour alone. The use in Italy of one or the other raw material can be documented, for instance, in Naples, the capital of durum wheat semolina, as late as 1605, when “the price of vermicelli was limited to a maximum of four grani and two denari per rotolo, it being understood that vermicelli makers were to make them from semolina and flour of a single quality.”2 In Sicily the distinction between flour pasta and semolina pasta documented as early as the fourteenth century persisted until the six64 from the hand to the extrusion press

teenth century. The use of mediocre-quality semolina and flour is indirectly attested at the turn of the seventeenth century by the experience of a certain Guglielmino Prato, a grocer from Asti, who refused to purchase vermicelli from the pasta makers of the Ligurian coast for fear they might be “made with very low quality materials or from old or rotten flour,” that is, flour that was denatured, adulterated, or blended.3 Increasingly, during this era of unreliable provisions, pasta makers were not always able to purchase durum wheat as they would like and were sometimes obliged to make use of replacement materials. As late as the Napoleonic era, pasta makers along the Ligurian coast were unable to obtain Sicilian and Moroccan durum wheat because of the blockading of sea routes by the British navy. According to an observer of the period, they replaced it with wheat from Romagna and Piedmont, even though it was known that this was “of much lower quality than the others.”4 Blends of semolina and flour were common, in any case, until very recent times. In the third edition of the Hoepli Industria del pastificio (1929), Renato Rovetta noted that, in his time, only the qualities of pasta called “extra” and “sublime” were made exclusively with durum wheat semolina. Other varieties, both those described as “first quality” or “fine quality” and those called “second quality” or “commercial quality” and especially those of the “third quality” were made with blends of semolina and soft wheat flour, with the latter sometimes making up the better part of the mixture.5 The use of semolina became progressively more common as the production of dry pasta began to spread during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The exceptional quality of the semolina used to make the macaroni of Naples and the fine pasta of Genoa was the basis for their commercial success. “The Neapolitans use only durum wheats for their excellent macaroni and other pasta creations,” wrote the anonymous compiler of a book of practical agriculture at the turn of the nineteenth century.6 He was speaking of top-of-the-line products, the only ones the kingdom of Naples exported, but in fact pasta makers in the Naples region primarily used semolina in that period. Indeed, the producers in the pioneering regions had long believed that durum wheat semolina was the best raw material to use for their pasta products. An ordinance decreed in Naples on October 24, 1656, was explicit on that point. It fixed the price of “Macaroni, vermicelli, and other Pasta Foodstuffs made by press at seven grani per rotolo, with a formal order to vermicelli makers to make their pasta with from the hand to the extrusion press 65

pure semolina, and to make them well and perfectly.”7 This call for pure semolina echoed earlier ordinances of 1604, which prohibited the sale or use of flour “mixed with lupine flour, corn, or millet.”8 The authorities were establishing a norm. The notion that semolina was a superior ingredient for pasta was also common outside the traditional areas of production and consumption. As early as the middle of the sixteenth century, the French agronomist Charles Estienne described the special quality of this “other flour that the Italians call semolino or semola,” which was made of an “excellent wheat” imported from Italy, primarily “from Naples, not to be made into bread, but to be cooked in meat broth.”9 The reputation of “real semolina” was confirmed in a medical text published in Lyons at the turn of the seventeenth century, which also established a direct link between this “excellent flour made from an exquisite wheat grown in Italy and Provence” and the macaroni and vermicelli that the “Italians eat with capon . . . fresh butter . . . and cheese from Piacenza grated over it.”10 A whole chapter of the Capitolari de l’Arte dei Fidelari, the charter of the pasta makers’ guild of Genoa, established in 1574, deals with the regulation of the purchase of semolina, in particular forbidding the members of the guild from going onboard English ships before the merchandise was unloaded, and the terminology of the profession soon incorporated the term durum wheat. The minutes of a 1649 meeting of the guild’s consuls state: “Experience has taught us the prejudices felt toward our guild and by the public due to the purchase of durum wheat, semolina, and other foodstuffs used by our guild.”11 And so, well before its special properties had been identified, durum wheat semolina had been accepted by one and all—producers, agronomists, and commentators—as the ideal raw material for making pasta. The first step toward a scientific understanding of this material was the discovery of gluten in 1728 by the Italian scientist Jacopo Bartolomeo Beccari (1682–1766). His research on wheat flour allowed him to prove that this substance, which had actually been well known since antiquity but was considered a residue of impurities in the starch, exhibited properties similar to those of meat; in other words, gluten had great nutritional value. It was later discovered that durum wheat was richer in gluten than soft wheat, and this fact was soon linked to its greater suitability for use in making pasta. “From all the varieties of durum wheat, milling produces semolina, while from all the varieties of soft wheat, milling produces flour, because the vari66 from the hand to the extrusion press

eties of durum wheat contain much more gluten, which is to say, vegeto-animal substances, while the varieties of soft wheat contain more starch, which is to say, floury and sugary substances. It thus results that soft wheats are excellent for making bread, and durum wheats for the production of pasta.”12 This analysis comes not from a student of Beccari but from the practical agricultural manual mentioned earlier, clearly showing that the research carried out by the Bolognese scholar had already yielded fruit. According to Paul-Jacques Malouin, the author in 1767 of the first study on the subject, entitled L’art du vermicelier, Italian pasta makers used durum wheats and semolinas from Sicily, from the “Levant,” and from “Barbary.”13 We do not know what land of the Near or Middle East is meant by the vague “Levant,” but other writers inform us that durum wheat was produced especially in Cyprus, North Africa (Malouin’s Barbary), Spain, and Provence. It was probably from those countries that the producers along the Ligurian Riviera traditionally imported their raw materials. The most sought-after varieties seem, however, to have come from Italian territories, such as Sardinia, Sicily, Apulia, and, more generally, the south of the Italian boot, the kingdom of Naples. Semolina from the kingdom of Naples enjoyed a good reputation among the professional chefs of the leading aristocratic homes as early as the sixteenth century. Bartolomeo Scappi, chef of the papal palace, recommended its use “in making a dish of semolina with other ingredients in the Moorish style, named sucussu.”14 TargioniTozzetti, an eighteenth-century Tuscan physician who was the first to recognize that the Triticum robus of the ancient Romans was the wheat “that we commonly call durum wheat,” stated that in his time Sicily produced numerous varieties of durum wheat, whose differences in quality and price he had been able to witness in the grain market of Leghorn. As a professor of botany, he began a program of experimental crops to identify the varieties of durum wheat that could best be acclimatized in Tuscany, where, it appears, the species tended to degenerate by the second or third harvest if grown from seed collected from the previous year’s crop. He determined that the variety of durum wheat called appropriately Bianchella da far paste, literally, Bianchella for making pasta, seeds for which had been gathered on his own lands, had later degenerated into soft wheat. If the seeds were imported, they gave excellent results for the first year, which offered a promising opportunity for Tuscan farmers, who had from the hand to the extrusion press 67

begun converting their lands to this crop, which brought “much higher prices than foreign wheat, or wheat imported by ship, used in making pasta.”15 The “foreign wheat” in question was imported from southern Italy, the Italian islands, or other parts of the Mediterranean coastline. But the durum wheat most sought after by Italian manufacturers, especially those from the Naples region, was the saragolla variety. The success and renown of the pasta of Naples depended in part on this variety, grown primarily in Apulia and considered to be the best durum wheat available until it was dethroned at the turn of the nineteenth century by the wheats of the Ukraine and the Volga River Valley in southern Russia, imported under the name of Taganrog, named for the port in the Azov Sea where it was marketed. Jérôme de Lalande, who traveled in Italy in 1765–1766, did not fail to note the remarkable quality of saragolla wheat, which provided the semolina from which Neapolitans made their pasta. He believed, without being well informed, that this wheat was imported from “Termini in Sicily and from the Levant,”16 but in reality it was from Apulia that the Neapolitans imported most of their favorite raw material, both overland, by mule train, and, more safely, by sea. It hardly seems necessary to point out that this region, whose abundant cereal harvests had long been proverbial in Italy, had always been the granary of the capital of the kingdom of the Two Sicilies. Sixteenth- and seventeenthcentury contracts with Apulian merchants that were issued by the city magistrates in charge of the food supply stipulated purchase of saragolla wheat, and we may suppose that at least part of this wheat was used in the making of pasta.17 Trade in cereals was regulated in Naples, possibly more strictly than elsewhere in Italy. The existence of a permanent magistracy entrusted with the organization, operation, and oversight of the supply of staple foods, also known as the Annona, was common to many European towns of the period, but in the capital of what was then the largest kingdom in the Italian peninsula, this institution had a very special standing and importance because of the exceptionally numerous population of the city—at the dawn of the modern era, one of the largest in Europe. The Annona was run by the Tribunale degli Eletti, or tribunal of San Lorenzo, a sort of council of wise men, comprising six eletti, five of whom represented the squares of the nobles (piazze nobili), while the sixth represented the populace at large, the whole constituting the Universitas Neapolitana. After 1560 this body was 68 from the hand to the extrusion press

supervised by a magistrate named by the government, the prefect of the Annona, also known as the Regio Grassiero.18 It was not until the fifteenth century that the city began to oversee directly the food supply for the populace, with the chief objective of ensuring that the poor would receive the sustenance necessary for their survival. According to a scenario reconstructed by a nineteenth-century historian, after the representatives of the various squares made estimates of the wheat supply needed by the city, they would name vaticali, deputies appointed to purchase wheat, who would travel through the kingdom to complete their mission, visiting producers (farmers), who were required to set aside part of their harvest for the deputies to buy. The wheat purchased was dispatched by land or by sea to Naples, where it would later be transformed into flour in the mills of Castellammare, Gragnano, Torre Annunziata, and Vietri. The grain was stored in warehouses operated directly by the authorities of the Annona, who were also responsible for transforming it into flour and semolina. It was then sold on the Mercato Grande at a set price, by the eletto, or representative of the people.19 Later, in the eighteenth century, the growing role of pasta in the Neapolitan diet obliged the authorities to treat separately the regulation of flour for bread and semolina used to make pasta: trade in the former was kept under tight control, while the market for the latter was partially deregulated. This entailed the organization of a separate supply network, with accompanying distinctions between the respective milling facilities. An ordinance of 1713 is of interest primarily because it forbids the city representatives and other wheat traders to grind the soft wheats of the town, the varieties known as romanella and carosella, in the mills of the district of Naples reserved for the milling of the hard, or durum, wheats of Apulia, especially the variety known as saragolla.20 In other words, the mills of Torre Annunziata, Castellammare, and Gragnano were by this point exclusively reserved for the milling of durum wheat, producing semolina that was used for the making of pasta. This distinction was not yet in place during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and pasta makers, though less directly targeted than bakers, still had to work within the regulated system of supply. The regulations established in 1544 and reconfirmed in 1591, 1592, and 1647, for example, prohibited any purchase of wheat outside the markets supervised by the magistrates of the Annona in an area extending thirty miles around the city.21 Beyond that perimeter, there from the hand to the extrusion press 69

was a free market, but aside from the fact that only the most prosperous pasta makers benefited from this, any room to maneuver remained quite narrow, since sale prices were restricted on a permanent basis and could be lowered drastically in times of crisis. That is what happened in 1605, when the magistrates of the Tribunal of San Lorenzo decided to restrict production to only second-choice pastas by establishing their price at four grani and two denari per rotolo.22 Neapolitan pasta makers had great difficulties working outside the regulated markets, made worse because the magistrates sometimes obliged them to purchase raw materials at a price that the magistrates set themselves, in order to prevent the stocks they had accumulated from going to waste, as had happened in the wake of the famine of 1551.23 Since they were thus prevented from selecting their own raw materials and forced to buy at prices set arbitrarily and to sell their finished products at stabilized prices, Neapolitan pasta makers could only look to increases in production as a way to develop. In comparison, their Ligurian competitors enjoyed a remarkable degree of freedom, though they faced other problems generated by precisely the level of savage competition that Neapolitans tried constantly to suppress. During a meeting held on May 11, 1649, the Consuls of the Guild of Fidelari of Genoa openly discussed the problem of the wholesale purchase of “durum wheat, semolina, and other commodities used especially by our profession, which we make on a daily basis, often in competition with the millers, and one tries to exclude the other, thus forcing increases in the prices of wheat, semolina, etc. which causes harm both to our guild and to the public.”24 Here is a fine example of the regulatory function of the guild, a professional association that allowed pasta makers to establish themselves as major actors in the life of the city.

the emancipation of the pasta makers The development of independent guilds of pasta makers in Naples, Genoa, Palermo, Savona, and even Rome is the leading indicator of a movement to break with the old ways. It took place between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and, in most cases, it involved a strenuous struggle. Until that period, pasta manufacturers were underrepresented, if not actually invisible. In some cases, they were considered a subclass of bakers, who themselves made pasta; thus they 70 from the hand to the extrusion press

were in a weakened position, outnumbered within the guild that had agreed to host them. In other cases, pasta makers were joined in a single association with other food-related professions, with fairly limited power to act, so they could not effectively defend their interests. So, between the second half of the sixteenth century and the first half of the seventeenth century, independent guilds of pasta makers arose in the cities mentioned above; these guilds began to make their voices heard by the authorities, defend themselves against intrusions and interests outside their profession, and regulate internal relations by establishing statutes. In Naples in the first half of the sixteenth century, the Arte dei Vermicellari, or Vermicelli Makers’ Guild, was founded, an offshoot of the Bakers’ Guild that achieved independence sometime before 1546. Its charter was approved in 1571 and revised in 1579 and again in 1603 and 1699, when the guild was renamed the Arte dei Maccaronari, Macaroni Makers’ Guild.25 On May 5, 1579, the master vermicelli makers purchased through their elected representatives the Consoli dell’Arte, a chapel with sepulchre in the monastery of Santa Maria del Carmelo, thus acquiring a headquarters for their association. The early establishment of this guild in Naples is all the more remarkable if we consider that it took place at a time of heightened tension in the flour and semolina market, where supply and price were controlled by the city authorities, in turn closely monitored by the Spanish viceroys. As early as 1509, the count of Ripa Cursia, the viceroy of the kingdom, issued a decree forbidding the production of pasta and pastries made with wheat flour during serious crises or sudden increases in price.26 This precautionary measure, to which we shall return later, was directed explicitly toward bakers, who, as we noted above, also made pasta and whose guild at the time included the vermicelli makers. When the decree was reissued in 1546, the first in a long series that punctuated city life at regular intervals of about two years during the second half of the sixteenth century,27 it was addressed directly to the vermicelli makers and no longer to the bakers, which indicates that the pasta-making profession had broken free of the control of the baker’s guild and was now considered a separate entity by the authorities and a major part of the social and economic life of the city. In 1598 the pasta makers obtained from the viceroy, Don Pedro Giron, authorization to imprison anyone who dared to make and sell vermicelli or other types of pasta without belonging to the guild.28 from the hand to the extrusion press 71

In 1574 the pasta makers of Genoa founded the Guild of the Fidelari, the statutes of which were approved by the senators of the Republic on May 28 of that year. A major section of those statutes was dedicated to the purchase of raw materials, which was to take place in accordance with very specific rules to prevent any member of the guild from being harmed. The statutes require, for instance, “that no Master of the guild in question be allowed to set foot aboard English ships, nor any other vessel in port, to purchase wheat or semolina, under penalty of five lire . . . , and it is only permitted to purchase foodstuffs on land, and the purchaser must share the wheat and semolina in question with the men of the guild.”29 Guild members had to purchase transparently, then, and could not conceal their business practices from others; in short, they were expected to practice healthy and fair competition, in the spirit of these associations. Three years later, in 1577, the statutes of the Guild of the Master Fidelari of Savona were published, defining the rights and duties of the pasta makers of that town; the guild was probably founded as a defense against their Genoese rivals and competitors. But it was also exceedingly vigilant concerning everything that occurred in its own town and freely reported the intrusions of other merchants in what it considered its own territory. In 1617 the guild members took issue directly with the cheese makers, with whom they had once been associated in a single guild, “since it has been shown that the said Guild of Cheese Makers, who make fidelini and other foods, has fallen into such a state of disarray that many individuals sell in secrecy fidelini, macaroni, and other foods, and it is not known where they come from nor who makes them.”30 The pasta makers of Genoa were no less solicitous of their own interests. They engaged in frequent quarrels with the rebairoli, small-time merchants who sold all manner of things, such as dried chestnuts, dried beans, and kitchen utensils, while at the same time producing and selling pasta products. The Guild of the Fidelari was particularly intolerant of this competition, considered to be unfair because the rebairoli conducted their business out of single shops, whereas they each should have operated a grocery-bazaar “in a separate shop thirty paces away from the one in which they conduct the profession of fidelari.”31 The manufacturers of Palermo waited until 1605 to give official status to the professional associations that were already more than a century old, transforming them into full-fledged guilds, with the formulation of the “statutes of the master pasta makers of Palermo.”32 In 72 from the hand to the extrusion press

the period from the end of the sixteenth century through the early years of the seventeenth century, no guilds had been founded in Apulia, probably because commercial pasta making there was not yet well developed. The general city registry of Bari records only five bakers who “make bread and other pasta products to sell them,”33 but there are no records of pasta makers as such. It is stranger to see the absence of guilds in Sardinia in that period, since pasta making had been and continued to be quite a prosperous activity on the island, whose pasta products enjoyed a considerable reputation. Tommaso Garzoni, the author in 1581 of an inventory with commentary of the various professions and trades, mentioned pasta as one of Sardinia’s leading commercial products. And a few decades later the Neapolitan majordomo Giovan Battista Crisci included the taglierini of Cagliari in his list of pasta that should be served year-round on the aristocratic dining tables of the city.34 An independent guild of pasta makers was officially established in Rome on January 17, 1642, when a papal brief approved the charter of the Universitas et Ars Vermicellariorum. The profession, whose fate and interests had until this date been linked to those of the greengrocers (ortolani),35 had much older roots in the city: as early as 1558 it had felt sufficiently strong to defy the powerful guild of bakers. This was the first skirmish in a long conflict that finally culminated in the defeat of the bakers. On March 17, 1595, the first “ordinance against the makers of vermicelli” was decreed, a step taken to further the interests of the bakers, who must have begun to find their rivals a bit annoying. The regulation was reconfirmed in 1602, with redoubled penalties, but the wind was soon to shift direction. In 1608 a decree by the city authorities ordered bakers who manufactured vermicelli and other pasta to join the vermicelli makers’ guild. In exchange, vermicelli makers who wished to expand their activity to include bakery products were obliged to join the Guild of Bakers. But by this point the power had clearly shifted, and in 1639 the vermicelli makers succeeded in obtaining a straightforward edict prohibiting bakers from making pasta products. Less than three years later, Pope Urban VIII signed a brief that sealed this victory. The rise to power of the guilds of the pasta makers corresponded to a considerable increase in their business, with new producers continually arriving on the scene. This thriving activity was particularly noteworthy in Rome, where in 1641 the government decided to limit the number of pasta makers by establishing a minimum distance of from the hand to the extrusion press 73

eighty meters (about 250 feet) between one pasta shop and the next. This regulation was probably necessary because of the concentration of pasta making in a single quarter, perhaps even on one or two streets, but it is significant all the same as an indicator of the tremendous popularity of pasta in the capital of the Catholic world at the time. Demand for pasta must have been remarkably strong: vermicelli makers showed an unfortunate tendency to sell their products at prices well above the maximum level allowed, arousing the wrath of the authorities, who issued more and more pronouncements, warnings, and threats. One ordinance, significantly entitled, “Against the Vermicelli-Makers,” was published in 1602 as a supplement to the general ordinance regulating the array of prices for staple foodstuffs, and it spells out the situation: “The most illustrious Conservators of the Chamber of Rome desiring to protect the public from the impositions of vermicelli makers and others when purchasing from them, it has been decided to send the guilds this special ordinance, in spite of and apart from the general ordinance, so that buyers might see more clearly and more easily the prices of foodstuffs shown below and that they might pay in accordance with those prices.” The ordinance included a detailed list of the types of pasta made in the city, along with the maximum authorized sale price, and specified that “vermicelli makers were required to supply purchasers with the listed products at the listed prices, under penalty of a fine of twenty-five scudi and three stretches for each case of violation, penalty that will be applied in accordance with custom.” (The “stretches” in question described involved tying the criminal’s hands and feet and then subjecting them to brief but very violent yanking.) The ordinance also required pasta makers to display their pasta, especially the “vermicelli and the white taglierini, on pain of a fine and three stretches.”36 Such strict penalties must have been established in response to flagrant violations, but they were also an indication of the difficulties encountered by the papal administration in maintaining prices that were fixed well below market levels. The arbitrary nature of the regulations put Roman pasta makers in an awkward situation, which explains why they were so reluctant to accept the regulation of prices, which set a single price for all the various qualities of pasta, from ordinary lasagne to lasagne a vento, from white vermicelli to yellow vermicelli, and so on. (The so-called lasagne a vento (literally, “wind lasagne”) were probably made with fermented dough, like those described in a recipe in the Liber de coquina, the earliest 74 from the hand to the extrusion press

medieval cookbook of the Italian tradition, compiled, as we have mentioned, between the end of the thirteenth century and the beginning of the fourteenth century.)37 The difference in quality between certain types of pasta seems evident. Yellow vermicelli, for instance, were made from a dough dyed with saffron, an expensive practice that was greatly prized by medieval cooks and was documented in both industrial and domestic contexts right up to the end of the nineteenth century. The institutions that oversaw regulation of the towns of the kingdom of Naples never fell into the trap of uniform pricing. A regulation issued by the police of Palermo in 1371 established different prices for macaroni and lasagne made of semolina and macaroni and lasagne made of flour, which were sold, respectively, at thirty and twenty denari per rotolo. The same distinction was made by the magistrates in charge of the city’s food supply in the sixteenth century, recognizing the difference in quality with a corresponding difference in price. In 1548 the authorities of Palermo established a maximum price of seven grani and two denari for a rotolo of macaroni and vermicelli made of semolina, as compared to the price of five grani and two denari for a measure of pasta made from flour.38 In Naples, the magistracy entrusted with the city’s food supply, the Annona, and those charged with oversight of the price of staple foodstuffs, through the Assisa and the Calmiere, otherwise known as the Tribunal of San Lorenzo, made a distinction as early as the sixteenth century between two qualities of pasta: white pasta (pasta bianca), a first-class product; and ordinary pasta, called pasta d’assisa, whose price was logically set at a lower level. The tables of the Assisa dating before 1570 have been lost, and so it is impossible to determine precisely when this official distinction was first established, but it was a permanent feature throughout the centuries that followed. The tables that are available make it possible to follow the development and progress of the prices of the two qualities of pasta from 1571 until 1703. Such study reveals a great stability in the prices of pasta d’assisa, implying a more rigorous control of this product, used especially by consumers of limited means. And the stability of these prices appears particularly evident in comparison with the prices of other foodstuffs under price control, with the notable exception of bread, a staple whose price was strictly controlled and maintained artificially below market level for political reasons.39 The existence of this lower-quality pasta and the efforts made to from the hand to the extrusion press 75

reduce its price are, in our opinion, clear indications that the consumption of this foodstuff was spreading to the less well-to-do categories of the citizenry. We should not be misled concerning the intent of the measures that periodically, beginning in 1509, were passed concerning the production and sale of pasta. These prohibitions, listed in the Capitula del ben vivere, did not actually indicate that pasta belonged to “the category of sumptuary consumption,” as did certain pastry specialties, for these decrees were passed by the Tribunal of San Lorenzo in times of serious crisis, with a view to preserving the stocks of flour and semolina that, when necessary, were reserved entirely for the production of bread, the basic foodstuff in a subsistence economy. It is no accident that bakers were the preferred target of mobs during the riots caused by famine. A Neapolitan physician, who wrote after the outbreak of plague in the years 1575, 1576, and 1577, captured the motive behind the drafting of such measures. “No foodstuff or liquor should be taken as carefully into account by towns as bread, water, and wine, and bread more especially than the others, as it is the final resource for one and all, when there is no other source of nourishment, for bread alone can keep us alive and for that reason it is the foodstuff without which it is impossible to make do.”40 Keeping the populace supplied with bread was the dominant concern of the magistrates of the Tribunal of San Lorenzo and the primary purpose of the food-related policies they were charged with conducting. Such policy was not dictated by any impulses of generosity toward the populace but rather by the overarching imperative of reducing as much as possible the risks of social tension that, in the overpopulated capital of the kingdom of Naples, could very quickly degenerate into bloody revolt. In the wake of the terrible famine that struck the city in 1551, for example, the authorities showed such zeal in obtaining supplies of grain that, once the crisis had passed, the city government found itself with huge surplus reserves that were at risk of rotting; they managed to reduce the stock by obliging bakers and pasta makers to increase their quota of wheat for the production of pasta.41 Such a solution would not have been appropriate for a rare and valuable product, and it is a further indication that pasta was consumed widely from the sixteenth century on, even though evidence suggests it was not yet a staple food in Naples. One also perceives in many of the measures of the Capitula del ben vivere covering the period from 1509 to 1615 a very real desire to protect consumers of pasta from abuses or potential fraud. It sternly 76 from the hand to the extrusion press

points out to pasta makers that they should not “sell spoiled or moist vermicelli, macaroni, or taglierini, but only well dried and at the established price, under pain of imprisonment.” It also expressly states that the representatives of the guild must present each week to the appropriate authorities a sampling of the pasta produced so that they may judge the quality of the products put on sale.42 All these measures testify to the importance of pasta as a popular staple of the time. Emilio Sereni traces this phenomenon in his pioneering essay on the transition of the Neapolitan diet from legumes to pasta, but we are not certain that the shift was due, as Sereni suggests, to a rise in the price of meat and a growing scarcity of legumes; rather, as we have said, the cause may have been that pasta consumption spread to new strata of the population, whose staple food nonetheless remained bread.

the triumph of the brake The modernization of the pasta maker’s profession and the consequent democratization of this foodstuff involved the introduction into the production cycle of machinery capable of performing the most laborious and time-consuming portion of the work: the kneading and shaping of pasta. In fact, the brake is an old invention. We have already reported on its use among the bakers of the Middle Ages and documented its domestic use from the sixteenth century on. The papal chef Bartolomeo Scappi, for instance, recommended that one obtain “a brake for working all sorts of dough, so that the kitchen in question should have all conveniences.”43 Pasta makers of the modern era adapted it to their own needs, and this made sense, as they worked a firm dough that was much more difficult to “pound and crush” than bread dough. “A brake with all its accessories and pole” formed part of the equipment of a pasta maker of Bari in an inventory drawn up by a notary in 1592. This was a small manufacturer, who owned a limited array of equipment: no extrusion press but two boards and two working surfaces, two new rolling pins, and three ferri da maccaruni, or macaroni irons, which indicated that the shapes were made by hand.44 This pasta maker’s only major investment was the purchase or construction of a brake, probably because, without this tool, it was impossible for him to compete with the larger shops and their modern equipment. In Naples, the small workshops that flourished in this from the hand to the extrusion press 77

crucial period were already equipped with this essential tool, as well as with the extrusion press. Our inquiry into the history of the brake should focus first and foremost on the factors that made this exceedingly simple device more widely used than all others, so that it was found in all the pastamaking shops of Italy and Provence until the middle of the nineteenth century. It is not as if there was any shortage of ideas on how to mechanize labor. In the generally favorable climate of the modern era, even professional architects and engineers found inspiration to invent machinery. Such was the case with Giovanni Branca, who in 1629 proposed a plan for a baker’s brake “to refine and knead dough for making bread.”45 It operated on the mechanical principle of the connecting rod and crank, and it was clearly meant for professional use, since it took up considerable space and required a number of sophisticated components (fig. 3). A worker operated a lever with a back-and-forth motion, causing a large flywheel to turn; once the flywheel was spinning steadily, it provided the force needed to impart an alternating motion to a piston, which was linked to a hinged board that was regularly lowered to the table, flattening the dough. The system was ingenious and required relatively little effort on the laborer’s part, but we do not know whether this machine ever made it off the drawing board. This was not the case for the two models—one for professional and the other for home use—described in 1683 by Alessandro Capra, an architect from Cremona. The author saw the first machine in operation in Mantua, and it appeared to him “so lovely and so well made,” especially because of the ease with which it was operated by a woman, who effortlessly used it to knead an enormous ball of dough, that he provided the plans, with dimensions and detailed instructions, so that any reader could reproduce the machine on his own (fig. 4). The second brake was, according to Capra, his own invention, and it “was made in the year 1632 and then used continuously until the year 1681 to knead bread dough for my family of ten or fourteen persons; it made it possible to knead an enormous ball of dough effortlessly, with one man to operate the lever and another to hold and turn the dough underneath.”46 How should we explain the fact that both of these inventors were exclusively interested in the production of dough for bread? We can understand the case of Alessandro Capra: in the domestic context, bread requires more work than pasta, because larger quantities of 78 from the hand to the extrusion press

fIGURE

3

A baker's brake: The crank handle, that is, the bar bent like a knee, pivoted in two fixed housings at either end of its vertical extension. F represents a housing or guide, opening on the side of the power supply, so that D can swing on a horizontal axis. D is connected to EG by a joint, the pivot of which can be seen, beca use the assembly of EFG is drawn as if seen from above rather than in cross-section or elevation like the rest. I, H, and K constitute a rigid whole, hinged at the bottom (under H) in the "ears," which allow K an alternating motion, so as to pound and solidify the dough, possibly indicated by l. Giovanni Branca, Le macciJillc (Rome, 1629; reprint, Turin: Utet, 1977).

FIGURE

4

A professional brake. Capra's commentary runs: "I saw a brake that was used daily by bakers and other private individuals in Mantua, and I saw one that was so lovely and so well made, also in Mantua, and I was so pleased by that handsome invention ... that I was struck with admiration and it seemed something worth announcing to one and alL" Alessandro Capra, La rlllova arcilitettll1"a l11ilitarc d'alltim rinnovata (Bologna, 16H3)·

dough are used at a time. Moreover, this sort of machinery could be found in the Po Valley well before Capra’s time,47 and the Cremonese architect’s plan should be considered in the context of this centuriesold tradition. As for Branca’s mechanical brake, it might well have been conceived for the production of pasta. His force-multiplying machine made it possible to apply powerful and intense pressure on the material while minimizing the effort of the laborer. Despite these undisputable advantages, however, the machine does not seem to have won any adherents among the bakers for whom it was conceived, much less among pasta makers. The amount of room it occupied, the complicated mechanisms it involved, and the considerable cost required to manufacture it were probably the chief discouraging factors. In comparison, the classical pasta brake, as seen in Malouin’s descriptions, is remarkably simple and cost little more to put into operation than the price of the raw materials required. These factors were doubtless the key to its success. In order to adapt this household tool to his workplace needs, the vermicelli maker had only to build it to the scale required for the greater and more sustained work involved. The bar became longer, reaching a length of three or four meters, and thicker, with a triangular cross-section pointing downward, toward the dough. There remained the problem of how to operate a tool of such size, which the pasta makers solved by inventing an original technique, the efficacy of which Malouin observed in both Provence and in Italy. A worker would sit at the movable end of the bar, which he would grip with one hand, and press his entire weight down on it to crush the dough; once the bar was completely lowered, the worker was in a squatting position. He would then stand up, lifting the bar at the same time, reposition the bar, then squat again, repeating this process over and over until the dough was kneaded. The work was fatiguing and at the same time required extreme dexterity; it also took teamwork: one worker operated the bar, while another concentrated on keeping the ball of dough properly positioned beneath it, folding it after each passage and pushing it toward the end of the bar (fig. 5). According to Malouin, in Provence a single man was able to operate the bar, while in Italy, and especially in the Naples area, several people worked it, which slowed down the cadenced movement somewhat. “There is certainly a difference between seeing the dough kneaded quickly as they do in Provence and seeing it pounded heavily as is done in other countries, where there are sometimes three men from the hand to the extrusion press 81

FIGURE

5

The workshop of the vermicelli maker during the era of the manufactory, with a vertical press and a hand-operated brake. Paul-Jacques Malouin, Description et details des arts du meunier, du vermicelier (Paris, 1767; reprint, Bayac: Roc de Bourzac, 1995).

on the same bar, jumping on it at the same time, which is not quite as nice to watch.” In his comparison, rather unflattering to Italian pasta makers, the observer forgot to point out that the Provençals generally produced vermicelli made of soft wheat flour, with a dough that, as he observed himself, was much easier to knead, requiring only a halfhour, while a dough made of durum wheat semolina had to be pounded “continuously for two or three hours.”48 The pasta makers of the Naples region used, if not exclusively, at least primarily durum wheat semolina. Moreover, they worked with balls of dough that easily reached weights of one hundred ten pounds and more, according to observers of the nineteenth century, which was certainly not the case in the pasta factories of Provence before the arrival of the new generation of machinery. In reality, nowhere was the brake used as assiduously and effectively as in the manufactories of the Gulf of Naples and the Amalfi coast. It was first adapted to pasta making in the Naples region, and it remained in use there for the longest time. As late as the period between the two world wars, when the Milanese constructor of machinery Braibanti was preparing to revolutionize once again the production of pasta with its continuous press, there were still small pasta-making operations in southern Italy that used the manual brake, an anachronistic holdover of a bygone era but still sufficiently effective to ensure the survival of those who were unable or unwilling to evolve with the times and catch up with the industrial age.

the revolution of the extrusion press The exceptional longevity of the manual brake should not hide the fact that there were other technical developments as well, if at an accelerating rate in and after the second half of the nineteenth century, culminating with the decisive change that came with the introduction of the extrusion press in the production cycle. While the kneading of the dough was unquestionably the most fatiguing phase of the process, requiring the greatest physical effort, the shaping of the various types of pasta was the most time-consuming phase, the most painstaking, and therefore the most costly, since it had to be done by hand. The fact that pasta items had to be made one by one represented an insuperable obstacle to the further development of production capacity. It was possible to use cutting instruments that from the hand to the extrusion press 83

were less archaic than a simple knife, such as the chitarra (guitar), a tool that was traditionally used to make spaghetti in the Abruzzi and other southern regions of the Italian peninsula, a practice now recalled only in local folklore. The chitarra is a simple rectangular wooden frame across which iron wires are stretched at close regular intervals (hence the name, although it more closely resembled a harp than a guitar); the pasta maker would lay a sheet of dough the size of the chitarra over the wires and, with the help of a pastry roller, press the dough through the wires to cut it into so many taglierini, or spaghetti, to use the classic appellation of the Abruzzi. These utensils, however, do not appear in medieval sources. The ferro da maccheroni, or macaroni iron, on the other hand, was quite widespread, at least in the large kitchens of the upper classes. Bartolomeo Scappi included it among the necessary utensils of a well-equipped kitchen and depicted one in an engraving in his Opera, published in 1570. This was a metal cylinder, covered with conical grooves running perpendicular to the handles, finished at each end with two handles of smaller diameter. A worker would roll the cylinder over strips of dough laid on a cutting board, probably equipped with guide channels so that the iron would cut along a straight line (fig. 6). Largely used for home production, the ferro da maccheroni, or macaroni iron, was not unknown to professional pasta makers, and we have found it listed in the equipment inventories of some workshops. With the arrival of the extrusion press, production attained a new scale. Its invention, or rather its adaptation to pasta processing—it operates on the same principle as the wine press, known and used since antiquity—came fairly late, all things considered, but since it came into use at a point when production was driven by strong demand, it rapidly spread. The idea was pretty much in the air from the sixteenth century onward. From Spain we have documentation from the humanist Sebastian Covarrubias, who explained in his dictionary that fideos are made by pressing dough through a perforated grill with holes of various size,49 a method that operates on the same principle as the wine press. In the same period, the chefs of the great houses of Italy made stringlike pasta with a utensil known as the ingegno per li maccheroni (literally, macaroni engine), according to the writings of Christoforo Messisbugo, majordomo of the Este court in Ferrara during the first half of the sixteenth century.50 This utensil for domestic use is particularly intriguing because it appeared several decades before the ingegno used by Neapolitan pasta makers, that is, 84 from the hand to the extrusion press

mDIJll)

(;:;:;>=; . ". ',' :

'. '.

I

'. ;aZi{4, ','

FIGURE

6

Macaroni iron and the earliest tools for cutting pasta uniformly. Bartolomeo Scappi, Opera (Venice, 1570; reprint, Sala Bolognese: Arnaldo Forni,1981).

the extrusion press. We believe that it was a utensil similar to the “syringe whose barrel was perforated with a number of small holes, [with which] vermicelli are made in private homes,” discovered by Père Labat during his travels in Italy at the turn of the fourteenth century.51 We have no descriptions of the first generation of extrusion presses, and it is quite likely that this tool, aside from the various forms it may well have assumed, must have developed considerably in structure and improved in performance before attaining the form that we find in Malouin’s book, published, as we have mentioned, in Paris in 1767.52 Malouin’s plates depict the extrusion press in elevation and cross-section, which allow us to see both the way it worked and the way in which it was actually operated. Alongside it is a brake, the two forming a single unit. The press, made of wood, had a vertical structure and was fairly large. It was composed of two large horizontal beams—the upper counter and the lower counter—one set above the other and both solidly fastened to two columns with square crosssections, called “the twins.” In the lower counter was lodged the “bell,” a hollow bronze cylinder with an open bottom, designed in such a way as to hold the die plate (or drawplate), a bronze disk perforated with holes the shape of the pasta one desired to produce. In the upper counter was set a threaded opening that housed a large wooden screw to which was fastened a movable piston that compressed the dough into the bell, thrusting it through the die plate. The considerable force required to operate the press was provided by an arm inserted in the iron “lantern,” a wheel set on the threaded axle, operated either by one or two men directly or, as shown by Malouin, by a windlass (see fig. 5). As was the case with the manual brake, Neapolitan producers were among the first to adopt this mechanical system for shaping pasta. Owning an extrusion press even became a requirement for membership in the vermicelli makers’ guild of Naples. The charter of the corporation, approved, as we have noted, in 1579, stated that “each shop must absolutely possess its own extrusion press suited to perform the work in question, equipped with a bronze screw and maintained in a state of operation according to the customs of said guild, in order that the work may be executed perfectly for the benefit of the public.”53 It was in this period that the phrase pasta d’ingegno became common in Neapolitan speech, to denote pasta molded with an extrusion press. The common use of the extrusion press can also be demonstrated by 86 from the hand to the extrusion press

a document dated 1596 attesting to the purchase of an ingegno for macaroni, equipped with four die plates, as well as a sieve, a scale, and other utensils.54 We have documentation of the early use of this machine along the Ligurian coast as well, especially in Savona, where, at the turn of the seventeenth century, pasta was sold that was made “al tornio dei fidelari” (with the press of the pasta maker), tornio being the equivalent in the local dialect of the Italian term torchio, “press.” And the inventory of the workshop of a Roman pasta maker, drawn up by a notary in 1634, mentions a press, complete with all its accessories and wooden bars, including seven die plates in fairly good condition and a windlass to operate the press.55 The use of the extrusion press even received literary consecration at the hand of Giambattista Basile, the Boccaccio of Naples. Describing the condition of his hero after a brutal beating, Basile said that he felt as if he had been squeezed through an extrusion press for making macaroni.56 With the development of this machine for making dry pasta, the Neapolitans were poised to create their reputation as inveterate macaroni eaters, or mangiamaccheroni.

portrait of the modern pasta manufacturer Since each center of production had its own specialties, rules, and laws, there is, of course, no single model of the pasta maker, especially if we consider that individual situations could be quite different within the professional guild of a single town. Nonetheless, it is possible to establish some idea of the professional profile of a pasta maker in this crucial period, as seen through three concrete instances observed in Naples, which was at the time one of the most dynamic centers of this rapidly expanding economic sector.57 First, we have the prosperous vermicelli maker Felice Vigilante, who was elected consul of his guild in 1636, an office that gave him real influence and even some control over the profession and was generally open to none but the largest manufacturers. Although he may not have been truly wealthy, Felice Vigilante clearly possessed substantial financial resources and was thus able to manage numerous business ventures at once, making his capital bear fruit. During one year—1636—we find him working with a relative, Aniello Vigilante, also a vermicelli maker, to open a shop in the Piazza Mercato. A contract bound the two partners for a year, entrusting Aniello with from the hand to the extrusion press 87

managing the business and making the pasta, while Felice supplied the capital necessary to rent the shop and provide the utensils and raw materials. Expenses were to be deducted from the final revenue; profits were to be evenly split. At the same time, and separate from that undertaking, Felice Vigilante was also financing another pasta shop, again providing the funds for a partner who actually ran the business. Domenico Russo certainly did not possess the same financial resources as his fellow guild member and rival pasta maker. Like many vermicelli makers in Naples, he had come to the city from the provinces—from Forino, a village in the Avellino region from which many pasta makers working in the capital city of the kingdom hailed. His lack of financial resources led him to go into business in 1620 with a miller named Stefano de Agnino. The miller provided capital, partly in the form of wheat (100 tomoli, about 1,600 pounds), which Domenico Russo was to transform into pasta with the help of skilled workers and laborers whose salaries were paid by the miller, who also took care of other expenses and the rent for the shop. The profits were split equally between the two partners once expenses had been deducted. The third example involves a partnership established by two vermicelli makers and a miller. In this case, the three partners all provided capital in roughly equivalent shares: the miller provided the shop and also helped to make the pasta, just like the other two partners—an unusual arrangement; in return, he was reimbursed for the rent. He also probably supplied raw materials, which were financed by the cash provided by his two partners. The contract establishing this three-partner company stipulated that a corner of the shop was to be devoted to the production and sale of bread, another surprising arrangement, given the rivalry between bakers and pasta makers. In this period, in fact, the rules of the bakers’ guild in Naples prohibited them not only from making and selling pasta but even from going into the pasta business with pasta makers or millers. There was no reciprocity on this point—pasta makers were allowed to make bread—which is a further indication of the increasing power of the vermicelli makers’ guild and especially the important role that pasta had taken on in the city’s economy. What do these three cases tell us about pasta making in Naples? We can say that pasta makers were important operators in the life of the city, given the role they played in the food supply. They were not necessarily natives of the city; in fact, they were often immigrants from the provinces. If a pasta maker owned his business, he rarely 88 from the hand to the extrusion press

owned the shop in which he conducted it. In many cases, he had a partner or several partners and even might be involved in several partnerships at once. Pasta makers tended to go into partnership with other pasta makers or else millers, who were important players in the Neapolitan pasta business, often providing the start-up capital for a business, while the vermicelli maker might only provide know-how. The pasta maker was a small businessman, doing part of the work himself and heading a small team of workers and laborers, whose numbers varied. A shop would certainly be equipped with a brake and an extrusion press. And the most successful and hardest-working pasta makers would help lead the guild, where they held the influential office of consul. We know absolutely nothing about how the work of making pasta was actually carried out during this crucial period—the division of labor, drying techniques, and so on—just as we know nothing about what proportion of the pasta was made from durum wheat semolina and how much was made with flour or how much of the pasta was first class and how much was second choice. We do know that, aside from the already classic macaroni and vermicelli, the pasta makers of Naples were also making pasta shaped like kernels of wheat or grains of rice, which they called semola, which would later be described with the generic term pastine (literally, small pasta). They sold exclusively to a local clientele, who either came directly to the shop to make their purchases or else had the pasta regularly delivered to their homes according to purveyance arrangements established annually or by the month. This method of provisioning, practiced commonly by wealthy houses and institutions, was particularly valued by the pasta makers, since it assured regular sales, with prices and quantities established in advance. The vermicelli maker Salvatore di Avossa was the appointed purveyor to the Casa dell’Annunziata of Naples, a major client that renewed its contract in 1636 for “the entire quantity of vermicelli and semola that the house requires for its daily needs, as was the case in the past and as will be the case during the coming month of September.”58 The price established was six grani per rotolo for the vermicelli and seven grani per rotolo for the semola, which seems relatively reasonable for pasta that was probably first choice. These prices are in any case lower than the maximum price fixed by the authorities for white pasta of first quality, limited that year to seven grani and three denari per rotolo, and scarcely higher than the price for ordinary pasta, limited to five grani and three denari per rotolo.59 from the hand to the extrusion press 89

The prices seem especially low in comparison with the maximum price of four grani set for a rotolo of ordinary bread, the low-quality bread eaten by the proletariat, especially considering that this was a truly fixed price, held artificially as low as possible in order to prevent social disorder. Even these measures proved inadequate, however, and a popular revolt broke out in 1647, led by the fisherman Masaniello (1620–1647), who found himself propelled to the highest power imaginable for a brief period. The results of his short and chaotic interregnum can be seen especially in the sharp increases in prices for staple foodstuffs. On June 25, 1648, the record books of the Assisa show for macaroni, lasagne, tagliatelli, vermicelli, and other types of pasta made with a press a price of seven grani for dark pasta, and nine grani for white pasta.60 Once the crisis was over, however, prices dropped to their usual level, which remained quite affordable for most citizens. In fact, pasta had by this point definitively entered the sphere of the working classes, a widely shared pleasure honored in the already proverbial expression reported by a French traveler: “Maccheroni bene mio!” (roughly, “Macaroni, my treasure”).61 Manufactured pasta was not far in the future, but before its time could come, the making of pasta would have to move beyond the walls of the great cities, Naples and Genoa, that provided letters of nobility to pasta made with an extrusion press.

90 from the hand to the extrusion press

CHAPTER FOUR

The Golden Age of the Pasta Manufactory “In San Remo we saw a great many manufactories of macaroni and vermicelli! They are widely consumed in Provence and are beginning to become common in Paris.”1 The French Dominican monk JeanBaptiste Labat (1663–1738), who traveled through Italy at the turn of the eighteenth century, discovered a flourishing pasta industry there. The combination of the manual brake and the extrusion press, which began to spread in the second half of the sixteenth century, had revolutionized the production of pasta, considerably increasing output without in any way harming quality. Pasta made with the extrusion press was in many ways superior to pasta made by hand. And that is not even to mention the smooth and regular appearance of the various forms, which now could be mass produced, one identical to the next, or the advantage of extending product lines to include new types of pasta whose complex shapes could not be made as easily by hand. Leading the movement to modernize the system of production were the vermicelli makers of the Naples region and the fidelari of the

Ligurian Riviera, both of whom thus attained a dominant market position that no one would be able to wrest from them until the middle of the nineteenth century. The key factors in their success were primarily their choice of raw material, durum wheat semolina, and their unrivaled know-how, recognized in both Italy and internationally, but the Genoese also brought noteworthy commercial skill to the activity, while Naples enjoyed massive local consumption along with a genuine popular culture of pasta, partly encouraged by the accounts of foreign visitors. Descriptions of the lively goings-on around the shop of the maccaronaro, the vendor of cooked macaroni, and the emblematic figure of the lazzarone (roughly, layabout or good-fornothing), eating a dish of steaming macaroni with his hands entered Neapolitan folklore, a genuine attraction that travelers loved to describe when they returned home. The growing renown of the macaroni of Naples and the fine pasta of Genoa accompanied and powered the development of their manufacturing industries. All along the Ligurian Riviera di Ponente, or western coast, towns and villages began to produce pasta, while in the area around Naples, pasta-making activity gravitated to the coastal towns of Torre Annunziata and Gragnano, which boasted major milling industries as early as the Middle Ages. The dynamism of these two towns overshadowed somewhat the development of other centers of production. Still, the production of pasta grew in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in all the traditional pasta-making regions as well as in other areas where it was found in earlier periods, and following the wave of expansion that pasta enjoyed during the Middle Ages, it spread across the entire territory of the Italian peninsula. Numerous towns had pasta makers, and—a new development— northern Italians began to discover the benefits of durum wheat semolina, while others converted to the production of long-preservation pasta. Thus, over the course of the first two centuries of the modern era, the universe of pasta changed in nature and scale, and the manufactory was born, a sort of hybrid between the modest artisan’s workshop and the industrial factory of the future. Humans were still the protagonists: the manual brake and the extrusion press were generally operated by brute strength, while most of the products were handmade, painstaking work that fell primarily to women. In the new workshop of the pasta maker, division of labor followed gender lines: men operated the machinery, hard and tiring labor that was highly 92 the golden age of the pasta manufactory

valued, while women performed the delicate tasks of fine handwork as well as all the thankless and menial jobs, including, in all likelihood, keeping the premises clean. This protoindustrial model, in which we can see the earliest instances of the production cycle of a manufactured product being broken into distinct, linked phases, developed in Italy toward the end of the 1600s and remained in place for almost two centuries.

the birth of manufacturing We have mentioned the important role the miller played in the creation of pasta-making workshops in Naples. The young vermicelli maker or mere laborer who wished to set up his own business often found a partner in the miller, a partner who wanted a considerable share of the profits, it is true, but also someone with capital to invest in the ambitions of a skilled but penniless craftsman. But while millers at first played an important role in the development of pasta production in Naples, in the long term, their involvement proved harmful to the city’s vermicelli makers. Millers gradually took over a larger and larger share of the production and trade of pasta, creating their own manufactories, often on the same site as their milling facilities, that is, in the small towns along the Amalfi coast and the Gulf of Naples. The interaction of these complementary professions led to the expansion of the pasta-making industry in Torre Annunziata and Gragnano, which truly established the reputation of Neapolitan pasta. These two towns were major centers of the milling industry. Archaeological traces of past economic activity are still visible in the Valle dei Mulini (Valley of Mills) of Gragnano, whose beauty had long inspired poets and painters. Nowadays, it is nothing more than a place of memories, preserved from encroaching brambles only by the seasonal throngs of tourists, but brilliantly rendered by Maria Orsini Natale, whose Francesca e Nunziata brings back to life the community of pasta makers of this place. The construction of mills along the streams and rivers along the southeastern slopes of the Lattari Mountains, overlooking the Gulf of Salerno, dates back to the ninth through eleventh centuries. As we noted in an earlier chapter, the production of pasta developed early in these valleys of the Amalfi hinterland, in symbiosis with the milling industry during the Middle Ages, and well the golden age of the pasta manufactory 93

before it established a presence in Torre Annunziata and Gragnano. These two towns simply had the good luck to be located at the foot of the northeastern slope of the Lattari Mountains, toward the Gulf of Naples, and therefore closer to the city, in an area equipped with a system of waterways that was especially well suited for the construction of mills. In Gragnano, the milling industry began developing seriously around the end of the sixteenth century and the turn of the seventeenth century, thanks to the activities of a local family, the Quiroga–De Antonios, which managed to gain control of land and springwater sources and then went on to regulate streams and rivers and build over the course of several decades no fewer than twentyfive mills between the city and Lido di Stabia, a port of Naples. The milling trade of Torre Annunziata followed roughly the same evolution during the same period, with the small difference that the decisive encouragement came from an aristocratic family, that of the count of Sarno, Muzio Tuttavilla, who became seigneur of Torre Annunziata and then arranged to supply it with freshwater via a canal, later named the Canale del Conte, literally, “the count’s canal.” Also a great builder of watermills, he established himself as a major supplier of flour and semolina to the city of Naples, acquiring contracts from the magistrates of the Tribunal of San Lorenzo, in charge of procuring the city’s food supply. A few decades later, the Bottaro Canal was constructed, roughly following the course of the Sarno River, along which numerous other mills were built. All this meant that by the turn of the seventeenth century the milling industry of Torre Annunziata had reached the same level of development as its leading rivals.2 As early as 1641 there is documentation of the existence in Gragnano of artisanal production of pasta, although it seems to have been on a fairly modest scale, given that the census of hearths in the town listed only two producers of macaroni (maccaronari), one of whom “came every morning from Castellammare to practice his art in the workshop of Flavio Golano.”3 The pasta industry developed much more quickly in Torre Annunziata, where vermicelli makers were so numerous that they formed a guild in the late decades of the seventeenth century. It was not long before they found themselves engaged in open conflict with their Neapolitan competitors, who tried in vain to exclude them from the marketplace of the southern capital.4 Since they were unable to prohibit the sale of products in the squares of 94 the golden age of the pasta manufactory

their town, the Neapolitan vermicelli makers resorted to half measures designed to give them exclusive rights to practice their profession within the city walls. In 1598 and periodically from that time forward, a series of ordinances sternly reminded the populace that “vermicelli makers who are not enrolled cannot work [in Naples], nor can they bring flour into the city, under penalty of three years penal servitude.”5 More than a century and a half later the prohibitions remained in place, even though they proved increasingly pointless. During a visit to Naples in the course of his Italian voyage in 1765–1766, Jérôme de Lalande observed that “it is in Torre Annunziata, four leagues’ distance from Naples, that workers in fine pasta are trained, at least most of them, because the Maccaronari of Naples who make ordinary pasta have the right to prevent them from working in the city.”6 By this point, however, the Neapolitan producers had lost the upper hand, and about a decade later the conflict had clearly turned in favor of their competitors from the coast, foremost among them the producers of Torre Annunziata. Another French traveler of this period, who was especially sensitive to the “picturesque” aspects of Naples, noted that while macaroni were certainly a considerable commercial resource for the capital of the kingdom, they were actually “made in the place called ‘Torre dell’Annunziata,’ near Mount Vesuvius.” The expansion of this activity was also confirmed by other observers, some of whom mentioned the great commerce in wheat carried on in Torre Annunziata, “a place where an immense amount of pasta is made.”7 In fact, the historian Lorenzo Giustiniani noted that at the turn of the nineteenth century, the production of pasta had become the chief source of the town’s wealth.8 For Gragnano, things were less straightforward, because the thriving success of Torre Annunziata, which had also attained a dominant position in the trade and manufacture of grains, thrust the town into the background, where it escaped the notice of observers. Nevertheless, pasta making developed in this milling town, perhaps in a less spectacular manner but still at a level that allowed it to compete in supplying certain towns, such as Vico, which placed an order in 1799 with the pasta makers of Gragnano for forty quintals (roughly 8,800 pounds) of pasta.9 The town developed more quickly during the nineteenth century. In 1859 there were eighty-one “Archimedes presses for the manufacture of macaroni,”10 which certainly did not correspond to a similar number of factories but still represented a considerable production capacity. the golden age of the pasta manufactory 95

The development of manufacturing between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries was equally remarkable along the Ligurian coast. Pasta is still produced in Genoa and in the little neighboring town of Nervi, the only place on the Riviera di Levante (or eastern coast) that has factories. On the other side, on the Riviera di Ponente (western coast), there were numerous manufactories, especially around Savona and Portomaurizio, present-day Imperia, in addition to those already noted by Père Labat in San Remo at the very beginning of the eighteenth century. About thirty vermicelli makers were active in 1746 in Loano, near Savona; in Portomaurizio, a guild of vermicelli makers was founded in 1740, and an association of vermicelli makers was established in the small neighboring town of Oneglia in 1766.11 The pasta makers of Portomaurizio proved to be the most enterprising in the region, and by the turn of the nineteenth century, there were already forty manufactories, providing work for two hundred families. Trade was thriving, and the town became a direct competitor with Genoa in terms of exports. “The production of vermicelli could rival that of Genoa if high-quality wheat were processed with great application,” according to a monograph on trade in Portomaurizio from the beginning of the nineteenth century, which remained unpublished. The anonymous author of this proposal, which has a boosterish sound, saw excellent reasons to look optimistically to the future, since in “San Remo, Taggia, Oneglia, all the adjoining valleys, and all the way to the Marquisate of Dolceacqua they buy our pasta, superior in quality to the pasta produced in those places, whether because of the air or the water, to the point that there are forty pasta factories in Portomaurizio.”12 Although they remained small-scale producers for many years, the inhabitants of Apulia succeeded in developing their output considerably in the eighteenth century, themselves transforming into pasta a considerable portion of their harvests of saragolla wheat. In the province of Bari, special mention should be made of Acquaviva delle Fonti, where “exceedingly fine semolina pasta is made in an infinite array of small formats.” We should also cite Gravina, although the pasta produced there was less highly esteemed. There was also a thriving “trade in a great variety of fine semolina pasta” in Ascoli Satriano, in the province of Foggia, as well as in Brindisi.13 In Bari five manufacturers of macaroni with “shop and extrusion press” are found in the city registry of 1753, identified by name and address.14 At the turn of the nineteenth century, there had been only four 96 the golden age of the pasta manufactory

declared manufacturers, but a commercial guide to Bari from 1881 names no fewer than twenty-two.15 Slow and focused at first, the construction of manufactories spread over time even beyond traditional pasta-making regions, intensifying greatly from the nineteenth century on. The vermicelli and pasta of Cuneo were among the products whose prices were regulated in Turin in 1788, along with the “superfine vermicelli made Genoa-style” and “vermicelli and pasta of ordinary semolina.” In the same period, the “vermicelli of Rivoli” began to gain renown, enjoying as good a reputation among the chefs of the great houses of Piedmont as did the pasta of Genoa.16 At the foot of the eastern Alps, a region long supplied with Apulian pasta by the Venetians, the Pastificio Tomadini was founded in Pordenone in 1843 and still operates today. In Tuscany, near Arezzo, the Pastificio Fabianelli began operation in 1860; it also continues to produce pasta today. And who would have bet on the future of the small pasta manufactory that began operation in 1827 in Sansepolcro, a tiny but magnificent medieval town, birthplace of Piero della Francesca, located in the upper Tiber Valley, along the border between Umbria and Tuscany? Yet it was there, far from the fields of durum wheat, well off the major trade routes, and without access to the sea, that the Buitoni company would prosper and grow, becoming one of the leading pasta manufacturers on earth. A region neighboring Liguria, Parma, still the capital of the duchy of the same name, had long been a market for the pasta of Genoa, and it was only natural that as early as the first Bourbon reign (1748– 1802), it should have become the site of a production of “pasta in the Genoese style.” In 1755 the government awarded the exclusive right to produce pasta in the town of Parma for ten years to a certain Stefano Lucciardi of Sarzana “who intends to introduce in the capital a manufactory of pasta in the Genoese manner.”17 At the turn of the nineteenth century, there were several manufactories of “vermicelli and dried pasta,” but the pasta industry did not really begin expanding until after the unification of Italy. At the local industrial exposition organized in Parma in 1863, a number of producers received prizes, including Emilio Marinelli, who was honored for the exceptional quality of his pasta and the variety of formats he presented. Most of these producers of pasta were bakers, who carried on this activity along with their original profession. Production was quite limited, almost on a domestic scale, much like the lasagne merchants of the Middle Ages. They still worked primarily by hand, a method of the golden age of the pasta manufactory 97

production that was highly valued. The producers who took part in the industrial and scientific exposition of 1887 were, by contrast, mostly true professionals operating small companies that were all more or less in the process of industrializing. This is a typical phenomenon of industrial conversion, illustrated in a particularly emblematic manner by the development of the Barilla company, whose founder, Pietro, began as a baker in 1877, expanding his activity to include the production of pasta, which his son Riccardo transformed into an industry in 1911. During the manufacturing era, pasta making prospered in Bologna as well. The city had already built a solid reputation for its egg pasta. Its main competitor was Alsace, that buffer zone between France and Germany that also boasted a very old tradition of egg pasta. In both cases, the pasta was made with flour, at least in the period that interests us here, and the preferred format was the tagliatella. The popularity of this pasta eventually led most of the pasta makers of central and northern Italy to feature it in their catalogs, alongside pasta from Naples made of durum wheat semolina. This reflected the growing interest in this simple and inexpensive food, considered nutritious and healthful, an interest that resulted in increased consumption and thus an expansion of manufactories to almost the entire territory of the Italian peninsula. In fact, the only real hindrance to the consumption of pasta in Italy during the nineteenth century lay in the system of production, which remained essentially and profoundly artisanal.

artisanal manufacturing For the processes used in the preindustrial production of pasta, we must return to Malouin. This author, who described himself as a physician, claimed to have been the first to introduce the production of vermicelli and macaroni in Paris, and his view of the industry combined an understanding of the situations in both France and Italy. His book, a compendium of theoretical and practical knowledge on the art of making pasta in the eighteenth century, allows us to determine what was changing and what stayed the same.18 In the plates that were published in an appendix to his book on the three professions of the “white industry,” he depicts a sort of ideal workshop, illustrating the main phases of the production process, which, with the exception of a few details, were the same everywhere, 98 the golden age of the pasta manufactory

aside from drying. The workshop that he shows in the second half of the eighteenth century is quite small. Only a few people are working there. It is equipped with a brake for processing the dough, and a press operated by a windlass and equipped with interchangeable die plates (see fig. 5). The room is also equipped for the indoor drying of the pasta with a series of wall shelves that can accommodate the trays, an arrangement meant for northern producers, who could not count on the climate to allow open-air drying (fig. 7). Sifted flour or semolina was mixed with hot water by hand in a kneading trough, until one could gather the dough into a ball. One then moved it to the front of the kneading trough, covered it with a clean piece of linen that in turn was wrapped in another piece of rougher cloth, and kneaded it for two or three minutes. This first operation had to be done immediately, while the dough was still warm. The dough ball was then kneaded with the brake for one or two hours without stopping—more, if semolina was used. In the Neapolitan region, more or less fine semolinas were used— meaning semolinas that had been sifted to varying degrees. The finest was used for vermicelli and was called “semoletta rarità” (literally, rarity-fine semolina). The proportion of water was listed approximately, but the the less water there was, the better the pasta would be. It was recommended, however, to make slightly softer dough for macaroni and lasagne than for vermicelli, because shaping them was harder. For the same reason, the water should likewise be a little warmer, because “cold water makes [dough] hard at first, and later softens it; in contrast, warm water softens the dough at first, and hardens it later: these are the fundamental principles to know in these arts.”19 Warm water was always used in pasta production, and it is documented in domestic practice as early in the Middle Ages, continuing through to the industrial era, with an increase in temperatures all the way up to 100 degrees Celsius (212 degrees Fahrenheit) at the turn of the twentieth century.20 The pasta makers of the Ligurian Riviera and Provence favored a firm mixture that was scarcely moistened at all, while the Neapolitans, and the pasta makers of southern Italy in general, made a softer and more pliable dough. Malouin offered a hybrid of the two methods: a firm, dry dough but made with hot water, as in the south. The technicians of the first industrial generation who undertook, at the turn of the twentieth century, the earliest systematic studies of the procedures of manufacturing and drying pasta, justified the preferthe golden age of the pasta manufactory 99

FIGURE

7

The workshop of the vermicelli maker during the era of the manufactory: hand-kneading and preparation of flour and semolina, shelving for the racks for drying the pasta. Paul-Jacqu es M alouin, Description et details des arts du meunie r, dll ve rm ice lier (Pa ri s, 1767; reprint, Bayac: Roc de Bourzac, >995) .

ence of southern Italian manufacturers for soft dough: it allowed them to knead the dough better and at greater length, making it more homogeneous. Hot water yielded a softer dough without extra moisture. Indeed, Neapolitan pasta makers tended to use hotter water than was the practice in other regions.21 Once the dough had been well and truly kneaded, it was put through the extrusion press, in this case, one with a vertical screw, the most common model (see fig. 5), although, according to Jérôme de Lalande, presses with horizontal screws were also used, but only to make short-cut pasta. Malouin estimated that it took two hours to process fifty pounds of dough through the die plate, which meant a daily yield of roughly 275 pounds for ten hours of work. The press made it possible to manufacture multiple formats of pasta. In the Naples area, Lalande observed “more than thirty distinct types,” mentioning among others fedelini, vermicelli, acini di pepe, macaroni, trenette, and lasagnette. There were dies “whose holes had a point in the middle, producing a cord that is hollowed out like a tube, just like ordinary macaroni.” He also described the special device used to mass-produce star-shaped pasta, the die plate being equipped with a rotating blade, operated by a crank, that cut the pasta after it emerged from the holes. He noted with interest the work of a child, who stood near the press and waved a cardboard fan to cool the pasta so that the individual pieces would not stick together.22 The danger of that happening was very real for long pasta, which was not cut but broken by hand, and especially for vermicelli, tiny threads roughly a foot in length. Malouin’s engravings include a series of die plates, depicted alongside samples of the forms of pasta they produced (fig. 8). The inclusion of lasagne among the illustrated shapes suggests the extrusion press was used to form this style of pasta, something no one has ever pointed out before, to the best of our knowledge. It is hard to imagine these strips of dough being made any way but by rolling, by hand or with a machine that reproduced the action of the rolling pin, the simplest version of which had two cylinders turned by a crank, along the same principle as the modern home pasta maker (fig. 9). Not only does this method seem more logical, the pressure of the pin or rollers on the dough increases its elasticity and firmness, important features of good lasagne. Malouin, however, shows that for a time lasagne were produced with the extrusion press, as were vermicelli and macaroni.23 Forming these flat noodles with a die plate borders on a techthe golden age of the pasta manufactory 101

nical miracle, especially if we consider that the producers of the eighteenth century did not limit themselves to producing simple lasagne but made them “sometimes different along the edges, cut or scalloped,” just like lasagne nowadays. Yet lasagne were among the products made: the text clearly states that “the thinner the lasagne, the finer the vermicelli, the hollower the macaroni, and the whiter they appear, the better they are liked.”24 As with macaroni, a softer dough mixed with hotter water was used for lasagne made with a press. In order to ensure that the lasagne did not lose their shape or stick together, they were cooled after being removed from the mold, just as the vermicelli and macaroni were. Cut and gathered beneath the press, the pasta was laid out to dry: the short-cut formats and the vermicelli in nests on trays, the macaroni and other long pasta hanging from poles. We shall return in some detail to this operation (in “Natural Drying,” below), which all agreed was the most delicate in the process of making pasta. The cycle of shaping ending with the fashioning of the nests, which required considerable dexterity. One had to grip them delicately with the tips of the fingers and roll them up adroitly in serpentine shapes on sheets of paper laid on the drying trays, which would then be hung up high to prevent them from interfering with the work (fig. 10; see fig. 7).

the hand that makes: the role of women Not all types of pasta could be made by machine. From this point of view, the situation was not the same everywhere, and the mechanization of production seems to have spread over the course of time. When Père Labat visited Italy at the turn of the eighteenth century, he noted that andarini and millefanti, two grain-shaped pastas, were made by hand. The former, he wrote, were shaped like peas, while the latter were oblong in shape, but there were many ways of making them; in the shape of orange or lemon seeds, melon seeds, or pumpkin seeds, everyone made them as they chose, according to taste and mood. In the Naples region, the best workers in fine shaped pastas, usually women, were found in that period in Torre Annunziata, and their imaginations led them to give the pasta a vast array of shapes: flat fish, such as flounder and sole, dried legumes of all sorts, such as beans, lentils, and so forth. Malouin claimed that in his time the tradition was beginning to die out and that it used to be that “the king, 102 the golden age of the pasta manufactory

FIGURE

8

The equipment of a pasta maker. The object labeled "Fig. 13" is the little hotbox used to heat the bell of the press, while the object marked "Fig. 14" is the fan used to cool the cut pasta once it emerged from the bell. Paul-Jacques Malouin, Description et details des arts du meunier, du vermicelier (Paris, 1767; reprint, Bayac: Roc de Bourzac, 1995).

p

FIGURE

9

Hand-operated roller for small-scale pasta manufacturing. Francesco Reulea ux, Chimica della vita quotidiana (Turin, 1889). FIGURE 10

The tools of the pasta maker. Especially interesting are the rack (L) and the brake pole (P). Paul-Jacques Malouin, Description et details des arts du meunier, du vermicelier (Paris, 1767; reprint, Bayac: Roc de Bourzac, 1995).

the queen, and the royal family, during the great banquet on Good Friday, were served nothing but pasta shaped like fish and vegetables,” a custom that appears to have been abandoned in 1762.25 But Père Labat claimed that Sardinia was where the most varied array of figured pasta could be found. “This is women’s work,” he pointed out, “and especially the work of nuns, for it does not require great attention, and it does not prevent them from chattering, the chief pursuit of the fair sex, and especially when cloistered.”26 It was indeed women’s work, and such it remained as long as manual dexterity was the only method available for producing special shapes. While the extrusion press was sufficient to produce stringlike pasta, however small, as well as hollow cylindrical pasta or even starshaped pasta, it was difficult to make spherical forms by simply pushing the dough through a mold. In the eighteenth century, the women of Brindisi shaped by hand certain special formats, “employed all day long at fashioning different pasta shapes made of very fine semolina,” and their painstaking dexterity helped greatly to establish the reputation of the specialties of the region.27 As in Sardinia, nuns played an essential role in the marketing and distribution of the pasta of certain towns. On the occasion of an exposition of the manufacturing products of the province of Bari in 1841, an editor of Memorie manoscritte recalled in connection with pasta “the truly cloistered patience of the nuns of Acquaviva who worked for years to make these fine pasta products, the mere sight of which was enough to prompt well-deserved praise.” The exposition featured no fewer than “nine formats of pasta, such as cavatelli, ritortini, cannoncetti, gnocchetti, and so on.”28 The production of pasta in the nunneries, a long-established tradition, was not always cheerfully accepted by pasta makers. It represented competition, for one thing, and they considered it especially unfair because of the tax exemptions religious institutions enjoyed. Neapolitan vermicelli makers never tired of trying to persuade the authorities to prohibit this monastic activity out of hand, and they sometimes were successful. An ordinance to this effect was issued in 1665 in Naples, though we do not know if it applied to the entire kingdom or only to the nunneries of the capital and surrounding area.29 The tension subsided eventually, and the nuns returned to their work and trade until renewed protests from professionals pushed the authorities to issue a new prohibition. This rivalry between the secular world and the religious domain to the golden age of the pasta manufactory 105

some degree camouflaged a more subtle competition between men and women that, by the time Père Labat visited Italy, had already been substantially won by the so-called stronger sex. In fact, the development of the pasta industry had by and large worked to the detriment of women. In the Middle Ages, women had played a considerable role in the production of pasta, and they ran shops that made and sold pasta, enjoying the same rights as their male colleagues, supervising and performing all the operations of the production cycle, from kneading the dough to drying the finished products. It is not unreasonable, in fact, to consider pasta making as a specifically female activity, since the artists of the illuminated manuscript of the Tacuina sanitatis chose to illustrate that profession with depictions of women and women alone (fig. 11). True, in that period, aside from a few centers specializing in production, the making of pasta was generally a domestic activity, handwork that produced small quantities. As artisanal production developed in scale, women found themselves increasingly elbowed aside. The introduction of heavy equipment that required strenuous and sustained labor to operate was used to justify having men take over this area of work, but strength and stamina did not explain everything. In reality, women were also—and perhaps primarily—excluded from this sector by the growing professionalization of the industry, as well as by the organization of production into a succession of specialized tasks, the most highly valued of which were performed by men. That did not discourage certain remarkable women from making their mark in this very masculine world. Indeed, women were the driving force behind some noteworthy success stories, the archetype of which was magnificently limned by Maria Orsini Natale in her novel Francesca e Nunziata. But these exceptional success stories took place outside, or perhaps above, the environment of the workshop, where women were largely restricted to unrewarding manual tasks. “Women are responsible for washing and preparing the wheat, and they are also in charge of drying the pasta,” noted the former prefect Chabrol, a Napoleonic official who administered Liguria as an imperial province between 1806 and 1812. In the numerous pasta manufactories of Portomaurizio and Savona, where teams of five workers usually comprised two men and three women, the men earned “two francs and forty centimes,” while the women received only seventy centimes, that is, less than a third as much.30 He might have added that women were responsible for sifting the semolina, a 106 the golden age of the pasta manufactory

FIG URE 1.1.

The art of making pasta in the Middle Ages: a pursuit for women. Tacuinum Sanitatis, manuscript from the second half of the fourteenth century, Liege.

task that was hardly restful: an illustration by Malouin shows that the sifter was suspended from a sort of trapeze so that the worker was not forced to support all the weight of the semolina with her arms. According to Lalande, who observed pasta making in the Neapolitan region, the sieves were of various sizes. Five siftings were needed for vermicelli, and no fewer than six for fidelini, which were “fine pasta.” For macaroni, on the other hand, nothing specific was mentioned, but we may surmise that the semolina was sifted through a slightly less fine sieve, because this format was classified as one of the more “ordinary pastas.”31 In addition to the work of preparing the raw materials and the manual preparation of certain forms, the female workers of Liguria were responsible for drying the pasta. We have only the most approximate idea of how this operation was performed in the manufactories of this region in Napoleonic times, but the very fact that it was assigned to women indicates that it was considered a subalternate job. This was equally true of the vermicelli makers of Paris in the eighteenth century. In the plates by Malouin, we can see a woman arranging on a board the nests of vermicelli just extruded from the press, so that they could dry. Malouin, however, usually so precise in his descriptions of the phases of production, dismisses the drying process in an elliptical formulation quite revealing of his estimation of this operation. The first to have a full understanding of the crucial importance of this final stage were the pasta makers of southern Italy, who developed a unique body of knowledge in this area. This probably explains why the pasta makers of Torre Annunziata and Gragnano, where drying techniques were most advanced, reserved this work for men.

natural drying Drying is the most delicate phase of all the processes involved in making pasta, and it is certainly not the least of the achievements of the pasta makers of southern Italy that they understood this before anyone else. For that matter, they kept their knowledge to themselves for as long as possible, since it was primarily their special drying method that, given the same raw materials, gave Neapolitan pasta the superior quality that was recognized by pasta lovers in Italy and elsewhere. As long as drying was an entirely natural process, the pasta makers of the Gulf of Naples maintained their supremacy, and it is 108 the golden age of the pasta manufactory

hardly surprising that the producers of the northern regions were the first to pursue research into artificial drying processes. We do not know just when natural drying took on the sophisticated and specific form we see described in the earliest technical works on the pasta industry, published in the early 1900s, but we may surmise that, like so many empirically developed techniques, the system known as “classic Neapolitan natural drying” was progressively refined over the course of time, in parallel with the development of manufacturing, attaining its full maturity in the nineteenth century at the high point of artisanal production. We know, all the same, that pasta had always been dried by the natural method, that is, at the ambient temperature of sunlight or of ordinary heating if it was done indoors. Observations of medieval cooks and of the artists of the various illuminated manuscripts of the Tacuina Sanitatis are quite explicit on this point. That pasta was dried in the ambient air has become such a received notion that it almost seems ridiculous to mention it here, and yet is it not fair to wonder whether, in the days when pasta makers were often also bakers, they ever considered drying their pasta in the way that hardtack or sea biscuit was dried? (Biscuit took its name from the fact that it was dried twice: after a first standard baking, it was returned to the oven at low heat to evaporate further the moisture it still contained [in French, bis means “twice,” and cuit means “cooked”]. This ensured longer preservation.) We believe that attempts to dry pasta artificially were probably made periodically, since, if a baker already owned and operated an oven, it must have made sense to get the most use out of the money already being spent on fuel. Once a baker had baked all the day’s bread, he might very well try to dry pasta in the still-warm oven. But this may not have been the case in the land of sun and fine weather, even though in the crowded alleys of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Naples, it is hard to imagine much space being available for open-air drying—except for terraces and balconies, and perhaps not all vermicelli makers in town had balconies. Oven-drying might have been more tempting under less clement skies. In Paris, as we have seen, the shop of an eighteenth-century vermicelli maker was set up in such a manner as to leave space for drying in the interior, for it was impossible to imagine open-air drying at that latitude. But the pasta was simply dried at room temperature. Malouin states that it takes several months to dry pasta, observing that if pasta is the golden age of the pasta manufactory 109

used before it is perfectly dry, “it will not be firm, and it will not keep its shape when boiled.”32 Leaving products out to dry for several months would be extremely inconvenient for a pasta maker without the luxury of unlimited space, and it seems logical that producers must have tried to find other solutions. To the best of our knowledge, however, Parisian vermicelli makers preferred to use natural drying, and if they chose this less convenient method, it must mean that, in spite of everything, it worked better than oven drying. We know that Alsatian pasta makers dried their pasta in the oven room, and that was probably true as well of the Parisian vermicelli makers, who were also often bakers (see fig. 7). One wonders, however, whether drying pasta naturally, in Paris and in areas with a similar climate, resulted in a satisfactory product. Despite the claims made by Malouin, who ranked the vermicelli makers of Paris with those of Genoa and Naples, it is probably safe to say that pasta dried in the conditions described above would probably be rather mediocre; in any case, the drying would not improve the quality of the product, as was the case for the producers of southern Italy. In order to dry pasta properly, it is not enough to leave it at room temperature, as the vermicelli makers of Paris did, and wait for the moisture to evaporate. Indeed, professional chefs were very critical of the poor quality of French pasta, which, even though it was made with durum wheat semolina, was always considered inferior to the pasta made in Naples or Genoa. True, the producers in Liguria from whom Malouin evidently learned the vermicelli maker’s art used the indoor drying processes he describes, but what works on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea may not necessarily work in a more northerly clime. The favorable climate of the Italian Riviera made it possible, at least, to complete the drying of the pasta, ensuring a satisfactory average level of quality and a good state of preservation. Later on, French and Spanish producers would dry their long pasta by stretching it between two blocks separated by a distance of six to eight inches and arranged on shelves specially made for this purpose. The resulting pasta, however, was quite fragile and opaque and did not stand up well to cooking. But since, with the notable exception of Alsatian pasta, French pasta—and, for that matter, most of the fine pasta from Genoa and other northern Italian regions—was generally eaten in broth, the question of how it stood up to boiling was of secondary importance. It was customary, even in Italy, to consider it a good property of pasta to break down a little bit during cooking, so as 110 the golden age of the pasta manufactory

to make the broth a little thicker.33 Still, compared with the highly technical drying methods used by southern Italian producers, the drying methods used in Provence, Liguria, Paris, and elsewhere seem somewhat rudimentary. The system of drying pasta described as the “classic natural Neapolitan system,” which was actually common, with some minor variations, to all the pasta makers of southern Italy, involved three basic phases: (1) the incartamento (stiffening, giving the dough the stiffness of cardboard), a preliminary surface drying achieved by exposing the pasta to direct sunlight; (2) the rinvenimento (allowing the dough to recover), which involves sheltering the dough in a cool place to soften the crust produced in the preceding phase; and (3) the essicazione definitiva (final drying), which involved completing the drying in a slow and progressive manner, sheltering it from the sun and varying the temperature.34 When the pasta emerged from the press, it was arranged according to its type—short or long—on canes, hung on racks, or spread on large pieces of cloth and exposed outdoors to direct sunlight. In a few hours, the pasta would form a fine surface crust called carta (literally, “paper” or “cardboard”), hence the term incartamento to describe the first stage of the drying process. This stage varied in length, of course, depending on the type of pasta and the weather, and it was part of the master vermicelli maker’s job to juggle all the various parameters in such a way as to conclude this critical operation successfully. The hardened crust, or carta, could not be either too thick or too thin: if it was too thick, the pasta could not soften properly in the next stage, and the crust would capture and maintain the internal moisture of the pasta; if the crust was too thin, the excessively fragile shell would disappear too quickly, causing the pasta to return to its original state. This not only wasted time, since the first phase then had to be repeated, but harmed the final quality of the product, since the pasta would not retain the pliability and firmness needed to withstand in good condition the rest of the drying process. The rinvenimento, or softening, phase required that the pasta be placed in a cool and well-ventilated place, where the ideal temperature would be about 15 degrees Celsius (60 degrees Fahrenheit). If a room with that temperature was not available, it was necessary in any case to place the pasta somewhere that was at least fifteen degrees cooler than the area where the the incartamento had taken place. The room could be a well-ventilated cellar or any other cool room, as long as it the golden age of the pasta manufactory 111

was very well insulated from external variations of temperature and had a high and constant level of humidity. The master vermicelli maker was capable of judging these conditions without the use of any measuring instruments, and in fact such instruments became common only well after this drying method had been fully refined. In the softening room, the long pasta was hung as close to the floor as possible, while the short forms were laid on racks, also close to the floor. This phase generally lasted one whole night. The purpose of the operation was to allow the humidity still contained in the pasta to diffuse progressively through the surface crust and soften it, causing the crust to return (hence rinvenimento) to a more pliable consistency, while the rest of the pasta became firm because of the evaporation of the humidity it still contained. Once this exchange was completed, the pasta would have a uniform consistency, at once pliant and firm, or, to use the vivid imagery of the Neapolitan expression, “the pasta would make the rope”—acquire sufficient strength to prevent it from breaking, twisting, or cracking during the rest of the drying process. The final drying phase differed for long and short pastas. For short pasta, after the softening phase, it was generally sufficient to expose the pasta at room temperature, sheltered from direct sunlight, on a porch or in a large open room, waiting without any further intervention for the drying to be completed, which took several days. For long pasta, the process took much longer and was far more delicate, because it was necessary to alternate, to a lesser degree, the temperature extremes of the first two phases. The pasta, still arranged on canes, was hung very high in the rooms where it was possible to vary both temperature and ventilation by opening and closing the windows to greater and lesser degrees. It was necessary to take into account the changes of temperature from season to season, day and night, ensuring that the contrast was never too extreme, certainly never as marked as the variation during the first two phases of hardening and softening. (In certain places with particularly favorable climates, the final drying process was done in the open air, on porches sheltered from direct sunlight, with the variation of temperature a straightforward product of the alternation of day and night.) It was also necessary to avoid horizontal drafts, because they would prevent uniform drying. Neapolitan pasta makers spoke in this case of making sure that the pasta was not exposed to the botta (shock), so that the surface would not crack—especially where the pasta was bent around the cane, causing the pasta to break and fall, shattering entirely. 112 the golden age of the pasta manufactory

The drying process varied in length, of course, depending on weather conditions. During full summer heat, drying times were shorter than in other seasons, even though in the Mediterranean regions temperatures remained quite warm even in the heart of winter. In general, in manufactories along the Neapolitan coast, drying the long pasta hung on canes took eight days in the summer and twenty days in the winter, or even thirty days if the weather was very humid.35 The time required also varied with the format and—something that was much more difficult to gauge—the final commercial market of the products. The pasta was thus arranged by batches and sizes and shapes, and every effort was made to keep the various categories in the same order through every stage of the drying process. In Torre Annunziata and Gragnano, the sites of production described in the earliest detailed technical documents concerning the drying operation, drying times ranged from a few days, for short pasta and pastine, to eighteen days and sometimes longer, for zite, large hollow macaroni made especially in the Neapolitan area, which were the most difficult to dry. On average, one had to count on a dozen days in the summer for the common formats of long pasta, macaroni, or spaghetti intended for sale in the local market and therefore destined to be sold in the following few weeks. For pasta that was to be exported, a few extra days of drying were required, because it was assumed that the pasta would be in circulation for a longer time, and it was therefore important that it last longer without spoiling. So, the drying of the pasta was modulated in accordance with commercial demand, and differences in drying time were influenced by whether the batch would be consumed locally on a short-term basis, distributed commercially in a regional network, distributed in a national network, or finally sold through an international network, involving storage and long-distance transportation. This modulated production, largely overlooked by historians, confirms our thesis concerning the various forms of production of the earlier periods, especially during the Middle Ages, where there has often been an unfortunate confusion between producers of dry pasta and producers of fresh pasta. The drying process was never a single and uniform process, as is generally thought, and much less so when it was done naturally; moreover, dry pasta might be dried to very different degrees. Another important point that will clash with existing notions is that drying, even in its most complete form, was never and could never be total. It was always necessary to ensure that the pasta would the golden age of the pasta manufactory 113

maintain a certain level of humidity, which the Neapolitan pasta makers described in their vivid imagery as “lasciare il sangue” (leaving the blood). This is a golden rule even now, and the high-precision instruments used by the modern pasta industry measure this ideal humidity at 12 percent, while the fresh pasta sold through major distribution networks has a moisture level of 30 percent. We shall not describe in detail the exact rules governing the complex procedures involved in the natural system for drying pasta, but we should emphasize the degree of skill and technical knowledge required to perform it properly. The success of each phase depended on a packet of combined elements, mastery of which could only be acquired by many years of experience. If just one of the procedures was performed wrong, if the pasta maker was distracted during one stage or another of the process, the quality of the finished product would suffer. Mastery of the profession had to include an understanding of the climate, the phases of the moon, the prevailing winds in this or that season, as well as other factors that allowed a master vermicelli maker or production supervisor to foresee changes in the weather in order to determine the length of exposure and the degree of ventilation. In the Neapolitan area, especially in Torre Annunziata and Gragnano, it was necessary to factor in the humidity of the sirocco (south wind) and the dryness of the tramontana (north wind), which can both blow during the course of a single day. In order to dry pasta to the state of the art, it was necessary to be an excellent weatherman as well as a fair astronomer, and it was only through the exercise of these arts that the pasta of Naples acquired the qualities of firmness and pliability—to use the Neapolitan expression, the nerbo (stamina, ribbing)—that it retains after cooking and that pasta lovers the world over have learned to appreciate with the term al dente. Even so, the technique had its disadvantages. Pasta exposed directly to the rays of the sun lost its natural color. Moreover, it required the employment of much greater manpower than the Ligurian method because it relied on a variety of manual operations, which, of course, affected the final price. Most important, exposure in the open air in the courtyards and even in the streets of the towns where the pasta was made, such as Gragnano and Torre Annunziata, proved extremely harmful to the image of the pasta of the southern Italian peninsula. One of the first to denounce the practice, which offended the growing sense of hygiene in the second half of the nineteenth century, was 114 the golden age of the pasta manufactory

Alessandro Betocchi, an expert for the Naples chamber of commerce: “If you make your way to the west of the city of Naples, you are heading for the region that extends to the foot of Vesuvius, and you will be overwhelmed by the disagreeable impression of seeing pasta made in exposed sites along the road, hanging from poles: the dust that is constantly raised by the passage of all sorts of vehicles covers and ruins the pasta.”36 He was one of the few operators in the economic community of Naples to sense the limitations of the local system of making pasta in a world being swept by the industrial revolution, but his clear-eyed criticism, however visionary, was ignored.

a short guide to italian manufacturers The Italian landscape of pasta production in the time of manufacturing was fairly uniform. There were larger and smaller establishments according to region, but, in the end, the points of similarity are more numerous than the differences. Until the middle of the nineteenth century, the equipment remained, aside from some minor modifications, roughly the same as that found in the “ideal” workshop described by Malouin in 1767. This was especially true of the manufactories in Liguria during the Napoleonic era. The former prefect, Chabrol, counted no fewer than 148 manufactories in the districts of Savona and Portomaurizio alone, but these were small concerns that employed on average five workers, two men and three women. He estimated that the annual production of each manufactory was just over 30 tons of pasta, or a total of around 4,500 tons, which corresponds to an average productivity of less than 220 pounds per day, or 175 pounds, if we count 350 working days. This seems quite small for a team of five people, and the low average productivity is even more evident when compared with Malouin’s estimates. The anonymous author of the monograph on the industry of Portomaurizio, cited above, offered for the same period the figure of approximately 17,500 cubic feet of wheat each year processed by each of the forty manufactories of the city, equal to a daily average production of ten times more than Chabrol estimated.37 This strikes us as grossly exaggerated and even impossible for small manufactories such as those described by Prefect Chabrol. A macroeconomic study of Italy, published in 1867, surveyed 134 manufacturers of vermicelli on the Ligurian Coast, in Savona, Genoa, the golden age of the pasta manufactory 115

and Nervi, which employed a total of a thousand workers and processed the equivalent of about 50,000 tons of wheat.38 These figures are no more reliable than the others, except perhaps for the number of manufacturers reported, but they are not far from more accurate numbers from other sources in the same period, which reflect a gain in productivity in comparison to the turn of the nineteenth century. An investigation undertaken in 1857 by Pensiero, the newspaper of Oneglia, surveyed sixteen pasta manufactories in Savona and fifty more in the territory of Oneglia and Portomaurizio.39 Less than five years later, on the occasion of the inauguration in 1862 of the Portomaurizio chamber of commerce, the city boasted more than twenty-six factories, with a total annual production—estimated with great precision by the president of the brand-new institution—of 47,470 quintals a year (roughly 5,220 tons), which means a little less than 1,100 pounds per factory per day.40 This is an impressive level of productivity, representing a spectacular improvement on levels of the Napoleonic era that can only be explained by an increase in the production capacity of the manufacturers themselves, caused by an increase in the number of laborers but also by the introduction of new equipment. An exposition in Genoa in 1846 presented a “pasta press . . . with the usual harness for the horse” that made use of steam to heat the bell directly and thus facilitate the extrusion of the pasta, softened by the procedure.41 The use of a horse to provide power appeared “usual” to this observer, while several decades before such a thing completely escaped the notice of Chabrol, who was generally so attentive to everything involved in the manufacture of pasta. Also during the course of the first half of the nineteenth century, the edge runner probably became common in Liguria; this machine, more sophisticated than the manual brake, operated on the same principle as the olive press. Some writers claim that the installation of the first models of this revolutionary new kneader dates back to exactly 1798, but they provide no serious documentation; moreover, it is absolutely impossible that this kneader had been used in Apulia ever since the Middle Ages, as others have speculated.42 The machine consisted of a smooth, heavy millstone that turned on a perpendicular axis in a circular wooden or stone basin, driven by a central axle, which in turn was powered by a system of cogwheels attached to a windlass worked by hand or by some other source of power. Even in its most archaic form, the edge runner made it possible to knead the pasta dough more

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quickly because it could handle larger quantities at a time with much less exertion; it also had the enormous advantage of accommodating motorization, drawing energy from horsepower, hydraulic power, or electric power, which made possible the rapid development of machines with even higher performances. In the Naples region, where the productive capacity of the manufactories developed earlier, technical progress seemed to come much slower. Beginning at the end of the eighteenth century, Torre Annunziata established itself as the most dynamic and prosperous town in the region, if not in all of Italy. “There is immense production of pasta there,” noted a traveler in 1793, “and it is said that production reaches levels of 500 quintars per day,” equivalent to about 98,000 pounds. We do not know how many manufactories were required to produce that volume, but, based on an annual estimate, it is four times the volume produced in Portomaurizio in 1862.43 There were certainly more than twenty-six manufactories in Torre Annunziata, however, and the manufactories of that town were larger in size, with larger labor forces. The Neapolitan author Andrea de Jorio, who became well known in the 1830s for a book about Naples and the Neapolitan region, advised visitors to go “watch the production of macaroni in the numerous manufactories along the coast. The spectacle is captivating even before entering the manufactory, in the street, where you can see great quantities of macaroni hanging from poles in front of warehouses, but the more curious visitors will not be disappointed when they enter the manufactories to watch the work being done by the young and powerful men, who operate their heavy machinery from morning to night, dressed only in a ‘rag around their waist.’ ”44 In the same period, an English magazine offered an account of pasta making in a large manufactory in the Naples region. The journalist described the teams of workers operating the brake, but instead of commenting on the miserable and exhausting labor required, he remarked, with the condescension of a subject of the most powerful empire on earth, that “in reality, they are doing nothing more than playing at seesaw, with the block at the short end of the lever; and to the eyes of a foreigner, the effect produced by a great manufactory in which many of these machines and a fair number of strong individuals are at work, as they jump up and down almost naked, is something quite comical.”45 Numerous pairs of machines made it possible to produce a sub-

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stantial amount of pasta, but the labor continued to be done with the simple equipment described by Malouin half a century before. Even though there were various attempts at mechanization in the region, and no lack of daring and forward-looking inventions in the field, none of them survived for long, evidently because people were not yet ready for change. In both Gragnano and Torre Annunziata, resistance to technical progress was very strong, because the production of pasta was not only the greatest source of wealth but the chief source of jobs. Between 1859 and 1863, when the region was being annexed by the Piedmontese conquerors and incorporated into the newly formed unified Italian state, the number of machines for making pasta increased in number in Gragnano from 81 to 120, “and they give employment to several thousand persons, offering lucrative remuneration.”46 But even at the height of this development, the manufactories were profoundly artisanal and manual in nature. The brake, it is true, was big enough to knead 110 pounds of semolina at a time, for a production of an equivalent weight of pasta, but the laborer who operated the bar with the strength of his arms was exhausted at the end of four hours and had to be replaced. A team of eight laborers working uninterruptedly on several brakes and presses could produce barely 2,200 pounds of pasta per day. That is, of course, a great deal for a crafts workshop, but it is quite small when compared with the capacity of manufactories in Marseilles at the time, which easily produced twice as much pasta with the same number of workers or even fewer. When Alessandro Betocchi calculated production, he drew a pitiless portrait of the backward state of the manufactories of the region: “Down here,” he wrote in 1874, “we don’t use mechanical kneaders to mix and knead the semolina; the dough is not processed with iron rollers and presses, and it is not compressed into molds with steam presses, nor is steam used to heat those forms, and while drying is not neglected the way we have seen it done in certain other townships, it is certainly not conducted in the best manner for the rapidity required, with warm air constantly recirculated.”47 Betocchi was especially pessimistic about the future of the regional pasta-making industry. The inability of local manufacturers to plan for the future and modernize was a source of considerable concern to him, much more than the economic conditions in which they were working when he was actually observing them. The development of industry would in the end revolutionize the world of pasta, which until the second half of the nineteenth century basically revolved 118 the golden age of the pasta manufactory

around its Italian cradle. The growing power of the French industry, which in the 1860s was first beginning to compete with the Italians for leadership in the international market, was enough to alarm a clear-eyed economist, but it was less the faint voice of the expert from the chamber of commerce than the crisis of the 1870s that led the manufacturers of the region to face the challenge of modernity. Until then, they had had little to fear from their competition.

macaroni from naples and fine pasta from genoa The golden age of manufacturing also saw the commercial expansion of the pasta of Genoa and Naples. The remarkable development of the market for this foodstuff that was generally thought of as an Italian specialty primarily benefited these two towns, by far the most dynamic centers of production in Italy. This was true for the domestic Italian market, even though the regions that traditionally produced pasta were more successful at resisting the onslaught of the Genoese and the Neapolitans, but it was especially true of the international markets. Save for a few enclaves where local production had gained a foothold, such as Provence and Alsace, Italian pasta was for many years virtually without competition in many European countries, and even when the Italian commercial empire met with some competition from local producers, as was the case in Paris, the superiority of Italian pasta, recognized and praised by all connoisseurs, preserved the dominance of Italian products. But what was generally called, as Malouin put it, “Italian pasta,”48 was actually pasta from Genoa and Naples; pasta from other Italian regions was virtually unknown outside Italy. In fact, the growing renown of the specialties of these two cities wound up greatly restricting the commercial success of other manufacturers. Of course, the growth of consumption allowed the Italian market to remain open for many years to the pasta products of other manufacturers, but what began as nothing more than a problem of visibility, the renown of the two major cities in a sense eclipsing awareness of the others—culminated in a genuine commercial deficit. The first to feel the full lash of the overwhelming competition of the Neapolitan manufacturers were the vermicelli makers of Rome, and their fate was a bellwether of the turmoil that the growing power of these two industry leaders would eventually cause. Until the middle the golden age of the pasta manufactory 119

of the eighteenth century, Roman manufacturers had controlled the trade in pasta in their city, for the most part in a well-organized fashion. As late as 1752 they enjoyed a solid position and indeed exported part of their production to Naples, a major pasta consumer, as well as to Genoa, which, in a move typical of the city’s long-standing merchant propensities, labeled them as Genoese pasta and reexported them to other countries. But in a decade or so these Roman manufacturers saw their solid commercial marketplace stormed by Neapolitan pasta products, which met with the favor of the Roman consumer because of the twofold advantage of higher quality and lower price than local pasta. According to Jérôme de Lalande, in some years, Rome imported as much as 400,000 [Roman] pounds of macaroni, or roughly 1,350 quintals (the equivalent of around 150 tons).49 This threat triggered a powerful lobbying effort on the part of the Roman pasta makers’ guild, which in 1764 persuaded the city authorities to prohibit the importation of macaroni and other pasta from Naples.50 Even more significant was the slow but inexorable decline of the reputation of pasta from Sicily and Sardinia, two centers of production with a very old tradition. Production continued in Sicily, but the flow of exports to Naples reversed, at the island’s expense: Sicily during the eighteenth century passed from a net exporter to a net importer. Sardinia held out a little longer against the joint commercial offensive of Naples and Genoa, but, though its retreat came later and took longer, it was no less real. As we noted in chapter 2, the Sardinian pasta trade was quite substantial in the Middle Ages, and Sardinian pasta enjoyed sufficient esteem in seventeenth-century Naples to be served by the court majordomo, Giovan Battista Crisci.51 The quality of Sardinian pasta was praised by Père Labat, and a half a century after the French Dominican monk’s voyage to Italy, its reputation had not yet dulled: the Tuscan scholar Targioni-Tozzetti cites “fine pasta Cagliari-style” as an example of the superior quality that could be obtained by using only durum wheat semolina.52 But in the following century, the pasta of Sardinia vanished from the Italian commercial scene, and while production did continue on the island, it was no longer powerful enough to rival the industries of Liguria and the Neapolitan region. A less dire fate faced the manufacturers of Apulia, who managed to preserve their commercial position. They had long benefited from the commercial expansion of Venice, which for centuries ensured the distribution of their product. As early as the middle of the fifteenth 120 the golden age of the pasta manufactory

century, it was noted that the pasta of Apulia “is sent by sea to Venice and other places for sale.”53 Thus “pasta di Puglia” reached even the most far-flung regions of Trentino, as was noted by the author of a book on local cuisine in the eighteenth century, Don Felice Libera, who recommended using it as an alternative to rice.54 The pasta trade was flourishing in Apulia, with centers of production spread across the region, then part of the kingdom of Naples. An observer of the period mentions admiringly the pasta made in the numerous manufactories of Brindisi, saying that the pasta in question “is so excellent that it is requested and sought out everywhere, providing a rich source of trade.”55 This trade was to continue at a healthy rate until the nineteenth century, even though it contracted to a regional distribution network. For the pasta of Apulia, as for the pasta of Sicily and Sardinia, there was no chance for survival save in local demand, which by happy coincidence proved to be growing rapidly. It was just as well, since the national market had long since been monopolized by “macaroni from Naples” and “fine pasta from Genoa.” Chef for the English ambassador to Turin in the first half of the nineteenth century, Francesco Chapusot shared the views of fellow food professionals serving high society. When he prepared macaroni, he used exclusively macaroni from Naples, which “are generally the best, both in terms of the quality of flour employed and in terms of their excellent durability when cooked, as they neither crumble nor break.” But when he cooked fine soup pasta, he preferred pasta from Genoa, especially excellent because it was made with special flours and with greater care than anywhere else.56 On the international market, the commercial dominance of Italian pasta became evident with the beginning of the expansion of manufacturing. France offers a good vantage point from which to observe the spread of Italian pasta outside of the original territory. In this period, French cuisine was held up as the best by the European courts, and it was not particularly receptive to culinary styles from elsewhere, especially if they did not belong to the universe of luxury that was intrinsic to French cuisine, as pasta most certainly did not. Besides, there existed in southern France, especially in Provence, a venerable tradition of making and eating pasta that was ideally suited for integration into the dominant culinary system without requiring French chefs to betray their national pride, already quite well developed during the reign of the Sun King. Alsace, moreover, a province the golden age of the pasta manufactory 121

of Germanic culture newly annexed to the French kingdom, also had a rich tradition of fresh pasta and would in time be the site of the first industrial production of egg pasta. French pasta lovers thus had no shortage of models within their own country with which to satisfy their palates. Instead, however, they learned to love the Italian model, through the fine pasta of Genoa and the macaroni of Naples, and they took it as a point of culinary reference, even though French pasta production, which began to develop in the second half of the eighteenth century, remained largely based on the practices developed in Provence. In fact, this foodstuff was generally described in France as “pâtes d’Italie.” Not only was this expression used by Malouin, who boasted that he had introduced the production of vermicelli in Paris, but also, and far more significantly, by Grimod de la Reynière, the father of French culinary literature.57 Benefiting from the commercial expansion of Genoa, the pasta of that city, and with it pasta made in numerous other centers along the Ligurian coast, gained a foreign market. As early as the seventeenth century, people in Paris enjoyed “pasta soups from Genoa, which are called vermiguelly in the Genoese language.” The anonymous author of a little treatise on Spanish cooking, entitled Traité de Cuisine à l’Espagnole (1662), further wrote that these soups were greatly loved by the Spanish, along with all the other pasta of Genoa, called “fidelly,” “lasagny,” and, more mysteriously, “carcosonny.”58 The Neapolitans were slower in getting their products known to the world, but eventually they became the sole true competition to the Genoese, and Malouin, like Jérôme de Lalande and other authors of the period, placed these two exporting towns on the same level. The development of pasta production in Paris dealt a serious blow to Italian imports. “There is practically no more [pasta] imported from either Genoa or Naples, once sole suppliers of the capital,” according to the Almanach des gourmands of 1806.59 And yet, according to Grimod de la Reynière himself, writing in that publication the following year, “the pasta made in Paris has less texture than the pasta made in Genoa and Naples.” He therefore recommended using the “true pasta of Italy,” as most chefs generally did, because that pasta was made “with superior materials to our own.”60 That was, most notably, the choice of Antonin Carême, the greatest chef of the period, for his timbale de macaronis à la milanaise. The “macaroni d’Italie” could be easily recognized, according to this food professional, inasmuch as it was “very solid, not cracked, with a transparent 122 the golden age of the pasta manufactory

dough, cooking very well, while the pasta made in our factories, in imitation of the Italian pasta, is dull and grayish in color; its surface is cracked, and when cooked it tends to crumble and separate at all the cracked points.”61 As a superior quality product, “Italian pasta” took its place in the hearts of the high priests of bourgeois cuisine as a choice ingredient, fit to appear among the topflight dishes on the finest tables. It was the top of the line, and its high cost was in no way an obstacle, either for gourmets or for food professionals. This position, attained during the era of manufacturing, continues strong to the present day. And in the universe of pasta that coalesced around Italy in this period, Genoa and Naples were the most powerful and most greatly admired centers of production. These cities bestowed on Italian pasta their overwhelming credibility and their radiant image, but while the name of each city resounded each in its own way as a label of quality, each took a different path and used different tools to attain its position of leadership. Faithful to its tradition as a trading city, Genoa established its standing as the capital of pasta exports. It had already long been the chief marketplace for trade in this foodstuff during the Middle Ages, but over the centuries it developed its own production, which extended well outside the city walls, though its inhabitants did not as a result develop any particular liking for pasta as a food or create a culinary tradition that attained any cultural value. The Genoese are not and have never been any more fond of pasta than the average Italian, and in culinary terms they have never been more creative than the rest of their fellow countrymen. It is all the same slightly paradoxical that the culinary genius of the people of Genoa, which is so strongly identified with the production and trade of dry pasta, should have found expression as much if not more in the production and home preparation of fresh pasta. The reputation of Naples developed according to a different dynamic. One English traveler at the turn of the nineteenth century noted that “whilst the Italians generally have a great passion for macaroni soup, the Neapolitans cannot live without it.”62 In fact, the Neapolitans were known as “macaroni eaters” even before they entered the pasta trade. If they developed the production of pasta in the form and under the conditions that we have described in this chapter, it was first and foremost in order to fulfill their own demand, which was enormous. An unpublished document from 1758 reports that the volume of raw material for macaroni consumed in Naples the golden age of the pasta manufactory 123

was estimated at 140,000 tomoli, equivalent to roughly 1,132 tons, which would produce roughly the same weight of dry pasta.63 It is true that, for a population estimated at more than 350,000 souls,64 that factors out to no more than about thirty-one pounds per person per year—that is, only a little more than the average per capita consumption in Italy today—but in the context of the poverty of that time, the figure is remarkably high. In comparison, the demand for flour for making bread, which was at the time the staple food par excellence, was estimated in the same document as 300,000 tomoli, which is equivalent to 2,427 tons; that means that the entire population of Naples, all ages taken together, consumed just over twice as much bread as pasta. But the Neapolitans had succeeded in expressing their love of pasta in a special form of popular culture that over the centuries had solidified as a full-fledged piece of living (or steaming) folklore. Numerous travelers who visited the huge southern Italian city remarked on the countless booths of maccaronari, who would proffer, in exchange for a modest sum of money, a steaming plate of macaroni, sprinkled with grated cheese, which the casual stroller would promptly gulp down, using no other utensil than his fingers. From Goethe to Alexandre Dumas, poets, renowned writers, or ordinary travelers, whether experts of cuisine or not, described with ethnological precision the gestures of the man in the street, honest laborer or wily lazzarone (scoundrel), as he grabbed a handful of macaroni, “twisting them around his fingers with a dexterity that foreigners rarely if ever succeed in imitating.”65 But, folklore aside, the Neapolitans had also developed a special art of serving dry pasta that was in the end adopted by all Italians and indeed by pasta lovers the world over. From pasta al dente to tomato sauce and the timballo, or timbale, of macaroni, the Neapolitans have explored the full range of this gastronomic field, from the simplest to the most sophisticated forms. This culinary creativity, which would eventually show the entire world the nobility of this food that is, after all, fairly humble, was unquestionably the finest testimony to the great skill of Neapolitan pasta makers, fully and completely developed during the age of manufacturing. Far less prepared than the manufacturers of the northern regions to deal with the disruption and turmoil of the coming industrial era, they could still rely on the gastronomic culture and taste so deeply rooted in the customs and folkways

124 the golden age of the pasta manufactory

of their region to withstand the increasingly fierce competition that made ruthless use of technical advances. And if the thundering wave of mechanization finally overwhelmed the ancient traditions of the Neapolitans, they at least had the consolation of seeing their own culinary model triumphing permanently the world over.

the golden age of the pasta manufactory 125

CHAPTER FIVE

The Industrial Age The industrial era turned a new page in the history of pasta. The mastery of steam and then electricity triggered the mechanization of manufacturing and revolutionized working methods. The classic workshop described by Malouin, where workers silently and nimbly operated the brake, was transformed into a hubbub of cast-iron and steel machinery, where the clamor of pistons and flywheels rivaled the squeals of transmission belts. Engineers developed a generation of machines that could reproduce with ten times the power the precise actions of the laborers, who were therefore excluded—both their labor and their knowledge—from various operations in the production cycle, ranging from the most fatiguing and exasperating to the most specialized. Mechanization swept through all the sectors of the general industry devoted to the transformation of grain, the “white industry.” But technical innovation was no longer limited to the Italian producers; indeed, the industrialists of northern Europe often outdid them, especially in the field of milling. Even before the roller mill became common, grain milling benefited from a series of improvements that made

it possible to produce the finest-quality semolina at a lower cost. Machines to remove pebbles and stones, mechanical sifters, and other automatic devices replaced the old manual contraptions. The first mechanical appliances, spectacular but not all that efficient, were followed by a constantly evolving series of mechanical kneaders, edge runners and brakes, which made their appearance at the same time as the hydraulic extrusion press, while versions continued to multiply of the continuous press, an improved version of the hydraulic press, the ultimate goal being a constant output of pasta. In the meanwhile, machines were developed to mix the dough; called impastatrici in Italian, they took their place in the production process before the kneading machines, finally eliminating the kneading of pasta by human hands or feet. Then came the dough breakers, batchers, pasta rollers, and other stretchers, each taking the industry one step closer to the automation of the entire production cycle. And this is not even to mention the development of efficient systems for artificial drying, the spread of which marked the final victory of industrial pasta making. The changes that were sweeping through the world of pasta at the end of the nineteenth century and the turn of the twentieth century amounted to a full-fledged revolution. At the base of the pyramid, workers lost the room for personal initiative, reduced to the role of mere servants to increasingly powerful and clever machines. At the top, the old corps of craftsmen and master vermicelli makers made way for a generation of entrepreneurs, many of whom had never worked in the profession but possessed sufficient financial resources to provide the immense investments required for industrial production. Production developed on a scale never before seen, growing well beyond its original birthplace, the Mediterranean; and through modern systems of artificial drying, the pasta makers of the northern regions found themselves for the first time on an equal footing, if not in a position of advantage in relation to their competitors from more temperate zones. And so industrialization radically and profoundly modified the landscape of this industry, depriving Italy of its position of near-monopoly, skillfully maintained until now.

the momentum of modernity The first step in the industrialization of the system of pasta production was the adoption of the hydraulic press, which marked the shift 128 the industrial age

to steam power. We do not know the name of the inventor of this machine, which blazed the path of the industrial revolution in this sector of production, just as we are unable to indicate where it was first put into operation, but we do know that many of these machines had been installed in southern Italian factories by the 1840s. An author of that period sings the praises of Nicola Fenizio, a wealthy merchant in Naples and a “renowned entrepreneur, who built in his factory four hydraulic presses that worked to perfection.”1 The factory in question had begun operating several years before, in Gragnano, and the new technology destabilized to some extent the economic equilibrium of this center of artisanal production, where pasta was still made with the use of strong arms. With its four hydraulic presses, Nicola Fenizio’s factory had ten times the production capacity of any of the other pasta makers in town, who all quickly mobilized to have the new factory shut down. Be that as it may, Nicola Fenizio gave Gragnano a headstart on the other traditional pasta-making regions, which apparently did not discover the hydraulic press until after the Risorgimento (1860–1870). Even then, some pasta makers set out on the path of industrialization with considerable caution. In 1870 the Pastificio Giuseppe Avella was founded in Bari, a modern plant with no fewer than five hydraulic presses, each with a sixteen-horsepower steam engine, made by the C. and T. T. Pattison company, a new machine tool manufacturer in Naples that would later introduce many fundamental technical innovations to the manufacture of pasta.2 Giuseppe Avella’s example was not widely followed in Apulia, however, at least in the short term: on the whole, pasta continued to be made by hand there as late as the last decade of the nineteenth century. A historian of the period noted that, of the 120 factories operating in 1895 in the province of Bari, “only sixteen were equipped with steam power.”3 A quarter century before this observation was made, certain professionals of the “white industry” in Apulia were already criticizing the inertia that seemed to reign in their region, despite the fact that it had enormous untapped potential. When Filippo Giove, owner of one of the largest mills in Apulia, was questioned by a government commission of inquiry on industry in the 1870s, he answered: “Considering the quality of the excellent durum wheat that is harvested in the neighboring villages of Basilicata, in this region we might easily produce excellent pasta that could certainly withstand any comparison with pasta produced anywhere else on earth. But there is a lack of capthe industrial age 129

ital and an absence of the spirit of teamwork, and without those two things, industry cannot develop.” Building a factory equipped with steam-powered machinery was beyond the means of most small-scale producers, who were fiercely independent but unable to come up with the funds to make such massive improvements. And, as the miller Filippo Giove rightly pointed out (and we do not know whether he himself was in partnership with others), rare indeed are those willing to join forces with others in order to acquire the financial resources indispensable for the creation of a modern factory.4 Rare it may have been, but ten producers in Bari managed to do it, and in 1887 they founded a cooperative, the joint operation of which clearly enchanted the local historian quoted above. These partners built, close to town, a large factory called Montrone-Travaglio in which “each of them in turn held the office of director.” The factory worked with a thirtyhorsepower steam engine, employed fifty workers, and daily produced 4,400 pounds of pasta, which was then distributed throughout the Italian peninsula and even exported outside the country. The factory was still in operation in 19125; we do not know if it lasted past the First World War. During the period when this cooperative was founded, Torre Annunziata was the center of a full-fledged urban revolution involving the development of new industrial-scale factories with ten times the production capacity of Montrone-Travaglio. “The industry of pasta making is well developed in this province,” wrote the author of an 1891 statistical study of the province of Naples. This author studied 213 active factories and found “there were 102 in the township of Torre Annunziata, 66 in the township of Gragnano, while the rest were scattered through twelve other townships. Out of all the factories in the province, 29 operated with one or more steam- or gas-powered mechanical engines. Gragnano had 3, Torre Annunziata had 11, equipped with ten steam engines and seven gas engines.”6 A similar trend, though on a smaller scale, could be found in Sicily, as well as outside the traditional regions. The Pastificio Tommasini of Milan, for instance, was capable of producing 300 quintals (66,000 pounds) of pasta a day as early as 1898, thanks to a system of artificial drying patented and developed by V. Tommasini himself. This was the most advanced and productive type of pasta factory, powered by electricity generated by an alternator hooked up to a steam engine.7 The industrial development of the pasta-making sector took place in Italy during the last quarter of the nineteenth century, with a sig130 the industrial age

nificant acceleration beginning in 1884, when the industry finally emerged from the serious crisis that had struck it sixteen years before with the passage of a tax on milled wheat. The tax, passed in 1868 by the government of the newly unified country for a number of reasons into which we shall not delve, was calculated according to the number of turns of the millstone, counted by a meter installed for that purpose. Hardest hit were small water mills equipped with old mechanical systems, by far the most common, especially in the pasta-producing regions of southern Italy. This tax had a disastrous effect on the entire sector of cereal processing, causing the padlocking of numerous mills and a sharp decline in the pasta business.8 The tone of a petition signed in 1878 by a group of millers from Gragnano offers a sense of the scope of the disaster: Gragnano is a town of fourteen thousand inhabitants who live by producing pasta; in the town territory there are thirty-two water mills. But since the day when the benighted decision to apply a meter entered into application, the industry has fallen into a deplorable state, poverty has become widespread, and the harm done has been immense, incalculable. Nowadays, the watermills of our town can no longer survive and prosper with this benighted gadget, the meter: the quality of the flour is disgraceful for the production of good pasta, and we are all striving to withstand the weight of an excessive tax, by its very nature inequitable, especially in competition with steam mills. Gragnano, once so prosperous with 110 pasta factories, which exported macaroni to every land on earth, is now swept by a slow decline, and afflicted with a sort of consumption caused by the meter, which has been and continues to be the ruination of our trade. Freedom of enterprise and the benefits of tirelessly improving the quality of pasta made by milling done by the finest rules of the art have been, let us not say suffocated, but destroyed by the meter and the seals on the valves. . . . Our town pays more than a half-million lire in taxes every year, and the government should give our dying town a hand, by freeing it from all these afflictions and a frightful economic crisis that is threatening the future and the survival of thousands of families. As the pasta factories see their profits and their capital melt away, they shut down one after another, and the populace, numerous and starving, will soon have neither bread nor work.9 the industrial age 131

The crisis triggered by the tax on milling coincided with the decline of exports to certain countries that were traditional consumers of Neapolitan pasta. While during the first ten years of Italian unity (1860–1870) exports to France rose from around 270,000 pounds to around 902,000 pounds, after 1870 volume dropped sharply, by about half by 1873.10 This drastic decline was not the result of chance or international events but caused by the growing power of the French pasta industry, which not only carved out a place for itself in its national and colonial territories but also began taking over part of the international market. The drop in exports further heightened labor tensions, culminating in the explosion of 1878. As difficult as it is to overlook the human tragedy the crisis created for those who suffered through it, we must recognize that by its very brutality, the depression facilitated the development of large pasta factories in the very places where the industry had prospered for centuries in its artisanal form, triggering the period of expansion that followed. The tax on milling had the same destructive effect on the pool of small hydraulic mills that Italy still possessed in the first decades of its political unity, and this in turn accelerated the installation of roller mills, already quite common in the countries of northern Europe. The process of conversion, however, progressed quite slowly, even though it was encouraged by the expansion of the pasta industry, as new pasta factories often included a mill that was also steam powered. A labor official, who had witnessed the disturbances in Torre Annunziata in 1878, dated the introduction of steam-powered mills as well as motorized kneading machines and hydraulic presses to 1884 (fig. 12).11 But this was just the beginning of the more intensive phase of the process of modernization, which would require two decades to complete. A government statistical study done in 1889 that covered the district of Castellammare di Stabia, which included both Gragnano and Torre Annunziata, counted 87 steam-powered mills and 221 hydraulic mills, 24 of which were equipped with rollers for milling or remilling. With the noteworthy exception of Apulia, this was the most advanced region in southern Italy in terms of modern equipment. Sicily was far behind, with barely 30 steam-powered mills in Palermo, as against 478 hydraulic mills, and the imbalance was even worse in Messina, where there were 20 steam-powered mills and 637 hydraulic mills. But the situation was not much better in Liguria, especially in Savona, where there was only a single steam-powered mill among the 208 water mills. Thus the milling industry in Italy’s Mezzogiorno 132 the industrial age

(South) was still quite fragmentary, at a time when the industrialization of the pasta industry was already under way.12 Indeed, the archaic state of this sector had already been revealed by a commission of inquiry organized in the 1870s, which had gathered many interviews with professionals in the southern regions, who all concurred in deploring the lack of large and modern milling facilities.13 Its complete transformation would take a little more than half a century, a reasonable time frame for a revolution of this scope.

the mechanics of progress “Great industrialists consider themselves benefactors of humanity, the first citizens of the place, their chosen homeland, where, with their talent, energy, work, and financial resources, they create wealth.”14 This tribute to the spirit of enterprise was dedicated to Nicola Fenizio, a wealthy Naples merchant who established a pasta factory on an industrial scale in Gragnano, the first of its sort in the region. The words, however, are deceptive. They are not from a welcoming speech addressed to a creator of “wealth” by an official of the local government but rather from a plea submitted to the Consulta di Stato by the lawyer of the entrepreneur in question, who had become the target of a war without quarter carried on by the pasta makers of Gragnano under the leadership of the mayor of the town himself. Far from being praised, the ill-timed enterprise of the Neapolitan merchant unleashed all the hostility of the town. In a town dominated by craftsman-run businesses, Nicola Fenizio’s modern factory was viewed less as a model worthy of emulation than as a threat upsetting the equilibrium and possibly endangering prosperity. The response to the innovations of this pioneer is a clue to how difficult it was for manufacturers in the south of Italy, especially in the region of Naples, to adapt to the new economic reality brought about by the mechanical revolution under way. Well established in a professional knowledge that had been solidly tested, from which they had gained a degree of prosperity, they were opposed to new types of production that might diminish their control. The hostility of the pasta makers of Gragnano toward this perceived intrusion into their field of activity by characters of the stamp of Nicola Fenizio was more than a simple rejection of progress: it was a defensive reaction in the face of a future that appeared rife with uncertainty and potentially the industrial age 133

FIGURE 12

Vertical press. Early versions of motorized presses (last quarter of the nineteenth century). Francesco Reuleaux, Chimica della vita quotidiana (Tur in, 1889).

dangerous to their very survival. Their fears proved all too well founded, because the mechanics of progress would prove fatal to many of them, too small to withstand the bulldozer of triumphant industry, too individualistic to seek a path toward survival by uniting their forces, as was the case—rarely, it is true—in other regions. Many were forced to shut down their small family-run businesses, while the luckiest found work as foremen in the new factories, others ended up as simple workers, and others still were forced to seek their fortune elsewhere. The mechanical revolution was in its most merciless phase of transition, throwing workers and laborers out of work, replacing them with far cheaper and more efficient machines. Of course, once it was completed, the modernization of the tools of production would generate far more employment than in the past, thanks to an unprecedented period of expansion, but for the moment it translated only into unemployment and poverty. All this could not take place without confrontation, and the conflict escalated in some instances into fullfledged rebellion, violent and dramatic, calling down fierce repression and heavy sentences for the perpetrators. In the context of the crisis that the pasta and baking industry was undergoing because of the milling tax, and probably in the hope of overcoming that crisis, a number of millers in Torre Annunziata decided in 1877 and 1878 to equip their mills with sifters, newly designed equipment imported from Marseilles capable of automatically separating the semolina from the flour through a series of shaking motions combined with jets of air. As so often happens, what was profitable for some people was harmful to others, at least over the short term. In equipping their machinery to sort semolina mechanically, millers were taking over an operation that traditionally had been entrusted to the workers in the pasta manufactories, who generally still performed this task by hand, with archaic equipment. Mechanical sifters eliminated this job, throwing laborers out of work. Thus to the laborers, already profoundly upset over the decline in the industry, the installation of the “machines from Marseilles” constituted a clear provocation. Their anger turned to rage, and protest broke into mutiny and riot. The revolt began in Torre Annunziata but soon spread, sweeping through the workers of the white industry in the region and triggering not only the destruction of the “machines from Marseilles” but also a good share of the mills and pasta manufactories, some of which were burnt to the ground. The disorders the industrial age 135

lasted five days, and in the end the army had to be called in to put down the revolt. Aside from its more dramatic aspects, this episode revealed the desperation of the workers in the white industry of the Neapolitan region at the prospect of encroaching mechanization, whose perverse effect they suffered directly. In their eyes, technological progress and the improvement of machinery were synonymous with unemployment and poverty and the so-called revolt of the Marseillaises was an act of legitimate defense against a machine “that starved the people.”15 Their fight was the logical aftermath of the struggle undertaken several decades earlier by the pasta producers of Gragnano against Nicola Fenizio and his manufactory equipped with four hydraulic presses. The workers and the small pasta makers united in grim opposition to a development that seemed to guarantee their elimination. Still, neither the resistance of the former nor the revolts of the latter were sufficient to halt the transformation, and it is not clear that anything they did had any effect on the progressive industrialization; if it was delayed, this was chiefly caused by the crisis produced by the milling tax. (It is no accident that the pasta industry of Torre Annunziata and Gragnano began its real transformation in 1884, when the tax was abolished.) The white industry was so important in this region in the nineteenth century that the social consequences of change were more painful here than elsewhere, but nothing truly hindered the march of technical progress. Mechanization was sweeping through the production of pasta at the same triumphant rate as in the other regions of Italy and in Provence. And if the victory of the machine was more difficult, it was because the area to be conquered was so much larger and was already occupied. For that matter, Naples had no lack of inventive individuals, enterprising businessmen, and even an advanced mechanical industry that could undertake the technological revolution required.

the bronze man; or, the automated dough kneader The transition to the industrial era took nearly a century. At first, the producers, doubtless trying to keep pace with the growing demand, worked to improve the performance of their equipment. There were such relatively simple innovations as the elastic suspension of the brake bar, which involved attaching a series of springs to the movable end of the bar so that it would automatically rise once the worker 136 the industrial age

removed his weight. When there was plenty of room, horizontal presses could be equipped with large paddlewheels, designed as treadmills, so that a man or a number of children could work the wheel by climbing up steps placed on its interior or exterior (fig. 13). The push to renovate was widespread but especially evident in the kingdom of Naples, which had the highest concentration of pasta producers in Italy, from the slopes of Vesuvius to the Amalfi coast, from Sicily to Apulia. Once the Bourbon monarchy had been restored following the brief French interregnum, it encouraged the development of the pasta industry, rewarding the spirit of invention and helping to finance the construction of machinery and the installation of new equipment considered worthy of interest by the Reale commissione per l’incremento industriale di Napoli, or Royal Commission for the Industrial Development of Naples, an institution surviving from the short reign of Murat that also had jurisdiction over the assignment of exclusive rights to the industrial and commercial exploitation of inventions. Among the numerous designs proposed in this period, many involved the production of pasta, and three in particular seem especially representative of the spirit of the times, both because of their degree of innovation and for the caliber and avowed ambition of their inventors. The first, examined by the commission in 1834, involved a “New and Large Plant for the Production of Pasta, with a Bronze Man,” presented by the engineer Cesare Spadaccini, a legendary figure in the saga of Neapolitan macaroni.16 The proposal for the second two was far more modest in its claims: in 1843 the Royal Commission was asked to rule on the assignment of exclusive rights for the industrial exploitation of a horse-powered edge runner, a kneading machine, and for a double-die press, to be attributed to the inventor, Salvatore Savarese, a producer of pasta in Andria, in the province of Bari.17 The kneading machine was in no way a revolutionary development when compared to the wheel kneaders long in use in Liguria. Savarese nonetheless won his listeners over: with a beast of burden and a worker to keep the dough under the wheel, his kneading machine was capable of transforming over 100 pounds of semolina into a perfectly homogeneous dough in the space of a half hour (it took a team of three men two solid hours to prepare the same quantity of dough with the classical manual brake). Savarese’s double-die press, on the other hand, was a true innovation, one of the earliest attempts to eliminate the dead time required to lift the piston in order to refill the bell with dough. An early verthe industrial age 137

FIGURE 1)

Horizontal press (early twentieth century) . Note the large wheel. Private collection.

sion of the double-die presses for which patent requests flourished during the later years of the nineteenth century, it operated on the alternating principle of an ordinary pair of household scales. A movable beam with a solid cross-section was balanced on a solid but narrow structure that allowed it to rock back and forth; under the beam, at each end, a piston was attached, so that when the beam was inclined in one direction, it compressed the dough in the bell. This movement automatically lifted the other piston, freeing the other bell, which could then be filled with dough. The downward pressure was provided by an enormous weight, equipped with wheels, which could be moved from one end of the beam to the other by means of a windlass, which was also powered by an animal (fig. 14). Here again, the inventor persuaded the commission that his device would save not only time but labor, because in order to operate the press, which could extrude more than 100 pounds of dough in a half hour, only two persons were needed, a child to cut the macaroni and an adult to hang them on the drying rack. For the first time in the history of pasta, we see a clear attempt to improve profitability by economizing on labor. With his New and Large Plant for the Production of Pasta, Cesare Spadaccini sought to attain a far more ambitious goal and even, one might say, a nobler one: to introduce the rules of hygiene into the production of pasta. This was the aim he pursued in his ten years of research, beginning in 1823 and encouraged—at least so he claimed— by the future king Francesco I (1777–1830), that was to culminate in the creation of a model pasta factory, equipped with the famous bronze man, a sort of automaton with wooden feet, designed to “eliminate the abominable custom of kneading dough with the feet.”18 Culinary literature has reduced the invention of this ingenious and visionary entrepreneur to the mere creation of a bronze automaton capable of reproducing the actions of a worker kneading dough with his feet. For this, he was inducted into the city’s popular folklore, which elevated the robot to a figurative podium in the temple of Neapolitan popular culture. But a brief examination of Spadaccini’s project taken as a whole, as it was presented to the Royal Commission, is enough to show just how revolutionary it really was, providing a model of production that by the end of the nineteenth century was adopted in the new factories of Torre Annunziata and Gragnano, of which a few surviving structures can still be seen today. Spadaccini’s “large and praiseworthy establishment for the production of pasta”19 (which cost him, as he himself admitted, years of the industrial age 139

, ~ ' /~_~'~~J~,., ~~J~~ FIGURE

14

Plan for a double-die press, submitted to the Reale commissione per l'incremento industriale di Napoli, or Royal Commission for the Industrial Development of Naples, in 1843 by Salvatore Savarese, a producer of pasta in Andria, in the province of Bari. Reproduced by permission of the Archivio di Stato di Napoli, Ministero dell' Agricoltura Industria e Commercio, file 277 / 45, authoriza tion no. 25762.

relentless labor, countless sacrifices—he was a man with a family of nine children—and colossal sums of money) was an entirely new conception, in terms of its architecture, the organization of labor, the equipment, and the rules of hygiene that would be observed both in the workplace and by the workers. The building, which also housed a mill in a separate area, was huge, well ventilated, and covered several stories, each divided into separate workshops specializing in different operations. The mill was equipped with rollers, a system that was still in an experimental phase at the time (in all Europe, there existed only a few of these mills, in Switzerland and in the industrially developed countries of northern Europe). First, the wheat was processed by a machine that sorted it “grain by grain . . . so as to discard grain-shaped pebbles, even those of the same size and color as the grains of wheat themselves.” It was then washed twice and set out to dry in a specially designed enclosed brick drier. Then, the semolina was mixed by the famous automaton, specially named “the bronze man” by its inventor. The necessity for such a machine—in fact more spectacular than effective—appeared particularly urgent to Spadaccini because the mixing was done with boiling water, and the feet of the workers, however tough they might be, still often sustained serious burns, which then erupted into open sores that oozed pus. There was a large macaroni press for different formats, and another press produced fine Genoese-style pasta, both operated by large wheels, each attached to a harness fitted to a mule. The water was filtered, “in the French manner . . . in order to purify it of sandy material or insects.”20 Cesare Spadaccini’s ideas were not limited to the area of production. Workers were required to respect a set of rules forbidding them, among other things, to leave the workplace at any time during the day. They would arrive in the morning, at break of day, going first to the dressing room, a separate area where they could wash their face and hands and then change out of their street clothes and into special work clothes provided by the manufactory. In case of sickness or accident, a worker would be conveyed home and would receive a subsidy for the time he could not work, while his wife or children would be allowed to substitute for him if they could prove they were able. Dowries were even provided for the daughters of deserving workers who had been at the manufactory for at least four years. The salaries were paid half in cash and half in goods from the manufactory. Clearly, these provisions owed more to good old-fashioned paternalthe industrial age 141

ism than any genuine social policy, but in Naples during the late Bourbon dynasty, they seemed remarkably forward-looking. In fact, they proved to be too utopian to gain widespread acceptance: the ideas, vision, and actual achievements of the engineer never spread outside his model manufactory, which appears to have operated for only a few years, and never at full capacity. As for the bronze man, Spadaccini’s masterpiece, it did not function as well as he had hoped, and it was more useful as publicity than as a genuine kneading machine. A contemporary, Andrea de Jorio, already mentioned it in the 1830s as a museum piece, on display in a shop across from the Reale Albergo de’ Poveri, the main poorhouse of Naples.21 Short-lived though it may have been, the abortive experiment of Spadaccini’s “ideal” factory constituted a radical development in the production of pasta, because it marked the arrival on the scene of the engineer. Nonfunctional though it may have been, the bronze man was a product of a mechanical science that engineers alone were capable of mastering. A solitary genius in the tradition of Giovanni Branca or Alessandro Carpa, Spadaccini was not able to make his creation last over time, but he did open a breach through which his colleagues soon crowded, and they possessed much greater resources with which to implement their projects. By proposing a mechanical alternative to the methods of producing pasta that had so revolted the enlightened sectors of Neapolitan society, Spadaccini was the first to inaugurate, entirely unknowingly, a major field of endeavor for the machine-tool industry that was to grow greatly from the 1850s on, offering room for the creativity of his successors. The need for new methods for making pasta became more urgent in a world in ferment, with the arrival of new figures such as wealthy merchants or financiers, attracted by the possibility of substantial profits and ready to invest in modern and well-equipped factories. It is safe to say that the convergence of the interests of captains of industry working in both fields of activity—engineering and pasta making—finally set the sector on the road to mechanization.

the triumph of the machine In 1853 the Guppy company was founded in Naples, a partnership of Thomas R. Guppy and G. Pattison, two engineers. The first was of English birth and worked as an importer of heavy equipment for the 142 the industrial age

navy and the railroads, while the second was the technical director of the Bayard company, which had built the first railroad line in the kingdom. The new company specialized at first in the construction and repair of locomotives, but it soon expanded to include the manufacture of steam boilers, mills, pumps, oil presses, hydraulic presses, and machines for the production of pasta. In 1864 Giovanni Pattison left Guppy to found, with his son, the C. and T. T. Pattison company, which developed the first wholly automatic kneading machine, described as a blade kneader, certain improved models of which could still be found operating at the turn of the twentieth century.22 This machine, operated by steam power and a transmission belt, reproduced the movement of the manual brake through a mechanism made of two flywheels to which were attached two eccentric arms that alternately lifted and lowered two “knives” or “blades” set above a circular rotating platter (fig. 15). One notable feature of the machine was that the blades and the platter were made of hardwood, an ideal material for conserving the natural heat of dough hydrated with boiling water, as was customary in the Neapolitan region. According to Renato Rovetta, who judged the device with a professional eye, since he himself had received numerous patents, this was “the best kneading machine for soft pasta hydrated with boiling water,”23 and indeed the machine enjoyed real commercial success, even though it was excessively noisy. No one disputes the pioneering role of the Pattison company and the Neapolitan engineering industry in general in the technological development of the means of production for the white industry, but it was very soon rivaled by other companies, in Italy and elsewhere. From Switzerland came the development of the edge runner built by the Bühler Frères company in Uzwil, which was in time to become one of the leading manufacturers of pasta-making machinery. The machine was adapted to new energy sources, steam or electricity, and was driven, like all the machines of its generation, by a transmission belt (fig. 16). A kneading machine with conical rollers was designed in the workshops of the Ceschina and Busi company in Brescia, which also had a branch in Naples. It was first built in the 1880s and enjoyed an immediate success throughout Italy, except in the Naples region, where producers preferred the blade kneader, which was better adapted, as we have said, to working the dough for their type of pasta. Smaller in size, the machine made by Ceschina and Busi, destined to enjoy a long career, operated on a simple mechanical principle involving two conical toothed rollers, like a pair of gears, that turned the industrial age 143

FIGURE

15

Blade kneading machine. This was the first motorized and automatic kneading machine, invented by the C. and T. T. Pattison company, a mechanical engineering company in Naples (circa 1865). It is especially appropriate for the Neapolitan-style soft dough . Pictured is a version improved by the Ceschina and Busi company of Brescia. Renato Rovetta, Indu stria del Pa stificio (Milan: Hoepli, 1908). FIGURE

16

Motorized edge runner. The older version, operated by animal or hydraulic power, was used in Liguria as early as the end of the eighteenth century. Renato Rovetta , Indu stria del Pa stificio (Mi lan: Hoepli, 1908 ).

together in a basin that was itself rotating on a horizontal axis (fig. 17). This machine would evolve quickly, the two rollers increasing to three and the entire machine growing to an enormous size, the basin measuring 7.2 feet in diameter, capable of processing just over seven tons daily. Later, Ceschina and Busi was merged with the Officine Riunite Italiane (O.R.I.), a major company in Brescia that would supply many producers in Italy and internationally with all sorts of machines, exploiting a remarkable number of patents. That company manufactured, among many other machines, the so-called colossal brake, a kneading machine with conical rollers whose capacity was unrivaled at the turn of the twentieth century (fig. 18). With its persistent growth and innovation, this company made Brescia one of the most prosperous centers of mechanical engineering in Italy. It is also worth noting that the industrialists of Lombardy invested heavily in the purchase of heavy equipment for producing pasta. The Piedmontese also competed in this race, represented by Losa and Campo of Turin, among the first to become active in this sector, but Brescia was the industry leader, with many companies of larger size, especially the Guglielmini company, in addition to the firms already mentioned. In Milan we should mention, first of all, the E. Breda company, later surpassed by the Braibanti company, which developed the first integrated continuous press, becoming one of the first builders of entirely automatic production lines. With the support of foreign manufacturers, especially from Switzerland, who set up businesses in Milan, the Lombard region progressively took control of this branch of the engineering industry, pushing Naples aside. After developing the first entirely mechanical kneader, the C. and T. T. Pattison company continued to prove itself an innovator by offering in 1882 a hydraulic press with a movable bell that definitively abandoned the old principle of the screw press. No longer did the piston move, through the action of the screw; instead, the bell was lifted by a quick-action cam system to press the dough against the stationary piston. Other improvements led to a new press with a movable piston and a stationary bell. In fact, the Neapolitan company, which described itself in its advertising posters as an enterprise of “engineers in mechanical construction,” managed to beat out the frenzied competition of all manufacturers in the sector to develop a continuous press, the ultimate goal being the creation of a machine capable of performing all three essential operations in the pasta-making process: mixing, kneading, and extrusion. the industrial age 145

FIGURE

17

Kneading machine with conical rollers. Especially useful for solid doughs made with little water, it was used first in Liguria and other regions in northern and central Italy. Renato Rovetta , Indu stria del Pastificio (Milan: Hoepli, :1 908).

,I

FIGURE

18

Colossal kneading machine. The progress in production capacity can also be measured by the gigantic size of the machinery. Renata Rovetta, Indu stria del Pa stific io, 3d ed. (Milan: Hoepli, 1929).

From this point of view, the movable-bell press made by the Pattison company, invented apparently by a French engineer named Pausat residing in Naples, was only an intermediate solution, at which however all the machine builders seem to have stopped.24 Instead, while continuing to engage in research, the manufacturers focused for the time on developing new machinery to improve and diversify the processing of dough and the shaping of the products. This period was remarkably fertile, producing new machinery of every sort, beginning with an array of mixing machines, in some sense realizing Cesare Spadaccini’s old dream of replacing man with machine for that particularly thankless task (a dream that less than a half century before had seemed hopelessly utopian). The automatic dough-turning machine was invented, a device that folded the dough under the wheels of the kneading machine, eliminating the human hand even here. Dough-rolling machines were developed that could produce thinner or thicker sheets of dough as needed (fig. 19). And a vast array of presses were produced, the best of which had the same advanced technical features as those made by the Pattison company. Renato Rovetta was an engineer who had specialized in this field of activity, and he had invested heavily in an attempt to create a universal machine, which he called a “total machine.” At first, he succeeded in developing a machine that rivaled Pausat’s, which he patented and presented in operation at the 1911 Turin Exposition. According to the inventor’s own admission, the machine was experimental, and a manufacturer in Toulouse would later improve it by introducing an endless (or worm) screw that advanced dough continuously toward the die plate. An application for the patent was filed in 1917, apparently by Ferréol Sandragné, an unassuming technician living in Toulouse, and the first machine built was put into operation in 1922 in a pasta factory that belonged to the Grands Moulins de Corbeil; by 1928 the plant was entirely equipped with this type of machine.25 Renato Rovetta resumed his research, and he soon developed a muchimproved machine that operated on the new concept of multiple diedrawing, which made it possible to eliminate kneading entirely by pressing the barely mixed dough through a succession of chambers separated by a series of die plates. As he put it, his invention was “the egg of Columbus,” because “no one had even thought of extruding the dough instead of kneading it.”26 It is not known whether this continuous machine enjoyed any substantial commercial success. The next decisive step toward the uni148 the industrial age

FIGURE

19

A large motorized refining machine for rolling out dough. Renata Ravetta, Indu stria del Pastificio (Milan: Haepli, 1908).

versal pasta-making machine did not come until 1933, when a continuous press was perfected in the workshops of the Milanese company M. and G. Fratelli Braibanti. This press was capable of executing all three operations—mixing, kneading, and extrusion—automatically and continuously, and in a certain sense this was the crowning development of the first generation of industrial pasta-making machines. Only four years later, the same company, Braibanti, designed and built the first entirely automatic pasta production line. All the machines, from those that weighed the semolina and measured the materials for the mixture all the way to the devices that handled the final extrusion of the pasta were finally linked together, working in a synchronized manner, so that one needed only to insert the raw material at the beginning of the production line, and the pasta would emerge continuously in its final format at the other end. The only process that was not included was the drying, but at this point drying cells existed that were perfectly suited for completing the job in a few days. The Braibanti pasta production line, presented at the Fair of Milan in 1937, immediately captured the imagination of the industrialists, even though most of them did not invest in this sort of machinery until after the Second World War. The way was clear for a second industrial revolution that would make it possible to produce more and more, faster and faster, at lower and lower labor costs. Spadaccini’s automaton finally gave birth to computerized robots, whose operation could be supervised by a single technician sitting in front of a computer screen. The know-how of the master vermicelli maker, at once skilled artisan and entrepreneur, was replaced by measurements performed in a laboratory, while the physical strength of the manual laborer was overmatched by the far greater power of machinery.

drying without sunlight According to a Neapolitan saying of yesteryear, “Macaroni are made with the sirocco and they are dried with the tramontana.”27 Pasta makers along the Neapolitan coastline, subjected to the alternation of humidity and heat with dry coolness brought by these two winds, enjoyed one of the finest drying systems available. Endowed with this gift of nature, they developed over the course of the centuries an art and unrivaled mastery of the drying process, the most complex and delicate phase in the entire cycle of pasta production. And they undertook 150 the industrial age

industrial expansion without worrying about drying, since there was generally enough space available to accommodate the increases in productivity. Moreover, drying time almost never exceeded ten days or so. For the producers of the northern regions, on the other hand, drying, already quite problematic when making pasta by hand, became a serious problem when they converted to industrial processes. Drying often required a month, sometimes even two as far north as the Paris region,28 and because drying areas could not be expanded indefinitely, there was the danger of a major bottleneck downstream in the production process. That is not even to mention the excessive cost of huge buildings and the problems inherent in holding on to large quantities of pasta during the production process, more susceptible to mildew, fermentation, and other damage the longer they were stored. It was therefore absolutely imperative to find a way of accelerating the drying process to make full use of the potential advantages offered by the new systems of production. This became all the more necessary when northern producers began to show increasing interest in extending their product lines to include Neapolitan-style pasta, greatly in demand. Those specialties, intended for use with a thick sauce (pastasciutta), had to stand up especially well to cooking, and only pasta dried by the natural Neapolitan method would serve. But this method, complex and difficult even in its Neapolitan birthplace, where it had been tested and refined for centuries, proved impossible under similar conditions but at less favorable latitudes. And so arose the notion of developing a practical system of artificial drying, in order to bypass the difficulties inherent to natural drying in a northern climate. The first mechanical driers were apparently developed in Friuli, probably during the first half of the nineteenth century. They were enormous wooden rotating cages, called “merry-go-rounds” (giostre), more than five yards in diameter and three or four yards tall, in which racks were arranged to accommodate both trays of short-cut pasta and poles for the long-cut variety. Arranged in well-ventilated rooms with some heating, depending on the season, these devices revolved at a rate of around six turns per minute, a speed limited by the effect of centrifugal force. They turned on a vertical axle lodged top and bottom in bearings and were powered by a transmission belt (fig. 20). Heating was provided by stoves, and shelves on the walls housed other trays of pasta being dried.29 The system was not entirely satisfactory, because the pasta placed at the outside of the giostra tended the industrial age 151

to dry more quickly than the pasta set in the middle, because of the difference in speed, so that it was constantly necessary to rearrange the hard-to-reach trays and poles. The decisive step came with the arrival on the market of the thermomechanical drier, a concept that became generally accepted in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. According to Renato Rovetta, who did research in the Rome patent office, the first invention based on this principle patented in Italy dated back to 1875.30 From that date to 1904, however, at least twenty patents were filed by machine-tool companies and pasta manufacturers for processes, equipment, and machines for artificial drying that combined heat and ventilation. The earliest devices were quite crude: on one side a hot-air heater, on the other side, an exhaust fan, and in the middle a perforated box allowing circulation of hot air, where the pasta was arranged to dry, spread on trays or hanging from poles. Renato Rovetta found a device of this type as early as 1889 in a factory in Abruzzi. It had been invented by the owner of the company, Filippo De Cecco, who founded in 1887 the renowned pasta-making company that still bears his name. The system was already more advanced than the giostra and required a smaller investment, but it suffered from the same defect: the pasta dried unevenly, because the source of hot air was fixed. In order to remedy this problem, the first solution suggested was to equip the box with a system of drawers, so that the trays of pasta could be moved around easily. At the Universal Exposition of 1900 in Paris, a process was presented “for drying macaroni with cold air conveyed through tubes.” This method, according to the chairman of the jury, “gave excellent results; it made it possible to reduce the hanging area and allowed the elimination of harmful disease-causing germs from the air used in drying.”31 With this system, the chairman went on, it was possible to dry macaroni perfectly in twenty-four hours. This was a continuous drying process that was neither progressive nor modulated with variations in temperature so as to reproduce the three fundamental phases of the classic Neapolitan drying process (stiffening, softening, final drying), which all Italian manufacturers were working to emulate. The drier in question had been developed by the manufacturer Yberty, located in Clermont-Ferrand, Auvergne, based on a patent filed in 1896 under the names of Jean Yberty, André Dessanges, and Giuseppe Alloatti. We do not know how long the Yberty drier, which was the subject of two patents in 1899 and 1900, actually operated,32 152 the industrial age

FIGURE 20

The gio stra, literally "merry-go-round," a mechanical pasta drier. This is the first machine for artificially drying pasta, probably invented by pasta makers in Friuli during the first half of the nineteenth century. Renato Rovetta, Indu stria del Pa stificio (Mi lan: Hoepli, 1908).

THE I NDUSTR I AL AGE

153

because inventions abounded during this period, and the Italians, particularly interested in the subject, constantly developed cheaper and more efficient solutions. Beginning in 1898, one major step forward was taken with the socalled Tommasini process, named after a Milanese industrialist, Vitaliano Tommasini, who filed an application for a patent for the commercial use of his invention. The process still called for a chamber with movable trays but added a flow of warm air that entered through a special intake on top of the device and exited through an exhaust outlet on the bottom, driven by a fan placed on the side, which produced a better distribution of heat (fig. 21). The overarching goal of the Tommasini design was to re-create the conditions of the natural Neapolitan drying technique, consisting of three phases, a central principle that guided all future developments. The first version of the device could only adequately execute the first phase of drying, since the circulating air was warmed to 28 to 30 degrees Celsius (82 to 86 degrees Fahrenheit, quite close to the average summer temperature on the Gulf of Naples). But Tommasini worked constantly to improve the process—he filed applications for two more patents in 1900 and 1901—and in the end he expanded the system to include final drying chambers. At the turn of the twentieth century, the engineer Ricciardi developed a rotating drying chamber for long pasta that adopted and modified the principle behind the giostra. It was a stationary octagonal structure, with two of the eight sides open in order to allow circulation of the hot air. Inside this structure was a column that rotated at a rate of one complete revolution every two minutes. This column was pierced at three different levels with holes into which were inserted poles, over which the long pasta was draped. The forced hot air entered from the bottom of the cell through an aperture on one side and exited at the top of the opposite side, sucked out by an exhaust fan.33 All the same, by the admission of Renato Rovetta himself, who was issued a patent for a mechanical drier in 1903, none of the devices and processes developed at the beginning of the twentieth century gave entirely satisfactory results. Though they represented an unquestionable advance in the drying of pasta, their retail price and cost of operation were still too high to make them truly profitable. Precisely where they were most necessary, in cold and humid regions, the pasta makers’ margins were too tight to allow the raw investment in this 154 the industrial age

FIGURE 21

The Tommasini drier, patented by Vitaliano Tommasini in 1898. Giuseppe Ceschina, Primo contributo alia studio dell'essicazione delle paste alimentari (Milan: Tipografia e Litografia degli Ingegneri, 1907).

machinery to pay off in a reasonable period of time. Oddly enough, the Sicilians, who had no vital need for thermomechanical driers, were among the first to use them and managed to make a real profit with them. In contrast, in centers of production along the Neapolitan coastline, these devices were not installed to any significant extent until after the First World War. After 1908 a period of extreme activity began in this field, resulting in numerous patents. The flurry subsided during the First World War but resumed with even greater vigor in 1920, to the point that between 1904 and 1922 roughly a hundred patent applications were made in Italy. Activity continued to intensify, reaching its high point in 1924, with no fewer than fifty-four patents issued that year. A few years later, Renato Rovetta culminated thirty years of research with a patent application for a drier in which it was possible to regulate all parameters, from the speed of the blower to the humidity and, of course, the temperature of the air, which could be adjusted from 35 to 15 degrees Celsius (from 95 to 60 degrees Fahrenheit). This was the advent of the universal drying chamber, which could be used for all operations—from stiffening to softening—in all seasons and everywhere: “from the Pole to the Equator.”34 Artificial drying was established as the most reliable method and certainly the method best suited to industrial production. The new equipment and improved control of the processes made it possible to reduce the drying time sharply while still obtaining a quality of pasta comparable with that achieved with the classic Neapolitan natural drying, with the immense advantage that the new system was more hygienic, a concept that was just beginning to be considered important. The next step was the installation of high-temperature drying tunnels, which became more common and were improved greatly after the Second World War. In this early era of artificial drying, the stiffening phase (incartamento) lasted from half an hour to two hours, depending on the format of pasta and the level of ambient humidity. For the softening phase (rinvenimento), practically the same as with natural drying, the pasta was arranged in cellars or in cool moist buildings, surrounded with waterproof cloth to prevent air circulation and promote some condensation, and held for one night. (The softening phase was employed primarily for long pasta, as cut or fine pasta was put directly into the final drying area.) For the final phase, in the manufactories along the Mediterranean coast, producers were generally 156 the industrial age

satisfied with relying on the ambient temperature and simply varying the ventilation to provoke constant variations. In regions with cold and humid climates, the final drying rooms were kept at a steady average temperature. The final phase lasted from three to five days, which meant that drying took a total of six days for the larger formats, whatever the climate in which the pasta was being produced. For producers along the Neapolitan coast, the advantage of using artificial drying was not that obvious at first sight, since it took them only about twice as long to perform the same operation with no other equipment than nature itself. The advantage was enormous, however, for producers in Friuli, Emilia, France, and elsewhere, because not only did the thermomechanical drier allow them to shorten the drying time by a factor of five or even more, but for the first time since the art of making dry pasta had developed, they were now capable of producing in the same conditions as their rivals in the Mediterranean south, and the revolutionary changes that ensued show that the industrialists of northern Europe were able to take full advantage of this new equality.

the splendor and misery of a world in transformation “I have the art . . . I need nothing but water, flour, and sunshine . . . and the Piedmontese can’t steal my profession because they have water and flour, but they have no sunshine and they do not have the art.”35 In these words of Francesca, heroine of a novel by Maria Orsini Natale, who was in charge of a prosperous manufactory in Gragnano at the advent of Italian unity, there is a bold challenge to the new conquerors from the north, but the values on which she built her little empire were about to fall into oblivion. Modern industry, still taking its first faltering steps in Francesca’s world, would soon make a mockery of what had always been the greatest strengths of the producers of the region: climatic conditions that were exceptionally favorable for the development of the art of pasta making and a professional lore developed over the centuries. Once the laws of nature had been conquered and once human know-how had been replaced by automatic technology, production would follow industrial logic, and dried pasta made of durum wheat would find itself in exile from its birthplace. The fine pasta industry of Torre Annunziata and Gragnano, flourishing at the turn of the the industrial age 157

twentieth century, was gradually to decline in strength and world leadership, until all its most prestigious champions closed down and moved away. All the same, this century, which proved so grim for the pasta makers of southern Italy, had dawned as a time of opportunity, energized by the modernizing optimism of the end of the nineteenth century. Industrial structures had been established in the traditional centers of pasta production, and manufacturing in the south was becoming increasingly mechanized. With the expansion of various food industries, many new pasta producers had begun operations all over Italy, and some of the new arrivals had succeeded in finding a place in the sun outside the classic locations of this Mediterranean-based activity. We have already noted the presence in Milan of the Pastificio Tommasini, one of the largest producers in Italy, which, however, seems not to have continued manufacturing after the nineteen twenties, but we could also mention, with Renato Rovetta, the Pastificio Dolfi in Florence, whose output was about eleven tons per day; this company received a gold medal at the Universal Exposition of Paris in 1900 for its “medicinal and gluten-enriched Italian pasta” and was still flourishing in 1929.36 Dolfi had competition, and right in Tuscany: the Buitoni company in Sansepolcro, which had already grown considerably since its foundation in 1827 and had received an award at the same exposition in Paris.37 And we should not forget De Cecco, established in 1887 in Fara San Martino (near Chieti), where a street bears the name of the founder, Filippo De Cecco. On the Ligurian coast, two producers were already well known: the Astenga company in Savona, which later went out of business, and Agnesi, founded in 1824 in Pontedassio, near Imperia. (This second company manufactures the oldest brand of pasta still being made, of all the pasta makers that have survived to the present day.) And let us not overlook the somewhat belated arrival of Barilla, which began production in 1911 and rose over the course of little more than half a century to rank first in pasta production worldwide, remaining under the almost uninterrupted control of the same family the whole time. When the Barilla family opened their first major factory in Parma, there were already pasta makers in the city, working more or less on an artisanal scale and producing no more than 2,200 pounds per day. The largest factory in the town belonged to Ennio Braibanti, which had grown considerably since the first workshop was founded in 1870; this was the only producer in Parma to have attained an indus158 the industrial age

trial scale. Ennio Braibanti made his fortune by specializing in deluxe pasta and “fine pasta made with gluten and eggs,” very highly considered at the turn of the twentieth century by the urban middle and upper classes, who were becoming aware of dietary concerns. As chance would have it, this pioneer of the Parmesan pasta industry was the father of Mario and Giuseppe Braibanti, future builders of the continuous pasta press (1933) and, most notably, designers of the first entirely automated production line for pasta. But individual success stories should not distract us from the essential fact that at the turn of the twentieth century the pasta industry was basically concentrated in the south of Italy. In 1880, when Gragnano was still mostly equipped with small mills and the pasta industry was in crisis, losing workers steadily, one survey counted 2,480 workers in pasta manufactories.38 But over the course of the next two decades, this sector experienced a veritable industrial boom, which was felt throughout southern Italy and in Sicily. Of the ten largest pasta-making companies in Italy at the turn of the twentieth century, seven were located in southern Italy. Leading the list was the Pastificio Scaramella of Salerno, comprising two large buildings, one of them for drying, which was entirely natural, done in accordance with the classic Neapolitan method. It had a daily production capacity of 66,000 pounds, which put it at the same level as the Pastificio Tommasini in Milan. Next came the companies G. Fabbrocino and Scafa of Torre Annunziata, with, respectively, production of 55,000 pounds and 33,000 pounds a day, both of them using the natural drying method. The four largest companies in Sicily had capacities that ranged from 22,000 pounds to 33,000 pounds a day. Two were in Catania (F. Moncaco and S. Lucia), one was in Palermo (D. Carella), and one was located in Caltanisetta (Piedigrotta).39 Most of the factories that were established and grew between the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth century were, however, fairly small, with capacities of no more than nine tons daily. Among the small producers, we should mention the Alfonso Garofalo company of Gragnano, one of the very few Italian pasta makers that took part in the Paris expositions, where it was awarded a gold medal in 1900 for its “macaroni and fine pasta.” Established in 1842, the factory was moved in 1881 to a new four-story building equipped with the latest steam-powered machines. But it went out of business in the nineteen seventies and has absolutely no relationship with the Pastificio Lucio Garofalo, founded in 1935 and still in business, manufacthe industrial age 159

turing a noteworthy line of organic products. At the same exposition, Amato, an excellent company in Salerno, was given an award for its “Italian pasta, flours, and semolinas”; the company continued to grow throughout the century, and nowadays has over a hundred employees.40 Among the smaller producers in Sicily in this period, the Pastificio Russo of Termini Imerese stood out for its quality; it produced 5.5 tons daily and had a factory that was quite remarkable for its architecture, standing fully six stories high. We have also found documentation of some twenty midsized factories in Apulia, located in the three provinces of Bari, Brindisi, and Foggia, for the most part changing ownership and name over the years and finally going out of business.41 Only two of those companies are still in business: the wellestablished trademark F. Tamma, which produces its pasta in a factory in Bari that includes “a roller mill and a pasta plant”; and the Fratelli Divella company of Rutigliano, in the province of Bari, which in its 1910 catalog presented itself as an “award-winning producer of pasta products.”42 The present-day company, which produces under the name F. Divella SpA, boasts a production capacity of 286 tons daily and has 137 employees. Most of these companies were founded and developed as both mills and pasta factories, a dual standing that was proclaimed on the pediments of the buildings and in all advertising materials and labels. This double nature was a dominant characteristic of the white industry of southern Italy in this period, especially in Sicily, where it still remains the rule for many pasta producers today. The industrial revolution thus introduced a new phase of expansion that swept through the pasta industry of southern Italy. The southern Italian pasta industry, however, was still largely dominant in both domestic and international markets and enjoyed an unrivaled reputation, and it faced its competition with unruffled serenity. It was not until after the First World War that it began to show the first symptoms of weakness and enter a phase of decline, culminating in collapse during the nineteen sixties and seventies. Among the causes of that decline, the most important was the sudden drop in Italian exports. This was not a passing phenomenon but a substantial and lasting change: the North American market was lost for good to the new American industry that had developed at a dizzying rate from an embryonic newcomer to a world-class power. The turning point came in 1913, and this can be seen in the steady decline in total Italian exports, which dropped from close to 78,100 tons in that year to scarcely 13,200 tons in 1928, fifteen years later.43 160 the industrial age

This decline in the international market affected pasta makers throughout Italy. The southern Italian producers were more sharply affected, however, while production in other regions of Italy continued to grow. The gap between the productive capacity of the two parts of the country was progressively narrowing. While in 1954 southern Italy and the islands still produced 51.8 percent of the country’s pasta, as against 48.2 percent in central and northern Italy, the relationship would quickly reverse in favor of the producers of northern and central Italy, who were capable of producing more pasta, even with a smaller number of companies.44 And that is not counting the acquisition of many southern producers by multinationals, Italian and otherwise. The story of Torre Annunziata and Gragnano, two towns that were associated in tradition, prosperity, and economic depression, is emblematic of the decline of the white industry in southern Italy. The first town boasted 102 manufactories, the other 66, and they enjoyed their golden age between 1890 and 1914. Both towns were entirely devoted to the milling and pasta-making trades and were built by men and women, often of modest origins, who in some cases became true captains of industry and in any case were people of remarkable determination who spread the reputation of their skill across the ocean. That was the story of Gaetano Fabbrocino (1852–1906), the son of poor laborers who started out with no capital other than his knowhow and who ended his life as the owner of two pasta factories, with a total capacity of 60.5 tons of pasta per day. Antonio Dati (1828–1910), also the son of a poor family, began his business career in 1848 with a hydraulic mill and in time became one of the first to build a roller mill. We should also mention Francesco Scafa, the founder in 1884 of a major industrial complex, including a mill and a pasta factory, as well as the names of Salvatore Gallo (1865–1919); Pietro Farro Sarnacchiaro, whose products were awarded a medal at the Universal Exposition of Paris in 1900; and Giovanni Voiello (1859–1939), who established his first workshop with a hydraulic press in 1879 and whose trademark is akin to a hallmark for those who love pasta from the Naples area. And let us not forget the wives, mothers, and daughters of entrepreneurs who supported them, encouraged them, and often took their places, running the factories. This was the case of Donn’Anna Dati (1855–1947), who took over her father’s company and developed it in a remarkable manner. And let us remember Donna Nunziata Ruggiero. And what about the industrial age 161

Donna Nunziata La Rocca, a capable woman who devoted heart and soul to her business, portrayed magnificently in Maria Orsini Natale’s novel Francesca e Nunziata? In his book about his town, Torre Annunziata, Francesco Dati rightly wished to preserve the memory of these great figures of local industry who helped to build the town’s former prosperity.45 Their flourishing factories nearly all went out of business between 1950 and 1970, and the revival of interest in pasta during the following decade, in the wake of the fortunate invention of the Mediterranean diet by the Americans, does not seem to have helped very much, if at all. In 1981 there were still thirty pasta factories in Campania, most of them in Torre Annunziata and Gragnano. There were no more than twenty-four in 1986, twenty-three in 1991, twenty-two in 1996, and, as we write in early 2000, other companies have gone out of business or are about to do so. Of those that continue to operate, many survive by subcontracting part of the production of the major multinational pasta companies, if they have not actually been bought out by one of them. Nothing in the happy period of industrial development could have foreshadowed the collapse of the traditional centers of production in southern Italy, no matter what some writers say, always ready to criticize the supposed fatalism of the people of these sun-kissed lands, by their nature little given to technical invention because they are selfdescribed unconditional subscribers to the belief that God will provide.46 This chapter shows, to the contrary, that the producers of southern Italy have an unparalleled skill in their trade, acquired over the course of centuries, through a love of work well done and a relentless determination to progress. If their history is written, as Roberto Fusco insists, “from the point of view of the defeated,”47 it is because the battle took place on a terrain that was quite alien to the art of making pasta.

from the industrial revolution to the food revolution If the industrial era put an end to the monopoly on pasta making in its Mediterranean birthplaces, it also witnessed the official acceptance of this family of foods as the Italian national dish and the beginning of pasta’s planetary popularity. By lowering production costs and providing technical solutions to natural and climatic limitations, indus162 the industrial age

trialization made mass-produced dry pasta popular throughout Italy and opened the path to its everyday consumption in societies far removed from Italian culinary culture. In Italy, with the exception of a few strongholds of rice and polenta in the northern portion of the peninsula, which held out until after the Second World War, and a few enclaves of poverty that were worn away over time, pasta, in broth or in thick sauce (pastasciutta), found acceptance everywhere beginning at the turn of the twentieth century, as a first course, or primo, at the tables of the well-to-do; as a meal on its own in less prosperous homes, prepared according to one of the myriad recipes found in the pages of magazines, cookbooks, and works of home economics; and as a supplement to vegetable soup or clear broth, for those with weak stomachs or for small children. Dry commercial pasta found greater acceptance among all Italians. It had long been daily fare for the inhabitants of southern Italy and the islands of Sicily and Sardinia, while for the rest of the population, it was the industrial version of a type of food that was already a staple in ordinary cooking. Foreign travelers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries had already noted the overwhelming role pasta played in Italian cuisine, and some were variously astonished or amused at the rapture Italians seemed to experience when consuming a food that was, all things considered, fairly ordinary in the eyes of habitual consumers of meat. “If Italians in general have a passion for pasta in soup, the Neapolitans cannot live without it,” observed an English author in the early nineteenth century, in a formulation that was certainly facile but accurately summarized Italy’s gastronomic singularity.48 In fact, pasta formed part of a nutritional system that was dominated by vegetables and had roots in the Greco-Latin world that had made the trio of wheat, olives, and wine a symbol of civilization.49 Far from destroying the edifice that had been built over the centuries, the industrial revolution strengthened it by putting pasta within reach of one and all and casting it as the central element of the Italian meal. The expansion of consumption was based at the time on a vast array of formats. Some were specific to one region or another or made only by one producer or another, but there was also a varied and rich battery of so-called special pastas, which ranged from egg pasta to dietetic and medicinal pastas. The range of natural pastas, that is, those whose basic mixture included nothing other than semolina or flour and water, was broken down into many categories, the industrial age 163

according to whether they were made with pure semolina, a blend of semolina and flour, or just flour. We should note in this connection that the quality of raw materials began to drop sharply after the First World War and Italian producers were forced to make regular use of blends of semolina and flour for a considerable time. This decline in quality could doubtless be attributed to the elimination of the flow of imported Russian and Ukrainian durum wheat; the crops were destroyed during the war and the revolutionary period that followed. But difficulties did not stop with the end of war, revolution, and civil upheaval, because Italy’s Fascist government was opposed on principle to imported wheat and refused to authorize any imports, unless they could be matched to exports of derived products, in this case, pasta.50 In this period, however, exports of Italian pasta were declining steadily, especially because of the loss of the American market.51 In 1929, in his manual of the pasta industry, Renato Rovetta provided instructions on how to organize and manage the storehouses, or silos, for semolina and flour blends (sfarinati) according to the type of pasta being produced. As he explained, “Nowadays (after the Great War), the pasta industry has been forced to change direction and follow the path of ‘what we are able to do’ and not ‘what we would like to do,’ and pasta made of pure semolina has become an almost mythical product.” He went on to indicate the proportions for the blends: long pasta, which at the time made up four-fifths of the total production, was made up of 80 percent durum wheat semolina and 20 percent soft wheat flour, while short-cut pasta was made with a blend of 40 percent durum wheat semolina and 60 percent soft wheat flour.52 In this theoretical framework, each producer could model its production according to the end market, choosing among four qualities of pasta: “extra superior quality,” or “sublime”; “fine quality,” or “first quality”; “commercial quality,” or “second quality”; and “third quality.” Rovetta commented, however, that “only a very few factories produce ‘extra superior quality’ or ‘sublime’ pasta.”53 Within the context of the north-south division—long pasta hung on poles and large-format short-cut pasta, traditionally made in the southern regions, and fine pasta in nests, typical of the Ligurian tradition—many regions developed their own formats and specialties. The pasta catalogs of the earliest decades of the century featured “pasta Sicilian-style,” “fine pasta Genoese-style,” “handmade pasta Bolognese-style,” “pasta Neapolitan-style,” “pasta Apulian-style or 164 the industrial age

Pugliese-style,” and so on. In the Naples region, macaroni were especially popular, along with oversized versions known as ziti and zitoni (names that are a tribute to unmarried women: zitelle is the term for old maids), completed with the entire series of mezzani, mezzanelli, bucatini, and vermicelloni. In Genoa and in Liguria, there was a preference for fidelini, vermicelli, capelli d’angelo (angel-hair pasta), fetuccine, and spaghetti, all long pasta dried in the nest form. In Apulia there was a greater development of the art of short-cut pasta such as rigatoni, ditalini, tubetti, fagiolini, conchigliette, anellini, and so forth, but the numerous producers in that region also produced long formats. In Sicily the entire range of long pasta and large-format short-cut pasta was produced, but, according to Rovetta, there was a tendency in the eastern part of the island to cultivate specialties and concentrate on specific formats. The array of possible formats was infinite and varied from one factory to another, even though there were certain regional standardizations, especially in terms of dimensions. In Naples, for instance, long pasta measured between twenty-three and twenty-four inches, while in Sicily it measured between twenty and twenty-two inches, with diameters and thicknesses indicated with great precision in the catalog. Bologna was known for its varieties of handmade egg pasta, with shapes ranging from the simplest, such as pappardelle, sheets of pasta cut into squares with scalloped edges, to the more sophisticated types such as cappelli pagliacci, literally “clown hats,” shaped like pointed conical hats with broad raised brims, again with scalloped edges.54 Pasta makers at the beginning of the twentieth century made abundant use of dyes. Traditionally, saffron was used in Genoa, as well as in Naples, but industry replaced it, at first with safflower and then quickly and more massively with chemical dyes. At the turn of the twentieth century, the most widely used dye was naftolo, a chemical dye derived from naphthalene.55 Providing a handsome yellowish color, naftolo, used alone or mixed with “Martius or tropeolina yellow,” was used especially to dye egg pasta.56 The use of dyes was so widespread that a method was developed to identify their presence in finished products. They were no secret, however, and it was not uncommon for a pasta maker to announce their use in big letters on the label or in the catalog as an added attraction. American manufacturers did not conceal their scorn for artificially colored Italian pasta as they tried to emphasize the superior quality of their own products, both domestically and internationally, where they were trying to gain market share.57 the industrial age 165

Egg pasta was among the special pastas produced in growing quantities and shapes by the pasta industry at the beginning of the twentieth century. Some of these pastas were simply gastronomical specialties that allowed pasta makers to extend their product lines by increasing the array of flavors and adding colorful touches. There was no limit to the imagination employed in this field. In France, for instance, during the belle epoque, just before the First World War, the culinary field was invaded by pâtes à la neige, literally, “snow pasta,” obtained by “grating ziti macaroni after completely drying them so as to form extremely light flakes.” This pasta, noted Renato Rovetta, had the unusual feature of cooking instantly, and it was sold at a price of nearly 100 francs per kilogram, which was ten to twenty times the cost of lobsters at Paris markets.58 The Italians were especially fond of tomato pasta, “spinach pasta, or made with other green vegetables,” and stuffed pasta, of which there was a wide assortment. Tomato pasta was made by replacing about 10 percent of the water in the mixture with “excellent tomato sauce, first diluted with water, and then filtered through a very fine silk cheese cloth.” For pasta made with spinach or other green vegetables, “a purée of the chosen vegetable was added after undergoing the same treatment.”59 It does not seem that the producers of that period ever used artificial dyes or substitutes in either tomato or spinach pasta, and neither did they treat the natural colorants industrially, by converting them to dried powders or other extracts to facilitate their use and simplify production. On the other hand, from before the First World War, many industrial manufacturers of egg pasta replaced fresh eggs with ovus, a powdered-egg substitute, about which we know nothing.60 This explains the need for chemical dyes in this variety. In Sicily “handmade pasta Palermo-style” was produced, a very special type of pasta that had the unusual feature of never completely drying. It was made of pure durum wheat semolina, according to the classic mixture, to which one would add 4.65 ounces of kitchen salt for every 2.2 pounds of semolina. This was thought to prevent the pasta from fermenting, while preserving it in a state of partial freshness, as it stopped it from ever drying out entirely.61 The pasta was shaped by hand into the various traditional formats of the island. Specialty stuffed pasta was the result of partly mechanical and partly manual production. A sheet of dough was rolled out and cut into the required shape by machine, but the final product was assembled by hand, pri166 the industrial age

marily by female workers. This was true at least until the twenties, when the first machines appeared that could make ravioli, cappelletti, and other types of tortellini.62 The most brilliant gimmicks of the nascent industry were enriched pasta, diastatic pasta (with enzymes), and medicinal pasta. Producers began in the last decades of the nineteenth century to offer pasta reinforced with gluten, and before long they expanded their selection of special types of pasta by introducing additives considered to provide energy or aid in digestion. Consumers were offered diastatic pasta with pepsin, diastatic pasta with lime lacto-phosphate, pasta with iron, pasta with gelatin, pasta with iron and eggs, pasta with extract of brewer’s yeast, fine dietary pasta . . . and that is not even to mention the series of pasta and fine pasta types with gluten, semiglutinated, hyperglutinated, and so on.63 These were pastas to be eaten in broth, intended especially for young children, the sick and convalescent, or anyone following a special diet. The formats ranged from very fine stringlike pasta, such as angel-hair, to an entire array of tiny cut pasta with such evocative names as stars, pearls, partridge eggs, sparks, lentils, elder flowers, eyelets, fog, and so on. Some producers even offered a varied line of “microscopic gluten pastas.” Of this vast assortment of special pastas, gluten pasta was to enjoy the greatest success. Gluten, whose nutritional value had first been explored by the work of Jacopo Bartolomeo Beccari (1728), was added to the dough mixture in a proportion ranging from 10 to 15 percent; producers obtained it either by making it themselves by treating durum wheat semolinas, if they were also millers or makers of semolina, or by purchasing it from a starch maker. It was not uncommon for producers to add gluten to ordinary pasta mixtures when they did not have soft wheat flour. But when they produced gluten pasta, they added extra gluten to augment the pasta’s nutritional value. The publicity, which in that period was basically the catalog copy, never failed to proclaim the fortifying, healthful effects of the additive. And so small-format pasta with gluten was often vaunted as being “recommended by the most respected medical authorities for children, weak stomachs, the sick, and convalescents.”64 The introduction of these special medicinal pastas at the end of the nineteenth century was no accident. The industrial revolution in effect opened the way for the nutritional revolution. In Germany, Switzerland, and Anglo-Saxon countries, soup tablets and bouillon cubes were about to revolutionize cooking. The companies Kub, the industrial age 167

Maggi, Liebig, and Knorr invested more and more heavily in the food sector, their purported aim being to free women from the exhausting daily chore of making soup. Meat juice and other meat extracts were thought to provide, concentrated in a one-inch cube, the equivalent of several pounds of beef, and, as Alberto Capatti has reported, nutritionists were increasingly seduced by industrial reconstituents with pharmaceutical names such as Plasmon (milk albumin), Kemmelrich Peptone (meat extract), or Tropon (a mixture of animal and vegetal albumin).65 Italy at the turn of the century was only marginally affected by this nutritional revolution, but the more enlightened classes were in touch with the spirit of the age, and the pasta industry responded to the sirens of progress.

168 the industrial age

CHAPTER SIX

Pasta Without Borders Almost half a century ago, an Italian writer observed that spaghetti had done more to spread Italian genius through the world than the work of Dante.1 Without question, pasta products made their way early throughout the Western world as an Italian specialty. The pasta of Genoa and Naples, already highly respected in the seventeenth century, was subsumed into the pasta of Italy: pâtes d’Italie was still used as a synonym for pasta in French commercial dictionaries at the turn of the twentieth century. Terms such as macaroni, spaghetti, and ravioli have been adopted in similar if not identical forms in many other languages. Consider the “spaghetti dinner” widely served in the American heartland throughout the 1950s or the term macaroni wheats, which has entered American agricultural terminology to indicate durum wheat.2 We could list countless similar instances in many other European languages. The expansion of the Italian language of pasta reflects the power of the Italian model for this family of foods, for which the industrial development of the early twentieth century opened up immense opportunities for growth. From Argentina to Romania, from Canada

to Australia, from Ireland to India, there are growing numbers of pasta makers working to satisfy a rapidly burgeoning demand. Among these countries, some can claim an ancient tradition, developed over the centuries in parallel with the Italian tradition. This is especially the case in France and Spain, countries that border the Mediterranean world, but it is also true of Germany, where the focus is on flour-and-egg pasta, also popular in Alsace and northern Italy, especially in Bologna.3 But most of the countries where we can find a more or less thriving production of pasta in the first few decades of the twentieth century were recent converts that in many cases discovered the culinary and economic values of pasta thanks to an influx of Italian immigrants, both as importers of pasta and as the first entrepreneurs setting up local production. In this chapter’s exploration of how pasta established itself elsewhere in the world, France will serve as a special point of observation from which to trace the growing power of an industry based on centuries-old practices. The remarkable penetration of the United States into this field of activity will serve to illustrate the establishment of the pasta industry in the New World, and Alsace will offer us documentation to illustrate the tradition of egg pasta, deeply rooted in the Germanic culinary culture. First of all, however, let us survey the general landscape of pasta in the period when its production was expanding to a worldwide scale.

the new horizons of pasta Renato Rovetta, author of an invaluable series of manuals on the pasta industry, listed in the 1929 edition 3,592 pasta makers in sixtyseven countries, in contrast to the 1,600 pasta makers counted in Italy at that time. If Italy was still clearly the leading pasta-producing country, it was primarily because of its enormous domestic consumption; in fact, on the international market, Italy was no longer in the quasi-monopolistic position that it had enjoyed in previous centuries. Although the first two decades of the twentieth century had seen a sharp expansion in Italian exports, that trend quickly changed direction, with exports dropping in the fifties to a tenth of the volume of the successful years from 1910 to 1920. The prohibition against exporting foods during both world wars, which extended a few years beyond the armistice of 1945, certainly did not help, encouraging 170 pasta without borders

pasta-importing countries to find alternative sources of supply, but the policy of self-sufficiency (autarky) proclaimed by the Fascist regime between the two world wars also contributed to the decline of Italy’s role in the international market of pasta.4 Among Italy’s main competitors was the United States, the secondlargest manufacturer, with 550 factories surveyed by Renato Rovetta in 1929; 377 of those factories were on an industrial scale, according to the statistics of the U.S. Department of Commerce.5 Next came France, which had fallen from second place to third but, with its 500 factories and its semolina factories in Marseilles, remained Italy’s largest competitor on the international market. Further back came Spain, a country with a venerable pasta-making tradition that at the time boasted 240 factories, closely followed by Hungary, with 220 factories and Germany and Portugal, tied with 200 factories each. Nearly all the countries of Europe had built pasta factories of their own, even Liechtenstein, which had 2, and the Principality of Monaco, with 4.6 With their country bordering Provence and Liguria, the inhabitants of Monte Carlo could hardly have escaped a love of pasta. Given its historic role, Spain deserves more study than we have been able to offer in this book. Crossroads of the Arab-Muslim, Jewish, and Christian civilizations, Spain has been one of the leading melting pots for the assimilation, development, and diffusion of the art of stringlike and grainlike pasta. The capital of a Mediterranean empire built by the Aragonese and enlarged by the Castilians, Spain dominated the leading centers of pasta production in Italian territory, from Sicily to Apulia and including Sardinia and the Naples region. True, the Spanish never intervened in production save with administrative measures and regulation of the guilds, and neither did they at any time monopolize trade in this foodstuff, preferring in general to delegate that task to the Genoese. But they nonetheless profited from it for centuries and, at a minimum, always managed to obtain at reasonable prices products made in the regions they controlled politically. This undoubtedly explains the absence of a major production of pasta on Spanish territory before the second half of the nineteenth century. “Spanish flour-milling has developed considerably in recent times,” wrote the observer for the jury on grains and flour products presented at the Universal Exposition of Paris of 1878, adding, “The production of pasta products and starch products has also made enormous progress in the last twelve years, more or less, but these induspasta without borders 171

tries have not yet reached a level of perfection.” Spanish pasta makers, who had access to excellent varieties of durum wheats imported from Algeria or cultivated in the Valencia region, came from the two Castiles, from Navarre, or from Seville, Pamplona, or Valencia. Among the numerous exhibitors at the 1878 exposition, the jury made honorable mention of only a single producer from Valencia, judging Spanish production on the whole to be of mediocre quality.7 The Universal Exposition of Paris in 1878, however, in a way heralded the birth of the Spanish pasta industry, which was to begin its true development in the twentieth century. It was probably during the First World War, when Spain wisely remained out of the conflict, that production rose to the level of other European nations, but what strikes us as noteworthy is that the number of factories grew from 1930 to 1940, totaling 349 in 1954, a figure that put Spain in second place among European producing nations, behind Italy but ahead of France,8 at least in terms of the number of factories, though that does not necessarily translate into a comparable increase in pasta production. Once more, the war years helped the Spanish.

from germany to the land of the cossacks Producers from the whole world over attended the Paris Exposition of 1878, which was the first major international show for the nascent pasta industry. The jury was pleased to note the presence of a Russian producer established in Kazan, in the Volga region, right in the heartland of the territory that produced what was considered the world’s finest durum wheat, long imported by European pasta makers under the name of the port from which it was shipped, Taganrog. “The vermicelli and macaroni of Monsieur Varaskine (Russia) were clearly well produced, according to the Italian process,”9 the report noted. One might well wonder why, if not through the wheat trade, this manufacturer from the farthest corner of the Russian empire would have ever had the idea not merely of taking part in the Paris Exposition but even of manufacturing macaroni in the first place. But one might also wonder if there already existed a tradition of pasta in that region so rich in wheat and, after all, quite close to the main trade route between East and West, the northern branch of the Silk Road, which passes through the town of Astrakhan, also located at the beginning of the Volga delta. It is well known that Russian cuisine has 172 pasta without borders

a rich and ancient tradition of fresh pasta, as do certain countries in central Asia, such as Uzbekistan, which neighbors the region where durum wheat is grown.10 However that may be, neither Czarist Russia nor after it the Soviet Union developed a pasta industry on a scale sufficient to supply the country: in 1929 Renato Rovetta counted only ten pasta factories in the entire country, placing the Soviet Union just ahead of Malta, which had nine, but behind Finland, with eleven, Albania with twelve, and Luxembourg with twenty-two, and well behind Romania, which then already boasted fifty pasta factories.11 The pasta industry in Romania began to develop during the second half of the nineteenth century, as was the case in most countries, in Europe and elsewhere. The Romanians distinguished themselves, however, by the dimensions of their early factories, which were unequaled in any of the other pasta-making countries of the time, even Italy. A pasta maker from Bucharest attracted notice at the Exposition of Paris in 1889 with his dry pasta, judged to be of excellent quality, which won him a gold medal. His factory, conceived, built, and put into operation by a “French builder,” was equipped with a 160horsepower steam engine; it employed 300 workers.12 Romania was a major producer of durum wheat that enjoyed some repute on the international market, and it seemed natural that industrialists should have tried to take advantage of this abundance.13 Two major factories were built there before the end of the nineteenth century, one at Gala¸ti and one in Constantsa, and then about fifty more during the first decades of the twentieth century. At the time of the Parisian expositions, which took place during the final quarter of the nineteenth century, the last in 1900, Germany was a major pasta producer, with the noteworthy addition of Alsace, annexed to the Reich in 1870. German culinary culture gave a place of special importance to fresh pasta, with a wide array of Nudeln, the origin of the French word nouille and the English word noodle. In his treatise on the art of the vermicelli maker, Malouin notes that they “eat noodles in Germany,” and the editors of the Encyclopédie, which began publication in 1751, had an entry for Nudeln, pasta made with pure wheat flour, milk, and butter, rolled out with a rolling pin, and cut into strips. According to the authors, this dish was “very common in Germany . . . roughly similar to the vermicelli and macaroni of the Italians.”14 Thus, at least since the Enlightenment, the tradition of Nudeln has been the German counterpart to the tradition of Italian pasta, and the reputation of German specialties was sufficiently pasta without borders 173

respected to merit an article in the greatest compendium in French history on the arts and trades. At the end of the nineteenth century, however, the memory of the crushing defeat of 1870 was still too fresh for the French, who were still dreaming of revenge, to accept readily the presence of Germany at one of their promotional expositions. And so neither German nor Alsatian pasta makers were invited to exhibit in Paris in 1878 or in 1889, and the Germans made only a timid appearance in 1900, with a presentation of the products of the Knorr company, which received an award for its vermicelli.15 The chairman of the jury noted in his summary of the deliberations that there were other pasta factories in Hamburg, Lübeck, and Königsberg and commented that there were probably still more in other towns. Germany was about to establish a fairly dense network of factories, as many as 200, as we have reported, even though it was forced to cede Alsace to France in 1918. Most of the industrial structures would be destroyed in the Second World War, but after the dark period just afterward, Germany succeeded in successfully rebuilding almost the entire network, even though the country had been split into two republics.16 Oddly enough, none of the reports on the Paris Expositions of 1878, 1889, and 1900 make any reference to the Hungarian pasta industry, even though the various jury chairmen were generous with their praise of the Hungarian milling industry, considered the best on earth. It had developed graduated milling, in which the cylinders are brought progressively closer, a method that was termed “Hungarian milling.” Should we conclude, then, that the Hungarian pasta industry, which Renato Rovetta classified in 1929 as one of the most powerful in Europe, did not begin its development until the turn of the twentieth century, well after its establishment in Romania? This is the most likely hypothesis. Such was not the case with Belgium, even though in 1889 the jury of the exposition awarded a silver medal to the sole Belgian exhibitor present, with the avowed intention of encouraging the efforts of the brand-new industry, whose annual production was estimated at 1,870 tons. The same jury awarded a gold medal to the largest pasta maker in Greece, where the “production of pasta products has acquired a certain dimension after several years.”17 Portugal was present at the Exposition of 1878 but did not return to the Exposition of 1889; it is true that the jury had found that great progress would be required before the producers of that country could hope to receive medals in 174 pasta without borders

an international competition. Judging from the 200 factories surveyed in Portugal in 1929, the country benefited from the lesson.

transatlantic migrations Few pasta makers from the Americas made the trip to Paris. In 1889 notice was taken of the presence of Uruguay and Argentina, two countries where the pasta industry was in rapid growth. “Numerous factories have been built in Buenos Aires,” wrote the reporter, specifying that the jury had encouraged that new industry by awarding “gold medals to Monsieur Antonio Devoto, of Buenos Aires, and to Monsieur Peirano, of Santa Fe.”18 In 1900 the encouragement of the jury went to producers from the little republic of Ecuador, represented by two producers of Italian origin who had set up shop in Guayaquil and were respectively awarded a gold and silver medal. There was only one representative from the North American continent, a Canadian producer from Montreal.19 All the exhibitors who crossed the Atlantic to attend the expositions of Paris and received awards had one common characteristic: their names were Italian, in flavor if not in actual origin, evidence—if evidence were needed—of the primordial role played by Italian expatriates in the establishment of the pasta industry in their new countries of residence. The first workshops for the local production of pasta were often established in immigrant neighborhoods, originally intended to sell pasta to other members of the immigrant community. For many years on this continent, pasta, whether imported or produced locally, was mostly consumed by Italian emigrants, while other residents discovered pasta as an exotic dish in restaurants or trattorias, depending on their financial resources. If Argentina was one of the first countries in Latin America to develop a local pasta industry, it was because Italians immigrated there en masse during the second half of the nineteenth century, ultimately forming the largest and most powerful immigrant community in that country; indeed, Argentines of Italian descent today make up 40 percent of the total population. This development was all the more natural because these producers had access to abundant raw materials, since Argentina, along with Chile, was one of the first countries to introduce large-scale cultivation of durum wheat, with varieties selected from the best crops of Spain, Italy, and Russia. It is not pasta without borders 175

entirely a chance occurrence that in 1929 Argentina was ranked fourth among world producers of pasta, with 330 factories, at least thirty of them operating on an industrial scale.20 In fact, in this period the pasta industry was flourishing throughout the Americas. Renato Rovetta surveyed pasta factories in Peru, Bolivia, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Haiti, Cuba, Chile, and elsewhere, reporting a strong presence in Brazil, which had about 320 factories in its major cities and towns. In less than thirty years, almost all Latin America converted to the production of pasta, while further north the development of the pasta industry led to the creation of a colossus. During the next quarter century, the countries of Latin America, not directly involved in the Second World War, successfully pursued the development of their pasta industries. There was a sharp increase in consumption, especially in Argentina, Venezuela, and Brazil. With 440 factories in 1954, Brazil appeared to be the leading producer on the South American continent, which had 1,024 pasta factories in all.21 Argentina, which had fallen to second place, had no more factories than Rovetta had reported in 1929, but, according to the 1954 study by Giuseppe Portesi, these were generally quite respectable in size and, most important, equipped with the most modern machinery. There was a remarkable growth of the industry in Venezuela, which continued to preserve a good ranking. Venezuelans are still the second-ranked consumers of pasta in the world, after the Italians, with an average annual consumption per capita of 28 pounds, according to 1999 figures.22 To sum up, after a slow incubation in the heart of the transplanted Italian communities across the Atlantic, the pasta industry enjoyed a period of rapid growth that would allow it to conquer the domestic market and challenge the producers of the Old World in the international markets. This second phase, which witnessed the emancipation of the pasta industry of the New World—its Americanization, if you will—coincided with a period of expansion on the European continent, where outside Italy it was established solidly nowhere save France.

french traditions Let us recall the observations of the Dominican monk Père Jean-Baptiste Labat concerning the production of pasta, a manufacturing 176 pasta without borders

activity he found flourishing in Liguria at the turn of the eighteenth century but also noted was widespread in Provence and even beginning to become popular in Paris. Particularly open to the Mediterranean, Provence was traditionally a consumer and producer of pasta. Beginning in the Middle Ages, Marseilles welcomed Genoese ships carrying dried pasta from Sicily and Sardinia, and small-scale artisanal production of pasta began to flourish in Avignon and Grasse in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. In 1607 the anonymous author of a medical treatise listed the formats produced in this province of the French kingdom, where the culinary customs are closer to Italy and especially to the neighboring Ligurian Riviera. Menudez, macarons, vermisseaux, and fidiaux—Old French terms in which we can recognize minutelli, maccheroni, vermicelli, and fidelini—were in this period made by hand and then laid out to dry on large white linen cloths.23 We must surmise that when Père Labat visited Provence before boarding ship for Italy, the production of pasta had taken a betterorganized form, for he emphasizes its importance, but it still maintained its essentially artisanal character. In his Dictionnaire raisonné de commerce, published in 1723, Savary des Bruslons found not a single pasta manufactory in the kingdom, even though he occupied the privileged vantage point of being Inspector General of Manufactories. He restricted himself to noting the importation of vermicelli, which the people of Lyons also call semoule or semolina, the tariff for which at the customs station of Lyons was “six sous per hundred kilograms.” What is most striking about this author, who was otherwise well informed, was his ignorance about pasta, which like most of his contemporaries he considered an Italian specialty. In fact, he describes vermicelli as a “type of pasta made with rice flour, of which the Italians are especially fond,” adding that it was made with a device like a syringe.24 Outside Provence, pasta remained a largely unfamiliar dish, and until Malouin and his imitators ventured seriously into production, Parisian pasta lovers had no alternative to Italian products imported from Genoa and Naples by luxury grocers. In his 1767 book, Malouin states that “nowadays all sorts of pasta is made in Paris,” and he boasts of having been the originator of this new activity, which he considered to be of “public utility.”25 The operation of the pasta manufactories in Provence was just as advanced in practical terms and in terms of equipment as in the pasta without borders 177

largest establishments in Italy in that period, and as for Parisian techniques, Malouin claims to have learned the latest technical methods. In contrast, however, with the norm in the Neapolitan region and along the Ligurian coast, French pasta makers were generally also bakers, which is no indication of advanced development of the sector. For that matter, Malouin, who was also a baker by training, described the art of the vermicelli maker as “a branch of the art of baking.”26 For vermicelli and ordinary pasta, the most common raw material was soft wheat flour, but for macaroni it was absolutely imperative, according to Malouin, to use semolina. When flour was used, the pasta was colored with saffron. For other pasta, durum wheat was imported from Apulia and Sardinia, purchased in the markets of Trani and Cagliari. In France the best wheats for making pasta were grown in the plains of the lower Rhône valley, which stretched to the south of Avignon, between Nîmes and Salon-de-Provence. As we have already mentioned, the vermicelli makers of Paris preferred to work from a yeast dough. We have also found this custom among certain Italian chefs of the Middle Ages, and it was renewed by the vermicelli makers of Rome in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, who included in their array of pasta the so-called lasagne a vento. The problem with fermented pasta, according to Malouin, “is that they don’t last as long,” but they present the enormous advantage, he added, of being more flavorful and easier to digest, “for they are easier to dissolve and they are easier to cook.” In other words, Parisian producers aimed for pasta that would melt in the mouth, while the Neapolitans cultivated the art of firm pasta that would not lose its shape or crumble, especially during cooking, pasta that possessed the famous nerbo and popularized the expression “al dente” around the world. Here we are at the heart of two contrasting approaches, one pertaining to the culture of fresh pasta and pasta in broth, and the other based on dry pasta, which found its ideal culinary expression in pastasciutta, pasta in thick sauce, as they are generally eaten nowadays. The vermicelli makers of Paris enjoyed great popularity, and their numbers grew. Before the French Revolution, they occupied a single street in Paris; by Napoleonic times, they had spread to nearly every quarter, including the very elegant Faubourg Saint-Germain. “Since pasta has come into favor, even among the less well-to-do class of consumers,” wrote Grimod de la Reynière, “in Paris many makers of vermicelli, macaroni, lasagne, stars, partridge eyes, and other pastes made in the fashion of Italy, have established themselves.”27 Previously 178 pasta without borders

mentioned in the Almanach du commestible in 1778 as the center of the manufacture of “pâtes d’Italie,” the rue des Prouvaires still housed under the empire the largest Parisian pasta makers.28 But an immense manufactory was built at the beginning of the nineteenth century in the rue des Lombards, which, according to the author of the Almanach des gourmands, overshadowed all the others, both in terms of the quantity of pasta produced and its quality.29 With the constant growth in consumption recorded during the first half of the nineteenth century, new producers heeded the siren call of pasta in other regions of France. Consumption of pasta seems to have spread throughout all of France, at least in the cities. Aside from encouraging profitable trade with Italy—whose imports, which had fallen to their lowest levels in the early 1800s, revived at a healthy pace30—it fostered a boom in local manufacturing. In 1819 commercial dictionaries noted the presence of pasta makers in Lyons, Toulouse, Grenoble, Montpellier, and Nîmes, by this point competing with the longer-established producers of Marseilles and Paris. In the same year, the pasta industry was established in Auvergne, a region in central France that would become in the decades that followed the leading center for production in the country.31 Clermont-Ferrand, the capital of Auvergne, had no more than two or three pasta plants in 1828, one of which was run by a certain Monsieur Amedeo, who was the first declared producer in the town; another was founded in 1823 by a Monsieur Drelon but registered under the ownership of another person. Both manufactories were well known for pasta that was “produced by the Genoese method.”32 In the years that followed, however, there was a flourishing development of the industry, at first in the capital and then in the secondary cities and towns of the region. In 1839 Clermont-Ferrand was already capable of shipping to Paris and Lyons approximately 715 tons of pasta, and it became common in commercial circles to speak of “pasta of Auvergne.”33 Less than forty years later, the region boasted more than one hundred manufactories and no fewer than seventy mills, and it shipped its products to the four corners of France and even outside the national borders.34 The reputation of the pasta of Auvergne was definitively established around the middle of the nineteenth century, meeting face-to-face the challenge of Italian pasta products, which suffered a sharp decline. The state offered official recognition of this achievement by decorating the finest pasta maker of Clermont-Ferrand with the cross of the French Legion of Honor for his commercial pasta without borders 179

promotion of pasta.35 Monsieur Magnin, also honored for the quality of his products at the Exposition of Paris in 1855, sold his manufactory in the 1880s to Yberty, which shared his devotion to quality and attracted notice for exceedingly modern methods of production and for numerous patents for new pasta driers. It was even said in this period that Auvergne shipped macaroni to Naples, where they were repackaged and exported under the label “macaroni of Naples.”36 Unlike the pasta makers of Paris, the producers of Auvergne made use of durum wheats. At first, like the producers of Lyons and Marseilles, they purchased the durum wheat of Taganrog and also bought it from Italy. Then, beginning in the 1840s, they began to rely almost exclusively on locally grown wheats native to the region, which proved to have high gluten content. This was a duck-bill wheat with persistent beards (Triticum turgidum) known as touzelle, blé mitadin, and even godelle, which the producers of Auvergne enriched with gluten they procured from starch makers.37 They thus produced pasta that held up especially well to cooking, which they were careful to shape into the classic Italian formats, the better to compete with their transalpine rivals in the French market. As far back as Malouin’s day, the so-called Neapolitan flavor of pasta had won great popularity among the consuming public, which found in the products of Auvergne acceptable equivalents, easier to obtain and at lower prices. The local producers prospered during the last decades of the nineteenth century, even as the competition of the major manufacturers of other regions, especially in Marseilles, Lyons, and Paris, became increasingly fierce. It is possible even now to find at rare-book dealers copies of the catalog of the Brusson Jeune company, which was highly respected between the two world wars for its dietetic products and its pasta. It was founded in 1872 by Jean Brusson, in Villemur, a small town in southern France, located about thirty miles north of Toulouse, where the first pasta manufactory of France had been established. Beginning in 1875, new buildings were erected on a larger plot of land on the outskirts of town to allow the company to expand to the production of starch and the manufacture of dietetic products, to be consumed by diabetics and other invalids constrained to special diets. The company continued to grow in the first decades of the twentieth century, moving to Boves, near Amiens in northern France, where it developed its line of Italian-style pasta. The company reached its pinnacle in the mid-thirties, after which it encountered various difficulties, finally 180 pasta without borders

vanishing. The rise and fall of this company were emblematic of the life cycle of many French pasta makers, which were born and died between the second half of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century. It was estimated in 1856 that Paris and its surrounding region were at that time capable of producing roughly 1,300 tons of pasta, enough to meet roughly half the demand of the local population; the rest was imported from southern France, Alsace, the Lyons region, and Auvergne.38 Marseilles, the entry point for durum wheat from Russia, Italy, and especially the French colonies of northern Africa, developed a major semolina industry, which grew at the same rate as its pasta factories, which were among the largest of the time. The size and technological strength of Marseilles’s pasta industry could not help striking fear into the hearts of producers in Naples, or at least those among them who understood the situation. “A single company in Marseilles distributes, domestically and internationally, around 2.2 tons of pasta a day, which amounts to 770 tons annually [based on a 350-day work year], equivalent to one-tenth of all Italian exports,” wrote Alessandro Betocchi in 1874, more than a little disturbed by the decline of the industry in the region.39 In retrospect, this Neapolitan economist may have been too pessimistic, for while it is true that the local pasta and baking industry was at that time in a bad state, this was not destined to last, and by the middle of the following century an unprecedented phase of expansion had begun. Moreover, some towns along the Neapolitan coast had factories with as much capacity as the those in Marseilles. Still, when Betocchi was writing his article on manufacturing capacity in the Naples region, the French pasta industry definitely had an advantage over its Italian competition. Lyons at that time possessed several manufactories with sizable capacity, the oldest of which was founded in 1809. The local pastamaking industry already basked in the fame of the Bertrand factories, which would reach its high point at the turn of the twentieth century. The chairman of the jury on cereal products presented at the Paris Exposition of 1878 was lavish in his praise of “Monsieur Bertrand, who has contributed so greatly to the prosperity of the pasta industry in France.”40 Over the years, this entrepreneur established a reputation as an innovator and also won praise as a national benefactor for being the first to use the durum wheat of Algeria, which proved to be perfectly suited for the manufacture of pasta. Thus not only did he manufacture a product whose quality equaled that of pasta made with pasta without borders 181

semolina from the finest Russian wheat, but he helped to improve the French balance of trade, as well as creating a profitable market for a promising foodstuff produced by a French colony. Unlike many of his colleagues, Bertrand did not found his own company but purchased it when it was already a thriving concern, from a Monsieur Zerega, a small businessman of Italian origin who had founded the company in 1822. (We find an Antoine Zerega in Brooklyn in 1848, reputed to have immigrated from Lyons and the founder of A. Zerega’s Sons, one of the earliest pasta manufactories established in the United States and still manufacturing pasta today. Can we help but connect these two producers?) Monsieur Bertrand enjoyed a spectacular career before handing over his company to his son, who further consolidated its reputation. It comes as no surprise that it was among the recipients of a gold medal at the Paris Exposition of 1889, alongside Yberty and a dozen other French trademarks. (True, few foreign producers participated, and the jury was made up exclusively of French judges.) If the company, at the pinnacle of its commercial success, received no awards at the great Exposition of 1900, it was simply because Monsieur Bertrand fils was himself a member of the jury. The company remained fairly small, at least in comparison with the colossal groups that developed in the first half of the twentieth century, and was family owned until the fifties, when it was taken over by a major distribution group. It moved to the Paris region, where it continued to flourish under the same name and was once again the talk of the industry in the 1980s, when, under the leadership of Raymond Cauvet, it found itself once again at the forefront of technological development with a new system of high-temperature drying.41 The name Bertrand nonetheless remains linked to the town of Lyons, which at the turn of the twentieth century established itself as the capital of the French pasta industry. With twelve factories of industrial scale counted in 1878, Lyons produced approximately 1,870 tons of pasta per year, a considerable portion of which was exported to the French colonies and the United States, where, according to a professional in the sector, “they are replacing, thanks to the superior quality of their products, Italian producers.”42 Among the awards of the Paris Exposition of 1878, we find alongside Bertrand two other producers from Lyons; of special interest is the Ferrand company, which would later be called Ferrand and Renaud. At the end of the nineteenth century, the Rivoire and Carret company was established 182 pasta without borders

in Lyons; it soon became the largest pasta maker in France. Between 1892 and 1900 the production of this new company rose from 16.5 tons to 55 tons daily, placing it on a par with the largest Italian producers of the period.43 The company continued to grow during the first half of the twentieth century, eventually merging with the Lustucru company of Grenoble, another great French producer founded in 1910. The group now constitutes the second-largest producer in France.44 Grenoble was at the center of the fourth cradle of the French pasta industry, which covered the entire Alpine region, from Savoy to Nice, two territories annexed by France in 1860, where the Italian culinary influence is particularly marked. In Nice the Albertiny company, founded in 1856, first made a reputation with its vermicelli, angelhair, and other fine pasta in the best Genoese tradition, which did nothing to prevent it from later developing a line of egg pastas and special tomato and spinach pastas, products that enjoyed a growing popularity at the turn of the twentieth century. Like many pasta makers of the period, it built its reputation progressively by participating in all the national and international promotional events, which occurred almost every year in the largest towns of France. Albertiny received awards in Toulouse, Paris, and, of course, on its home turf, and it never failed to feature prominently in its catalog the medals awarded in the various competitions.45 The oldest pasta maker in the region was established in 1860, the same year in which Savoy became French. It prospered under the name Léger and Fils before being sold to the Richard family in 1926. The heir to that family still runs the company, which now markets its products under the Alpina brand. Another very old company that is still in business is the Chiron Moulins de Savoie company, which has remained under the same family ownership since 1870, when Antoine Chiron was running a mill in Cognin, near Chambéry. The pasta factory was established in 1892 in Chambéry, and at first it established a good reputation with its simple formats made of durum wheat. Later, the company extended its line of products to include special pastas, especially milk pasta, sold under the Louis Chiron brand. Having given up once and for all the idea of massive expansion, this is the only French company of its size that combines the production of semolina with the production of pasta, and evidently this approach is working just fine.46 Last born of the French brands of pasta, Panzani is now the label of pasta without borders 183

the largest pasta maker in the country. Founded in 1941, in Parthenay, in western France, by Jean Panzani, the son of Italian immigrants, the small family company began a phase of rapid expansion after the war that allowed it to win a majority share of the French market. Playing skillfully on the Italian sound of the name and adopting the American lessons of transparent packaging, Panzani was the first company in France to understand the development of the market toward mass consumption, and it enjoyed the fruit of its tactics. In the seventies, it was purchased by a major industrial group, which had also taken control of such prestigious Italian brands as Agnesi. The French colossus has continued to grow, now boasting numerous factories in Marseilles and the Paris region.47 Although the pasta industry never had the importance in the French economy that it had in Italy, it was established quite early, and production progressed at the same rate as in the great farmlands south of the Alps, adopting the most advanced techniques along the way. From the turn of the nineteenth century on, French producers have tried to compete with their powerful southern neighbors in the very area where the Italians had the greatest advantage: pasta made of durum wheat semolina. The difficult period of transition that occurred in Italy in the 1870s served to encourage the ambitions of French producers, who competed even more effectively after finding that the wheat from French colonies was an excellent and inexpensive raw material. French pasta exports totaled roughly 976 tons in 1868, a trivial quantity that was mostly shipped to the captive markets in the French colonies. By 1876 that figure had increased by more than five, to 5,680 tons, much of which found its way into international markets open to competition. The significance of this becomes obvious in light of the sharp decline in imports,48 even though in that same short period of time, France had lost Alsace, one of its oldest pasta-producing areas, ceded to Germany in 1870.

alsace and the passion for egg pasta If the Mediterranean world developed the art of pasta made with durum wheat semolina, the German world was the first to show the culinary benefit that could be gained from egg pasta. Of course, medieval Italian cooks had already used egg whites in certain macaroni recipes, but the custom of making pasta by using only eggs to 184 pasta without borders

moisten the flour seems to have first become common in northern Europe. It was well established in the Rhineland around the middle of the seventeenth century, a period in which there is no evidence of the practice in Italy, France, or Spain. “Noodles are made with plenty of eggs, good flour, and salt, no water, but a great number of eggs,” recommended the abbot Bernardin Buchinger, the author in 1671 of a cookbook in German that Alsatians claim as the sacred scripture of their culinary tradition.49 The abbot was not speaking of Strieble, Knoepfle, or Spätzle, whose dough was liquid, like fritter batter, which are quite typical of Alsace and certain regions of Germany; rather, he was referring quite clearly to pasta made with a solid, homogeneous ball of dough rolled out with a rolling pin and cut into strips, which German culture terms Nudeln, and which the Alsatians integrated into their culinary heritage in a version enriched with eggs. The indication of “plenty of eggs” corresponded, in the customs of well-to-do Alsatians, to three or four eggs for each pound of flour, a proportion that industrial pasta producers used in their high-end products, well known in the language of French marketing as pâtes sept oeufs, literally, “seven-egg pasta.” In Alsace, the pasta industry began to develop around the middle of the nineteenth century, but the transition to industrial production was prepared by a deep-rooted artisanal activity, which evolved much as it had in France in the eighteenth century and in Italy as early as the Middle Ages: through the work of the bakers. At first, no doubt, the product was fresh pasta or superficially dried pasta, produced in small quantities for a clientele pleased to be able to purchase a readyto-use product with homemade quality. As their success grew, producers were forced to increase their output and move on, like their Parisian colleagues, to a form of extended drying, exposing the pasta to the ambient heat of their bread ovens. Because they limited production to traditional formats made with rolled-out sheets of dough, such as tagliatelle, drying did not require excessively long periods of time, but the presence of fresh eggs in the compound made the process more complex, because the drying had to be done quickly enough to avoid spoilage of the product. The introduction of new machines made it possible to produce better, faster, and cheaper pasta, and the corresponding increase in demand opened the way to industrialization. Mechanical kneaders and hydraulic presses made their appearance in Alsace roughly in the same period as in the Naples region, in Liguria, and in Auvergne. Here, too, however, the real pasta without borders 185

change came when artificial drying systems became available; the rapid progress of these systems from the turn of the twentieth century on allowed some producers to expand to an industrial scale. The Alsatian pasta industry, of course, had its pioneers, among them Frédéric Scheurer, founder in 1840 of the first pasta manufactory on an industrial scale in the region.50 His factory in Logelbach, near Colmar, was apparently one of the most modern manufactories of its sort in France, and it was one of the first to make use of durum wheat, which represented a genuine cultural revolution in Alsace. But it was under German administration, between 1870 and 1915, that the pasta industry became solidly established in the region, though this did not immediately eliminate artisanal activity, which continued until the Second World War. Annexed by Germany after its victory over France in the War of 1870, the province found itself integrated into the immense and dynamic German economic system, which offered ideal conditions for the development of its nascent pasta industry, since the culture of egg pasta had deep and ancient roots in German cuisine. Alsatian industrialists showed all the more alacrity in seizing the opportunity they had been offered because the market was opening up to them just as their business was experiencing a fullfledged technological revolution and just as the Italians found themselves temporarily hobbled by a crisis in their own pasta industry. During the brief period when Alsace was part of Germany, some twenty pasta factories were founded, all of which produced egg pasta almost exclusively. The largest number were located in Strasbourg, the capital, but they also flourished all over the territory of the province, in the towns and villages of the Rhine Valley. Many vanished over the course of the twentieth century, absorbed by more powerful competitors, or closed because of difficulties of various sorts, especially during the long war years. A very few have grown and prospered right up to the present day, adjusting to societal changes without necessarily giving up their regional identity. This is the case with the Thirion company, the smallest of the four big companies in Alsace, which survived the twentieth century in its home territory of Colmar, where it was founded in 1904. The heirs of Jules Thirion, founder of the dynasty, who began making egg pasta in his bakery before undertaking industrial production, are still in control of the company, which remains faithful to the traditional processes of producing pasta from rolled dough.51 The historic roots of the Valfleuri company are in Guebwiller, a 186 pasta without borders

small town located midway between Colmar and Mulhouse. The small pasta workshop was founded in 1910 and then sold in 1922 to Frédéric Kuentz, who within a few years turned it into one of the most dynamic pasta manufacturers in Alsace. In 1920, just after the province was returned to French possession, the pasta maker Deka was founded in Strasbourg and quickly established a solid reputation for quality. The company managed to keep its quasi-artisanal scale even after the Second World War. It merged in 1969 with Sheurer, the oldest producer of Alsatian pasta—and also the largest after it absorbed many of its competitors—which later fell under the control of Lustucru. That merger resulted in the creation of the Gopal company, also known as the Générale Alsacienne de Pâtes Alimentaires. Heimburger, the fourth large producer in Alsace, was founded, like the others, by a baker just before the Second World War, but it did not really begin industrial production until the fifties. All the pasta makers of Alsace, past and present, have based their commercial success on their egg pasta, presented as a traditional specialty of the region. As far back as we can find documentation on the oldest labels and posters, right up to the most recent audiovisual advertising campaigns, the publicity of the Alsatian pasta industry has focused on its roots in the farmland and the respect for ancestral culinary traditions. The name “Alsatian pasta,” which replaced the older “Alsatian noodles,” is as much a marker of regional identity as the traditional costume or the distinctive broad-brimmed hat. In the era of artisanal production, the identity-based message served as a sort of certificate of authenticity intended for the local clientele, who could be certain they were purchasing a local product, made according to recipes that belonged to a common shared heritage. It is surprising, however, that this regional and traditionalist image has persisted even though the principles and means of production have radically changed, along with the general context of manufacturing and an expansion of the commercial territory. It has even managed to survive the replacement of soft wheat flour by durum wheat semolina, an ingredient that is not even remotely traditional in Alsatian pasta. Producers began to use this ingredient in homeopathic doses, in imitation of their Mediterranean counterparts, in the second half of the nineteenth century, but the practice only became common during the twentieth century. In 1889 Alfred Picard who drew up the report on flour-based products at the Paris Exposition, noted that “the producers of the Vosges region tend to work with soft wheat semolina.”52 pasta without borders 187

The trade name of “Pâtes d’Alsace,” literally, “pasta of Alsace,” has maintained if not increased its appeal even as the product has radically changed. “Pasta of Alsace” served equally well as a seal of quality in the German world, during the years of German administration, and in the French marketplace, when the province returned to French possession. It took more time and effort to win over French consumers, however, than it did to conquer the Germans. The French market was already largely controlled by the products of major international industrial groups, and Alsatian pasta makers had neither the production capacity nor the sales force required to market their products outside their regional territories, where they were firmly in control of the market. It was not until the Alsatian producers began to attain an industrial scale, international reach, and acceptance from large-scale distributors that Alsatian pasta began to venture outside its regional borders. Nowadays, “pasta of Alsace” can be found on the shelves of supermarkets in the largest towns in France alongside the leading Italian or French brands, but they are purchased primarily as specialties rather than as ordinary pasta. In a time of globalization, the name and reputation of Alsace remain the best promotional asset available for its products, even and perhaps especially those produced industrially. Their draw has its limits, however, for as effective as it may be in areas where the significance of the name Alsace is immediately recognized, both French and German, it has only the most limited value in the international market, where only Italian pasta truly enjoys a planetary level of recognition.

pasta from the new world: the example of the united states The American continent opted by and large for the Italian model. Certainly, with the development of the pasta industry, American producers extended their product lines to include special pastas such as egg pasta, milk pasta, and gluten pasta, but, in contrast with what we saw in Alsace, the types of pasta that took root first and most broadly were the simple and natural ones that formed part of the Italian culinary culture. The establishment of local production owed a great deal to the Italian immigrants who arrived en masse beginning in the last decades of the nineteenth century, but we cannot explain the devel-

188 pasta without borders

opment of the pasta industry in the New World by their presence alone, however important the immigrant communities may have been and whatever role one or another member of those communities may have played, whether as an early pioneer or as a great captain of industry. Industrial development, documented throughout the North and South American continent in the first decades of the twentieth century, was a result of the conjunction of various factors with a receptive environment created over the long term. The case of the United States is exemplary in this connection. The roots of the pasta industry in the United States can be traced deep into the nineteenth century, and they originate with an artisanal activity that began well before the massive Italian immigration. Some scholars even claim that Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) imported the first pasta-making machine on American soil, thus linking the birth of the pasta industry with the epic deeds involved in the very foundation of the United States. While it may seem presumptuous to cloak one of the fathers of the first republic of the New World, author of the Declaration of Independence, in the garb of pioneering American pasta maker, we cannot entirely rule out the possibility that the idea of promoting an autonomous production of this foodstuff in the new nation passed through the mind of this great statesman. Greatly interested in anything that could be useful to his country and prepared to pay out of his own pocket for research into new directions of economic development, he may well have thought of the production of pasta in this light. He served as ambassador in Paris from 1785 to 1789, where he could have learned much about pasta making, and we know he took advantage of a friend’s stay in Naples to ask him to enquire into the production of pasta, which he knew to be of great economic importance to the kingdom of Naples. Jefferson even asked his friend to purchase on his behalf a pasta-making machine, a concrete step that shows his intentions went beyond idle cultural curiosity. In a letter sent from Naples on February 11, 1789, this friend informed Jefferson that he had purchased a macaroni press as instructed but went on to explain that the machine was far smaller than those normally used in Neapolitan pasta manufactories and that it was made especially for foreigners.53 In other words, he had purchased a small press for home use, for which patents were issued in the nineteenth century under the name of “portable press,”54 the forerunners of the small metal presses later used in restaurants and by the chefs of well-to-do homes for making fresh pasta (fig. 22). pasta without borders 189

:

FIGURE 22

Small pasta presses for use in the home. Renata Ravetta, Industria del Pastificio, 3d ed. (M ilan : Haepli, 1929).

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Jefferson was no doubt disappointed to learn that he was the owner of an object that was largely useless to his purpose, but it is not impossible that the first pasta makers in the United States actually did begin by using this sort of press, whose small size and cheap price would allow a small-scale pasta maker to supply a line of handmade products. Beginning in the first half of the nineteenth century, however, we find evidence of a more substantial type of production that could only have been carried out with professional equipment. Among the pioneers of the pasta industry in America, we should make special mention of Antoine (or Antonio) Zerega, who founded a small pasta factory in 1848 in Brooklyn under the name of A. Zerega’s Sons before changing the name to Zerega’s Sons, Inc., now one of the leading pasta companies in the country. Antoine Zerega was fresh off the boat from Lyons, France, where there is documentation of a Zerega company as early as the 1820s, founded by an Italian immigrant of the same name, which would later become the Bertrand company. As we noted above, we strongly suspect that Antoine Zerega of Brooklyn had some family relation with the pasta maker of Lyons and may have been one and the same person, but we cannot provide any actual proof of this. Whatever the case, the story of this pioneer of the New World pasta industry is a saga of personal success, the way they like them in the United States. He set up shop in the dual role of miller and pasta maker, relying first on horse power, later on steam, and finally on electricity, as soon as his resources allowed him to purchase modern manufacturing material, all the while drying the pasta by natural means. Although he was probably not the only pasta maker of the period, he is the earliest American producer to have been identified, and his name is still identified with a well-known trademark. He is an emblematic figure of the American industry, both for his historic significance and his triumphant success story. Pasta Journal, the publication of the National Pasta Association, which is dominated by Zerega’s Sons, Inc., recently celebrated the 150th anniversary of the establishment of the little Zerega factory in Brooklyn as the founding date of the American pasta industry.55 The short biography set forth in Pasta Journal also presents Antoine Zerega as the earliest importer of durum wheat from Russia, and he is even said to have encouraged the cultivation of that wheat in the United States. Certainly, as his pasta business prospered, he, like many others, purchased imported durum wheat from the Old World, but it seems pasta without borders 191

unlikely that he or his generation of pasta makers were responsible for its introduction as a native crop: the infrequent attempts to acclimatize this species of wheat before the turn of the twentieth century were all given up as hopeless.56 There is no doubt, on the other hand, that A. Zerega’s Sons of Brooklyn expanded over the course of the nineteenth century and that it became one of the most important producers in the country, which in 1903 already possessed about a hundred small pasta factories. The profession began to feel a need to organize, which it did the following year in Pittsburgh with the founding of the National Association of Macaroni and Noodle Manufacturers. In 1919 the association changed its name to the National Macaroni Manufacturers Association, and a few years later it established its own newsletter, the Macaroni Journal, which it published for many years, before changing the name to the Pasta Journal when it became the National Pasta Association (NPA) in 1981.57 Most of the factories founded at the turn of the twentieth century later vanished from the American industrial landscape, swallowed up by competing companies that were often purchased in their turn by more powerful industrial groups. In 1925 the United States had 347 industrial-scale factories, with 105 in New York State alone, 46 in California, 28 in Illinois, and 24 in Pennsylvania.58 In 1927 the total was 353, which grew to 377 in 1929, leaving aside the artisanal producers, who numbered 173, according to Renato Rovetta.59 A process of concentration, observable in all large manufacturing countries, has reduced this number to several dozen brands that are almost all owned by a single large corporation. New World Pasta controls about ten brands, all created between 1900 and 1920. The oldest company was the Ideal Macaroni Company, founded in 1903 in a small shop in Cleveland, Ohio. The founder, Pasquale Ippolito, was an Italian immigrant who succeeded in reaching an industrial scale, establishing a reputation as a great industrialist before setting off to conquer new markets. Another immigrant founded the Ronzoni Macaroni Company, one of the largest pasta manufacturers in the United States. Emanuele Ronzoni was eleven years old when he came to America in 1881; in 1892, at the tender age of twenty-two, he and a partner set up a small pasta shop in New York. In 1895 the business was renamed Atlantic Macaroni. Emanuele Ronzoni worked as the director of manufacturing until 1915, when he decided to strike out on his own, founding the company that still bears his name. One year later, in Lebanon, Pennsylvania, the 192 pasta without borders

San Giorgio Macaroni Company was founded; it now has a distribution network that covers at least ten states in addition to Pennsylvania. Girolamo Guerrisi supervised the company as it first grew to commercial success; he had arrived in America in 1912, direct from Reggio Calabria, with some experience in the trade and, more important, sufficient capital to purchase a small factory. In 1916 the American Beauty Macaroni Company was founded by Rocco Sarli, and the same year the Porcino-Rossi Corporation (P&R) was established by Nicola Porcino and Alfredo Rossi, long-time partners who already owned a factory in Syracuse, Sicily. The New World Pasta group now also owns the Skinner Macaroni Company, founded in 1911 in Omaha, Nebraska, by Lloyd M. and Paul F. Skinner. The company enjoyed a period of rapid expansion during which it diversified its activity, making products other than pasta and finally splitting into two separate companies, one devoted to pasta and biscuits, under the leadership of Lloyd M. Skinner, while his brother took over the other company. And in this ocean of Italianstyle pasta, we should also mention the great success of the Weiss Noodle Company, founded in 1920 by Gasper and Bertha Weiss, which built a solid reputation with its egg pasta and traditional formats from German-speaking countries. Founded during the course of the first two decades of the twentieth century, these companies, among the oldest on the American continent, are living witnesses of the remarkable industrial development the pasta industry enjoyed in that period. A statistical study published in 1932 by the government foreign trade service estimated that pasta production had more than doubled during the 1920s, reaching a record volume in 1929 of 274,065 tons.60 During the same period, imports dropped by 92 percent, while domestic production exceeded demand as early as 1922. All observers seem to agree that the war years were especially favorable to the development of the local pasta industry, and we can only agree when we consider the number of businesses created between 1914 and 1920. If the American pasta industry was able to take full advantage of the favorable situation created by the halt in Italian imports, it was because it had ready access to high-quality raw materials in the abundant harvests of Americangrown durum wheat. Beginning in the second half of the nineteenth century, the Americans began to cast an acquisitive eye on the trade in durum wheat, a very desirable foodstuff that was in great demand among the countpasta without borders 193

less pasta manufacturers of Italy and France and had brought substantial revenues to Russia, then the leading supplier and grower of the highest-quality strains. The possibility of taking a portion of this profitable market led the American authorities to undertake experimentation in acclimatizing varieties of Russian durum wheat. According to a very thorough study on the acclimatization of durum wheats in the United States published in 1901, the first attempts to grow Russian durum wheat were made in the United States in 1864, with wheat of the Russian Arnautka variety, purchased in Odessa.61 This first attempt was apparently successful, because for several years thereafter the Department of Agriculture distributed seeds to farmers who were interested in cultivating this variety. For all the government’s encouragement, however, this wheat did not become an important crop. Faced with the tepid enthusiasm of American farmers, the government decided at the turn of the twentieth century to meet the challenge head on, and it launched programs to select and acclimatize some twenty varieties of durum wheat, most Russian but also including some North African varieties and other strains that were already being harvested successfully in other countries in the Americas, such as Chile, Argentina, Nicaragua, and Canada. These programs, publicly funded, were conducted jointly on experimental stations run by the Department of Agriculture and on farms in certain regions, selected according to the nature of the soil and the similarity of climate to the farmlands of southern Russia. The experiments lasted three years, and the best results were obtained in North and South Dakota. Many states participated, however, and, in the years that followed, vast spaces were turned over to the cultivation of durum wheat. In less than two decades, the United States became one of the leading wheat growers on Earth, though it soon shared that distinction with Canada. These two nations’ rise to supremacy in the production of wheat was greatly facilitated by the elimination of Russia from the world market after the crops of the lower Volga valley and the plains of the Ukraine were devastated by years of war and revolution, culminating in the total disappearance of the famous varieties of durum wheat marketed under the generic name of Taganrog. With the United States now a major producer of durum wheat, economic authorities were motivated to encourage and assist where possible the development of an American pasta industry. The First World War came at just the right time, cutting off international sources of supply, which allowed domestic production to make a spec194 pasta without borders

tacular leap forward. In the years following the war, the Americans proved quite uninterested in resuming the flow of imports, both because the local industry was quick to satisfy domestic demand and because that demand remained quite weak. For the years 1919–1923, consumption was estimated at 4.3 pounds per capita annually, an average that over the following years dropped to 4 pounds, less than in the period from 1909 to 1913. (It was not until the 1930s and 1940s that American consumption increased, reaching its height in 1945 with 7.5 pounds and then dropping by around 2 pounds during the 1950s.)62 The industry deployed great resources to increase domestic consumption, and while the results may seem modest, the volume was enormous if one considers the entire population, which had grown considerably. The genius of American industrialists lay less in raising production in record time in order to satisfy a demand that had suddenly lost its supply than in converting the greatest possible number of Americans to the relatively regular consumption of pasta. Transforming an exotic food into an everyday consumer product was every bit as difficult as mass-producing that same food, and the goal was not to be achieved until the second half of the century, when the United States showed a constantly rising rate of consumption and achieved levels comparable with most developed countries, finally joining the small group of leading pasta-consuming nations over the course of the last decade, with annual per capita consumption of just under 20 pounds in 1999.63 From packaging in cellophane to advertising, recipes, and recommendations on how to cook pasta, the producers spared no effort or expense in encouraging American consumers to enjoy pasta often, and their European counterparts, despite their older traditions, did not wait long to adopt some of the same commercial approaches. Once it had conquered its domestic market, the American pasta industry focused on international conquest. As early as 1922, the United States exported more pasta than it imported, and in the years that followed, the America pasta industry expanded rapidly, extending its commercial network to seventy-two nations, including the leading countries of the Americas and Europe, Italy among them. The trade war with Italy, which, of course, dominated the world market, was fierce, and American producers, often from Italy themselves or at least the offspring of Italian immigrants, stopped at nothing to steal market share from their powerful Old World competitors. In particular, they were willing to imitate contents and packaging, reproducing pasta without borders 195

the shapes of the wooden crates, the colors and patterns of the wrapping paper, and even the logos of Italian brands, insisting in particular on adopting Italian-sounding names for their trademarks.64 Through these methods, American pasta makers quickly ranked second among producers and exporters. The Second World War and especially the years soon after witnessed the greatest period of expansion of the American pasta industry. The United States exported no more than an average of 1,760 tons per year in the period from 1936 to 1940, but in 1948 this increased to more than 110,000 tons, almost all of which was exported to war-ravaged Europe. In the year that followed, the quantity exported dropped to 11,550 tons. The Marshall Plan was beginning to bear fruit.65

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CHAPTER SEVEN

The Time of Plenty “America generously distributes money and medicines to the underdeveloped countries of the world. But the greatest gift that the United States has given everyone was its example of producing in abundance.”1 These words, written by Vincenzo Agnesi (1893–1977), who was a philosophical master for an entire generation of Italian pasta makers, had a special resonance and depth. The second industrial revolution, which ushered the pasta industry into the era of abundance, took shape in America during the Second World War. Trapped in a prewar state of technological development, and deeply damaged by six years of combat, the European pasta industry fell badly behind its American competition, which took advantage of this period of stasis to progress to continuous production with entirely automatic production lines. As we have mentioned in chapter 5, the notion of a series of machines carrying out in a synchronized manner all the operations of production, beginning with the measuring of semolina and the addition of water and culminating in the conditioning of the finished product, had first emerged in Italy, where the Braibanti company presented it as a prototype at the Fair of Milan in 1937. But the

industrialists of the Old World never had the necessary time to pursue it, and it was finally in American factories that the system was tested and fine-tuned. As this model of intensive production quickly spread and was widely adopted, it triggered a reshaping of the industrial landscape around a handful of multinational manufacturers that wound up seizing control of the core of the pasta market. Restructuring soon became necessary in most of the former pasta-producing countries, beginning with France and West Germany, which proceeded to modernize their manufacturing equipment and infrastructure in the wake of general reconstruction, taking full advantage of the Marshall Plan. The situation developed in a far less straightforward manner in Italy, where, alongside the major corporations that enjoyed rapid expansion, there was a widespread withering of the network of smaller producers in the traditional heartland of pasta making, in the south and the islands, regions that had been bypassed by the economic boom. Poorly equipped and cut off from the market by a lack of communications, many of these small family enterprises simply went out of business, victims of the steamroller effect of their powerful competitors; the few survivors sank into an inexorable decline. Adopted as a promise of abundance at the end of a long period of poverty and food shortages, the productivist model imported from the United States at the same time as new methods of packaging and marketing, as well as new requirements for the identification and standardization of pasta products, reached its apogee in the eighties with the maximum possible concentration of the industry, which had been narrowed down to a small circle of huge manufacturing groups supplying massive quantities of standardized products with a single level of quality. But nobody was in the grip of consumeristic euphoria anymore. After slowly coming to the realization that physical well-being is produced by a system that can, if pushed to excess, create a nutritional nightmare, the Western world went on to discover the values espoused by the Slow Food movement, the pleasures of a variety of flavors and the advantages of identifiable foodstuffs. And so, even though the large-scale pasta industry had overall provided a fine level of quality, especially in Italy and France, over the next decades a new commercial niche opened for first-class products created by a semiartisanal system of manufacturing, beginning with the selection of excellent varieties of durum wheat and returning to the old-fashioned method of producing pasta with bronze die plates. 198 the time of plenty

The same period was marked by the surging return to popularity of fresh pasta. A nostalgia for the good old days and a renewed appreciation for the simple foods of the vanished world of the countryside together served to revive a taste for this family of products whose artisanal tradition sinks its roots in Italy back to the Middle Ages. But new methods of production have made possible much larger production of packaged fresh pasta, using processes well suited to supermarket distribution, where most pasta is sold. And so, at the end of the century that first saw the industrial production of pasta, this simple foodstuff, so easy to prepare in a thousand and one ways, is more than ever one of the best-loved and most widely consumed foods on Earth.

the world of pasta The Second World War badly damaged the flourishing European pasta industry. The disruption of the supply networks for raw materials, added to the destruction of many facilities and the forced immobilization of many other factories for a number of years, made most of the former pasta-exporting countries dependent on New World manufacturing, especially that of the United States. Only the Spanish and Swiss pasta industries developed during this period, following different paths. Spain increased the number of factories, which rose, as we have said, from 240 in 1929 to 349 in 1954. Remaining neutral throughout the war, Spain was trying to fill the void left by the halt of Italian imports and wished to establish self-sufficiency in the field of pasta, but the very fact that so many new factories were set up during this period shows there had been no attempt to modernize the production equipment. It would be wrong to attribute this remarkable development entirely to the war, because during the same period Portugal, also neutral, lost nearly all of the 200 pasta factories it possessed in 1929; only 16 were still active in 1954.2 This was not the result of a concentration of the industry prompted by modernization of the factories but rather the simple failure of a once prospering industry, plunging into an ineluctable decline mirroring the country at large, as Portugal slipped into a sweeping and general depauperization. Switzerland, in contrast, which also suffered no particular loss or hardship during the war, undertook, before any of its neighbors, a general restructuring of its pasta industry. Boasting 78 factories in 1929, the Confédération the time of plenty 199

Helvétique had only 66 factories in 1954, but they were equipped with modern automated production lines, built in Switzerland by the Bühler company. Switzerland at that point had the most efficient pasta industry in Europe. The former European producers were forced to wait for the end of the food shortage to reactivate their pasta industries, but since they were producing a staple food, they were often among the first to benefit from the program of reconstruction. In just a few years, many countries of the Old World recovered and even exceeded their prewar production capacity. As early as 1954, Germany had rebuilt its productive capacity, with 131 factories in West Germany and 66 in East Germany3 (after the general concentration of the industry, the reunified Germany in 1996 was the second-largest producer in Europe, with an annual volume of 342,546 tons, largely manufactured by 23 plants).4 This was likewise the case in Belgium, which, however, reduced its pool of factories from 46 to 11, as well as in Holland, Finland, and Austria. Even Yugoslavia partially recovered its prewar production capacity by restoring to operation more than half of the 60 factories that it possessed in the thirties. Of course, not all these countries undertook a modernization of their production facilities (that tended to happen in countries that received American aid), but the speed with which the pasta industry got back on its feet everywhere in Europe and elsewhere is evidence of the essential role it played in the restoration of nutritional equilibrium. The case of Greece was exemplary in this connection. Immediately after emerging from the long and ruinous years of war and civil war, the country had established an industrial pool of no fewer than 52 factories, doubling the number it had in 1929. Such increases were, however, exceedingly rare, given the trend toward concentration. During this period, the pasta industry attained its greatest expansion in the Old World, extending to the countries of the Near and Middle East, as well as Africa. Just five years after its foundation as a nation, Israel already had fifteen pasta manufacturers. Turkey, which would in time become a major producer of durum wheat, had sixteen pasta factories before the Second World War, while Egypt had no fewer than thirty-eight. Industrial production of pasta was also present in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Libya, Kenya, Angola, and in other African nations, including the former Italian colonies of Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Somalia. A pasta industry was at that time well established in Cyprus, with four producers, and more solidly still in 200 the time of plenty

Malta, where there were eight, but it was the territories of North Africa, under French control—Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia—that invested most heavily in the sector. In these countries, which since the end of the nineteenth century had been supplying France with an essential part of its durum wheat, a very considerable production of pasta developed, in part no doubt because of the war but also in order to make up for the decline of the Parisian pasta industry, at that point in a definite slump. Thus in 1954 Tunisia boasted fifty pasta factories, and its neighbors, Algeria and Morocco, had respectively forty-one and thirty-nine. Over the years that followed, French disengagement from these countries and especially the concentration of the industry in the European countries that had long been producers of pasta corresponded with a decline of activity in Africa and in many other counties that at this time were aiming at the goal of self-sufficiency.

the thwarted ambitions of french industrialists The French pasta industry rebuilt itself in successive phases following the war. In 1946 the comité professionnel entrusted with the allocation of semolina to the pasta producers, still under rationing because of shortages, counted 450 factories operated by 430 companies.5 Eight years later, when food rationing had ended and pasta consumption had increased greatly, there were only 305 companies, but their production was greater than that of the industry before the war, when France had 500 producers.6 Over the course of the decade that followed, while France evolved into a consumer society, the pool of producers dropped by more than half, and by 1966 only 112 factories remained in operation. In other words, in twenty years the French pasta industry lost 75 percent of its companies while at the same time increasing its production to a remarkable degree. The drop corresponded to the general phenomenon of concentration benefiting the largest companies, the five leading groups alone accounting for 75 percent of French production.7 That was not sufficient, however, to give the sector the structural solidity to withstand the disruptions induced by rapid urbanization and especially the sudden penetration into the French commercial landscape of mass distribution, with its networks of supermarkets, which grows from year to year. The acquisition of smaller producers the time of plenty 201

by the larger manufacturing groups was the first response to the new economic situation, but the decisive step in the construction of a powerful industrial concentration came with the appearance on the scene of such major groups as BSN, later renamed Danone, which purchased Panzani in 1973 and then gained a solid foothold in Italy in the eighties with the acquisition of Agnesi, one of the crown jewels of the Italian pasta industry. During the same period, the establishment of the group Rivoire and Carret, Lustucru (RCL) served as a counterweight to the creation of this industrial colossus. The two groups eventually extended their control upstream in the manufacturing process, to the semolina industry, thus acquiring greater control over the processing of their raw materials. Semolina milling, a traditional activity in Marseilles, where it first thrived on the Russian durum wheat of Taganrog and later on Algerian durum wheat, underwent in the fifties and sixties the same process of concentration as the pasta industry, but because it had never recovered the vigor and dynamism of the prewar years, the milling companies were not equipped to resist the appetite of the giant pasta producers. The RCL group took over two semolina mills that controlled 35 percent of production, while three other major producers were merged with BSN-Danone, which now controlled 52 percent of the semolina milling capacity. The smallest of the seven French semolina mills, accounting nonetheless for 5 percent of total production, is controlled by the pasta manufacturer Chiron Moulins de Savoie; thus 92 percent of the semolina milling industry is integrated with the pasta industry. The disengagement of Danone from the sector when it sold its companies to the Paribas group did nothing significant to modify the industrial landscape for pasta products. It is now composed of thirteen companies concentrated in four areas: southern Mediterranean France, principally Marseilles; the Paris region; Alsace; and Savoy. These companies produce an annual total of 319,000 tons of dry pasta, of which 13 percent is for export, and supply about two-thirds of the national demand, which amounts to 418,000 tons. The remaining third comes from imported pasta, mostly from Italy. With annual capacity of 110,000 to 220,000 tons, the two largest manufacturers— Panzani (now owned by Paribas) and RCL—account for 85 percent of the pasta produced in France and control roughly half the French pasta market. Far in the rear come four regional manufacturers, with a production capacity of about 11,000 to 22,000 tons: the Alsatian pro202 the time of plenty

ducers Valfleuri and Heimburger and the Savoy companies Chiron and Alpina-Richard.8 The great and growing success of these small companies with strong regional identities is noteworthy: they have recently swept into the national market, challenging the lion’s share that the larger companies had long enjoyed undisturbed. But taken as a whole the French pasta industry has been on the defensive for several years. While it set out to conquer the commercial strongholds of the Italian industry in the seventies, it has been forced to yield ground to its powerful rival from the other side of the Alps, a rival that is feeling particularly hungry as it takes advantage of the triumphant popularity of Italian food, never as fashionable as today.

the italian reconquest In Italy the process of rebuilding the industrial landscape took longer to get started, and in the end it damaged countless small pasta makers and entailed severe consequences for the local economies of certain regions of the south and the islands, where the centuries-old pasta industry was sharply reduced. At the end of the war, Italy went through a long-term food shortage, and it focused first on reactivating its vast and dense network of pasta factories. Once food rationing ended, this effort was remarkably successful. The statistics for 1954, provided by the investigation of the High Commissioner for Foods, are enlightening. That year, 1,333 pasta factories were found to be operating in Italy, 80 percent of the prewar industrial potential, estimated at about 1,600 manufacturers. According to the same investigation, only 268 factories had failed to resume production following the war. What is particularly striking about this rapid recovery was the spectacular increase of output, which rose from 660,000 tons in 1937 to 1,511,950 tons in 1954. As early as 1949–1950 Italy regained its ranking as the largest pasta producer on earth and in just five years managed to double production with a sharply smaller industrial infrastructure that had not been modernized since before the war.9 In 1971 Italy had just 398 pasta manufacturers, a number that would drop to 153 in 1996. Thus in about forty years the Italian pasta industry lost roughly 90 percent of its companies. Sicily, the historic birthplace of the industry, paid the heaviest cost in the general industrial restructuring: its local industry dropped from 332 factories in the time of plenty 203

1954 to 20 in 1996. But all pasta-producing regions were affected. Of the 109 pasta producers operating in Lombardy at the end of the war, there were only 15 left. Over the course of the same period, the number of pasta producers dropped from 112 to 11 in Tuscany; from 115 to 13 in Abruzzo; from 86 to 13 in Emilia; from 115 to 22 in Campania; and in Sardinia none of the 18 factories survived.10 On that island nowadays, only small pasta makers survive, who have found an opportunity for a new prosperity in the thriving markets for organic products and artisanal production. The drop in the number of producers over the course of the second half of the twentieth century should be compared with the volume of production, which once again increased by more than 100 percent, reaching in 1998 a level of 3,168,179 tons according to the most recent statistical studies.11 This process of concentration, which continues to this day, proved to be all the more fatal for small manufacturers in that it took place in a political environment favoring the unchecked creation of large and powerful groups. The southern and island regions of Italy, which had the greatest presence of small family companies, unlikely to be able to undertake the massive investment required to modernize their production equipment, have been the chief victims of the uncontrolled restructuring of the pasta industry, not least because they were virtually forgotten in the postwar economic reconstruction of Italy. After a happy period of recovery, culminating in a dizzying climb in consumption, the Italian pasta industry began to show signs of weakness. This became a full-fledged crisis of overproduction in the sixties, when major corporations entered a phase of expansion and progressively took over the most important sections of the domestic market. At the behest of Senator Angelo Abenante, who was also mayor of Torre Annunziata and was especially concerned by the crisis sweeping the industry, in 1968 the Italian Senate drafted a bill for a law to be called Ristrutturazione e Riorganizzazione dell’Industria Molitoria e della Pastificazione (literally, “Restructuring and Reorganization of the Milling and Pasta Industry”).12 Because Italy, especially the south and the islands, had fallen considerably behind in the modernization of the manufacturing sector of this industry, the bill proposed directing the administration to establish a public agency to guide the recovery of a newly integrated and modernized industry capable of competing on an equal footing with its foreign rivals in the international marketplace, with special focus on the regions hit hardest by the crisis. We shall never know whether a state-funded pro204 the time of plenty

gram of assistance would have been an effective way to promote the modernization of the industry, but it might at least have helped to limit the damage in the centers of production in the south. Because of grim political considerations, however, the proposed law was killed, and the restructuring instead proceeded under the harsh natural law of the strongest. After muddling through this first crisis, or perhaps we should say after the initial crisis subsided with the bankruptcy of a great number of smaller pasta makers, the Italian pasta industry felt the full and disastrous impact of the price freeze for basic products ordered by the Italian government in the wake of the oil shock of 1973. To make things even worse, the following year the price of durum wheat rose 56 percent on the international market, where the Italian pasta industry purchased most of its supply, especially the higherquality varieties produced in the United States and Canada. (Having failed to implement an adequate agricultural policy regarding the planting and selection of grain, Italy raised only mediocre varieties of wheat and was forced to rely on American imports.) The double effect of price increases for raw materials and price freezes for finished products would have paralyzed the Italian pasta industry if the government had not intervened by partially subsidizing purchases of durum wheat, offering it to producers at a price a little lower than the going rate.13 Pressure on smaller producers was particularly intense because not only were the large groups seizing a larger and larger market share but Italian household consumption was growing slowly, if at all. Pasta consumption had grown sharply since 1936, when annual per capita consumption amounted to only 14 kilograms (30.8 pounds) of dry pasta; by 1954 it had increased to 28 kilograms (61.6 pounds) per capita, a record that was rarely beaten thereafter.14 The bulk of the increase took place after 1949, the year that marked Italy’s definitive emergence from the period of food shortages. This increase, the most remarkable of the era, reflects both the rapid growth in the material well-being of the population at large and the conversion to regular consumption of pasta among the inhabitants of regions that until then had been reluctant converts to the national dish (Lombardy, Venetia, etc.).15 This increase in consumption explains the rapid expansion in production recorded between 1949 and 1954, growth that was still barely enough to satisfy domestic demand. Before the war, only a tiny sliver the time of plenty 205

of total national production was slotted for export, no more than 2.7 percent in 1936. But even this unimpressive figure dropped in 1954, to 0.4 percent, a truly insignificant volume.16 And despite several fine achievements by certain leading brands, for many years the Italian pasta industry proved incapable of taking its place in the international marketplace. As late as 1968, the Italian senators who were trying to pass a law calling for the restructuring of the white industry emphasized the weakness of Italian exports and the need to support them. The situation improved briefly in the beginning of the eighties, when the media frenzy surrounding the Mediterranean diet helped to revive the fortunes of this simple foodstuff. The reconquest of the international market by the Italian pasta industry was first of all the work of major brands, which were especially effective in establishing themselves because the lire was in practically constant retreat on the international exchange. But a growing number of Italian brands, some of them quite small in size, soon leapt in to help meet the new demand for pasta created by the shift in tastes, most of them targeting the high end of the market, offering top-quality products in very attractive and well-designed packaging. Some major brands had already established themselves in other countries. This was especially true of Buitoni, one of the first companies to open factories outside Italy. It was under the leadership of Giovanni Buitoni—heir to the branch of the Perugia-based family that owned Perugina, of which he became director at the tender age of twenty—that the Buitoni company attained its international dimension. In 1934 Buitoni built a very efficient pasta factory in the Paris area and began to conquer a small share of the French pasta market. After the war, the company pursued the same policy of expansion under the direction of Bruno Buitoni, Giovanni’s nephew. Other Buitoni subsidiaries were set up outside Italy, especially in Spain, and the company, based in Sansepolcro, established itself as the largest Italian pasta exporter. But closely followed and then overtaken by its biggest rival, Barilla, Buitoni in the end met with difficulties, in part caused by disagreements in the board room, and it wound up being taken over, first by the industrialist Carlo De Benedetti (1984) and then merging in 1988 with the huge Nestlé group.17 The Agnesi company, the oldest manufacturer of dried pasta still in business and the last survivor of the once-flourishing Ligurian pasta industry, followed a radically different path. It intentionally remained on the sidelines during the frenetic race for colossal dimensions, and 206 the time of plenty

yet it still enjoyed a half century of prosperity under the leadership of Vincenzo Agnesi, an engineer by profession who was recognized throughout the industry as a great expert on pasta. Enjoying a reputation for superior quality in Italy, Agnesi pasta first became familiar internationally in the restricted network of luxury shops that sold Italian products, while in supermarkets it was found on the shelves stocking luxury and exotic products. Following the death of Vincenzo Agnesi, the heirs sold the Imperia-based company, which had always aroused the appetites of the larger pasta manufacturers, to the French group BSN-Danone, which in turn sold it to the financial group Paribas. The new ownership seems to have adhered to the same commercial policy, occupying the premium pasta market niche.18 De Cecco as well has always produced for the high end of the market. For many years, this was a midsized company, distributing primarily in Italy, but in recent years it has penetrated the markets of many European, American, and Asian countries, attaining second place in the rankings of Italian producers in a flurry of expansion. But it was the irresistible rise of Barilla that best symbolized the return to power of the Italian pasta industry on the international marketplace. Still trailing Buitoni in the fifties, the company was to begin its expansion under the leadership of Pietro Barilla, son of Riccardo Barilla, who took over the company in 1947, supported by his brother Giovanni. At the time, the family-owned company produced about 110 tons a day, which already placed it in the upper rankings of Italian producers. But young Pietro had greater ambitions, and he looked with interest at what was happening on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, in the most powerful country on Earth. After numerous factfinding trips to the United States, he modified the company’s policy of development and began to make massive investments, both in production equipment and in the presentation and promotion of the products.19 In the course of a few years, Barilla rose to join the small group of leading pasta manufacturers and then solidly took first rank in world production, leaving all its competitors far behind as it continued to grow. Barilla’s share of the Italian market rose from 6 percent in 1960 to 15 percent in 1970, a period of rapid expansion during which the manufacturing complex of Pedrignano was built a few miles north of Parma. With its nine continuous production lines, that complex is still the largest on earth.20 The company was sold in 1971 to the American company W. R. Grace and was then bought back by Pietro Barilla himself in 1979, whereupon he resumed his expansion, the time of plenty 207

attaining Italian market share of 35 percent. In the meanwhile, in 1973, Barilla purchased Voiello, a historic pasta producer from Torre Annunziata, one of the most renowned companies in Italy. The following year, it took control of Mulino Basile of Altamura, near Bari, considered at the time the most important miller in Italy, thus ensuring control of a high-performance milling facility in order to guarantee supplies of the raw material his factories required.21 Next came the purchase in 1983 of Pastifici Meridionali of Foggia, which allowed the Parma-based colossus, already owner of Voiello, to establish itself solidly on the southern Italian market. When Pietro Barilla died in 1993, he left behind an empire of thirty factories, employing a total of eight thousand workers. Following in his footsteps were his three sons, Guido, Luca, and Paolo, who are continuing the same policy of planetary expansion, now that the Italian market is close to saturation.

american lessons Pietro Barilla was hardly the only industrialist to make exploratory visits to the United States. The entire business leadership of Europe viewed the American economic model with a certain fascination, and pasta producers, or at least those who had ambitions to expand beyond their strictly local markets, tried, like all other European businessmen, to adapt or import the successful methods developed by their American counterparts. American producers between the two world wars had proven their skill at marketing and promotion, as well as their talent for innovation. The European producers borrowed from this vast arsenal of innovative tactics in the second half of the century, and they have become so engrained in commercial practice that nowadays they are taken for granted. Packaging was transformed. Packaging in small quantities was not the norm in Europe, and Germany, where it first took root, was alone in this practice at the turn of the twentieth century. In Italy local trade, organized according to the classic network of manufacturer/ wholesaler/retailer, took no special care with presentation. The shipment of long-cut and large short-cut pasta was generally done in wooden crates weighing about 50 kilograms (110 pounds) each. Some southern Italian producers even shipped their lower-quality pasta in jute gunnysacks, which grocers then set out in their shops, doling out 208 the time of plenty

loose pasta as required. Other producers used baskets holding between 30 and 50 kilograms (66 and 110 pounds) of pasta apiece. These were used especially for cut pasta, but all the formats, long or short, were loaded into containers loose, with no other protection than a sheet of light-blue paper covering the inner walls of the basket or crate. Only the producers in eastern Sicily bothered to wrap their pasta in packets of about 5 kilograms (11 pounds). Fine pasta was more fragile, and therefore greater care was taken with it. Packed in smaller weights, ranging from 250 grams (8.93 ounces) to 5 kilograms (11 pounds), they were wrapped in cloth bags or shiny paper. Special pasta—pasta with gluten or medicinal pasta—also escaped the fate of common pasta and was sold in packets weighing 250 grams (8.93 ounces).22 This type of packaging, which exposed the pasta to dust and insects, was popular neither with American consumers nor with American health authorities, who were much more demanding in matters of hygiene than their European counterparts, especially those in France and Italy. Beginning in the last decades of the nineteenth century, importers in the United States, followed by those in Australia and Germany, demanded smaller packages weighing no more than a pound. “The United States will not accept pasta products unless they are contained in packets of 453 grams [just under 16 ounces],” wrote the chairman of the jury for the Universal Exposition of Paris in 1878.23 Later, it became customary to send packages of only a half pound, roughly 225 grams and, less often, packages of a quarter pound, or 125 grams. These packages were wrapped in a colored paper on which were written in English indications on the type of pasta, the format, and cooking instructions.24 This demand for information on the part of the consumer was light-years away from the concerns of Italian producers, who complied because they had to if they wished to export but continued with business as usual in their domestic markets. The attitude of the American pasta industry was quite different, and far from refusing to respond to a growing demand for improved hygiene, the Americans took advantage of it to make packaging more attractive to the purchaser. Beginning in the 1920s, American pasta manufacturers introduced transparent cellophane packaging. The pasta was now completely visible but still safe from external contamination. In this new packaging, pasta appeared in its most attractive garb. With their clean, modern style, the individual packets were ideal for attracting American consumers but also worked with the more the time of plenty 209

well-to-do consumers of the Old World.25 In the face of this success, the more innovative and dynamic European manufacturers did not hesitate to follow in the footsteps of their competitors from across the Atlantic, adopting packaging in small quantities, at least for their high-end products. This innovation blazed the path for the standardization of formats and heralded the era of packaging. Packaging’s power to seduce had completely eluded the notice of European industrialists until the second half of the century. And even then it long remained the exclusive territory of the major manufacturers, which all took their cue from the New World model. One of the great lessons that Pietro Barilla learned in his travels in the United States was the importance of packaging, but the same thing might well be said of Buitoni or even of the French company Panzani, which also adopted the idea of transparent packaging, introduced in America more than twenty years before. The creation of perceived value for pasta products was a central goal of American pasta makers, who did more than simply make pasta attractive in terms of presentation, in the 1920s initiating a campaign of publicity and information designed to add value to the image of pasta as a food. American food culture at the time was chiefly focused on the abundant consumption of meat, and pasta was an alien foodstuff to most Americans, who scorned it as part of the frugal if not poverty-stricken diet of Italian communities. Dieticians and nutritionists were convinced that Italian immigrants ate pasta and vegetables not by choice or tradition but because they were too poor to afford meat. “The Italians eat a balanced diet as soon as they are able to afford it,” wrote a fervent supporter of nutritional science in 1922. She clearly wished to come to the aid of these people who were, admittedly, poor but “by tradition enthusiastic cooks. And it is not difficult for a physician that knows their nutritional habits to help them to adapt them to their new country and to their needs in the new situation in which they find themselves.”26 In such a context, giving pasta a positive image proved to be a challenging but indispensable task, and American pasta producers worked at it with imagination and determination. The launch of Macaroni Journal by the manufacturers’ association formed part of the this promotional policy. The magazine had a mission of making pasta more familiar to American families. In it the average consumer could find all sorts of information about pasta and its nature, its nutritional 210 the time of plenty

properties, its flavor, instructions on how to cook it and how to prepare and present pasta dishes, as well as anecdotes about pasta, its origins, and its saga through the ages. (The fable of Marco Polo’s discovery of spaghetti in China originated in Macaroni Journal.) In this long-term undertaking, which lasted practically the entire century, the pasta industry at first enjoyed the active support of government officials in charge of American agricultural policy, who were working to promote the cultivation of durum wheat. Beginning at the turn of the century, scientists and agronomists connected to the government promoted the nutritional value of this inexpensive foodstuff, finding a warm welcome in the pages of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Bulletin. In an issue published in 1905, macaroni was presented as an easy-to-digest and highly nutritious food that was inexpensive as well, similar in many ways to bread.27 But the biggest boost came from scientists, who provided solid evidence of the salutary effects of the Italian diet. The case of the Italian community of Roseto, a small town in Pennsylvania, caused some discussion in the seventies and enjoyed an interesting epilogue twenty years later. The village was founded in 1882 by Italian immigrants, all from the same small village in southern Italy, Roseto Valfortone, located in the province of Foggia on the border with Campania. Over the course of the twentieth century, this village in Pennsylvania enjoyed considerable economic prosperity, but its inhabitants remained faithful to their roots and ate the same foods prepared in the same ways their ancestors had favored in Apulia. In the sixties, a physician in Roseto noticed that heart disease was quite rare among the town’s inhabitants, much less common than it was in neighboring towns, also inhabited by immigrant communities, especially from Germany and Wales. The doctor reported his observations to two researchers, Dr. Stewart Wolf and Dr. John G. Bruhn, and they did an in-depth study. They first established that Roseto had experienced between 1955 and 1961 only one-third as many deaths stemming from heart disease as had surrounding towns. In the period from 1965 to 1974, however, their studies showed that the coronary death rate in Roseto had risen to the same level as elsewhere. After numerous blind alleys and false starts, they found the key to the mystery in diet. While the inhabitants of Roseto had continued until the beginning of the sixties to eat more or less as their ancestors had back in Apulia, with cereals, mainly pasta, cooked with olive oil and accompanied with wine forming the bulk of their diet, they had then traded their eating habits for the time of plenty 211

the classic American style, abandoning the use of olive oil and giving up wine entirely.28 The discoveries of these researchers reverberated well outside of the scientific community, and pasta manufacturers took advantage of the new findings to sing the praises of their products. Dieticians soon discovered the nutritional values of pasta and developed special regimens for high-performance athletes, which did even more to bolster the prestige of this food. Trade press and mass media began preaching the benefits of the Mediterranean diet, and the clamor made its way across the Atlantic Ocean, finally reaching those who had been following it for centuries without thinking about it. The final result of this long chain reaction was a spectacular increase in pasta consumption and a correspondingly impressive increase in sales and profits for the American pasta industry. It had positive effects for pasta makers in the Old World as well, especially Italian producers, who soon found ways to exploit this scientific consecration from across the ocean.

victories and defeats in the regulation of raw materials For pasta to be made as valuable a product as possible, a clear definition of its properties, categories, and appellations was needed, and here once again it was the Americans who led the way. The Federal Food and Drug Act (1906) was the first law to regulate the area of the production and sale of pasta products. The chapter devoted to pasta defined the raw materials to be used for its production, specified the forms of the finished product, and regulated trade. In 1931 a pamphlet was issued that compiled all the definitions and standards governing the manufacture and branding of macaroni products. Aside from the obvious intention of preventing fraud and abuse, the American government was also intent on establishing clear rules and setting the bounds of the field of production. The law gave pasta an identification card so that everyone, manufacturers and consumers alike, would know exactly what was involved.29 Over the course of the thirties, the leading pasta-producing nations of Europe enacted similar regulatory measures. Italy was the first country to follow the American example. A law governing the production and sale of pasta was passed in 1933, designed to establish its nature as a mass-distribution product. Until then, it had been subject 212 the time of plenty

only to the regulations on public hygiene and health defined within the Italian law of December 22, 1888, which governed only the sanitary conditions of cereal and flour production.30 The law of 1933 was meant to improve the image of Italian pasta as a brand, particularly because it was losing ground on the international market, especially to American pasta. As we have noted, the restrictive policy imposed by Italy’s Fascist government on durum wheat imports had forced Italian producers to make use of mixtures of durum wheat semolina and soft wheat flour. This battle of wheat, waged to the sound of a beating propaganda drum by the Fascist regime, did little or nothing to protect the country from an endemic shortage of cereal products, and, despite the larger amounts of land planted with durum wheat in Apulia, the Italian pasta industry constantly labored under a brutal shortage of high-quality raw materials. The 1933 law came at just the right time to frame a set of professional standards in this context of supply problems, so that a minimum level of quality could be assured, accepted by everyone in the profession, and presented on the international marketplace. In fact, the regulations defined two types of pasta products: one, higher in quality and less common, made exclusively with durum wheat semolina, could be marketed under the label “pasta made with pure semolina,” while the other variety, made with a blend of durum wheat semolina and soft wheat flour, was called “ordinary pasta.” The law also regulated the sale of special pasta, which could include a certain proportion of gluten, malt, eggs, green vegetables, tomatoes, or meat, and defined the types of semolina and flour that could be used in production, the conditions of storage and preservation, and so on. The next year it was Germany’s and France’s turn to pass laws about pasta products. By a decree dated November 12, 1934, the German government categorized pasta products (Teigwaren) according to three chief criteria: (1) whether eggs were used; (2) the type of wheat used; and (3) the format. Five types of pasta products were thus categorized: egg pasta (Eier-Teigwaren); pasta without eggs (Eifreie-Teigwaren); semolina pasta (Griess-Teigwaren); pasta made with durum wheat semolina (Hartgriess-Teigwaren); and flour pasta (Mehl-Teigwaren), which could be made with soft wheat flour or with a blend of flour and semolina. These different types of pasta were marketed in multiple formats, such as Nudeln (which were in turn split up into Bandnudeln, Schnittnudeln, and Fadennudeln), Spätzle, Makkaroni or Röhrennudeln, and Spaghetti. The law also defined seven types of the time of plenty 213

special dietetic pastas. Clearly, the German legislature, like its American counterpart, was more interested in regulating the commercial supply of a range of products by defining their chief characteristics than in imposing particular standards of quality.31 The French law passed in the same year, 1934, was far stricter, requiring the use of durum wheat semolina in the production of all dried pasta products. With this decree, at the time the only law on Earth to make this provision, the French government demonstrated its long-term vision; it was not until well after the Second World War that a few other countries passed similar laws. (It is true that France, unlike Italy, enjoyed the luxury of abundant sources of high-quality durum wheat from its North African colonies.) The law was updated in 1957 to define the different qualities of semolinas.32 Although Italy was one of the countries that most needed such legislation, it did not adopt the tough French stance until some thirty years later; in the meanwhile, there were numerous revisions of its first regulations in the sector, all tending to reinforce them. An amendment in 1936 first defined three categories of semolina, according to granulometric parameters. It also broke pasta into four categories: two categories of superior quality, designated as “extra 00 semolina pasta” and “first-quality semolina pasta,” and two categories of inferior quality, called “ordinary pasta” and “blended pasta.”33 After Liberation the regulations on pasta were reestablished under the jurisdiction of the High Commission on Nutrition and revised once again in the 1950s, before becoming the subject of a new law in 1967, inspired by the French law, requiring the production of dried pasta products to use only durum wheat semolina.34 This famous law, commonly known as the Law on the Purity of Dried Industrial Pasta, is still in force in Italy. The last act of regulation of the production and marketing of pasta products belongs to the history of the European Community. Within the European Community, there are radically different bodies of regulations, since not all the member nations have anything like the strict legislation found in France, Italy, and Greece. As with chocolate, the authorities of the European Community made the most permissive choice and sacrificed the interests of consumers—who have yet to find their voice—in favor of the special interests of the industrial and financial lobbies, who have long kept their pawns in key decisionmaking positions. And so, rather than extending the application of Italian or French regulations to all the member nations in order to 214 the time of plenty

ensure a standard level of quality throughout the European Community, the European Commission, obeyed and supported by the European Parliament, issued a directive that required Italy, France, and Greece to open their markets to pasta that did not comply with their national legislation. The decision made in Brussels leads, in its basic logic, to the abrogation of the national laws, but, in the face of consumer protests, the governments have not yet capitulated. This question has prompted a particularly lively debate in Italy, and it is easy to understand why. With an annual per capita consumption of about 28 kilograms (61.6 pounds), compared with an average consumption of a fourth or a fifth of this in neighboring countries, the problem of the quality of pasta is far more crucial in the peninsula than elsewhere. Pasta, especially dried pasta, is the staple foodstuff of the Italians, and it truly is the foundation of their culinary culture, which transcends the decidedly entrenched regionalisms of the peninsula. Thanks to the wide-ranging debate, a broad consensus developed in favor of preserving the national regulation, and, confronted with active popular mobilization and heavy media coverage, the Italian authorities decided that there was no choice but to defend this position, which was likewise supported by the French and the Greeks. After extensive discussions, debates, and even appeals before the European Court of Justice, a compromise solution has been worked out, though it is unlikely to last. Italy, France, and Greece will maintain their national legislation and are consequently obliged to produce dry pasta in compliance with their domestic regulations, both for the internal and the international markets. At the same time, however, these countries must allow free entry to all products from other countries in the European Union and specifically to pasta made with raw materials other than durum wheat semolina, if that pasta respects the regulations in force in the exporting country. Particularly unfair in its very principle, the compromise solution currently in effect nonetheless failed to revolutionize the structure of the dry pasta market. First of all, the great majority of producers, whether or not they are governed by the law on raw materials, already use only durum wheat semolina. Second, the international pasta market is dominated by Italian producers who enjoy a favorable prejudice when it comes to pasta, thanks to the Italian culinary tradition. Finally, foreign pasta, whether or not it is made with pure durum wheat semolina, is no more present on the Italian market than it used to be, and the Italian market, of course, is the most important market the time of plenty 215

in Europe, if not in the world. The decision to maintain regulation has actually had a favorable effect on the Italian pasta industry because it helped preserve the bond of confidence that links consumers to Italian companies, which in their eyes are the only producers who use pure durum wheat semolina exclusively. In any case, the current situation is unstable and is unlikely to last. It is unclear by what principle one group should be forbidden to do what another group is allowed to do. For that matter, it seems a safe bet that the European Commission, in its quest to eliminate all perceived obstacles to free trade, will return to this area of regulation and impose communitywide norms on all member countries. This may not translate into a general alteration in the quality of pasta, but the risk of a slow drift toward mass production including a greater or lesser proportion of flour is not out of the question. There is no reason to think that Italian, French, or Greek industrialists are any less concerned with quality than their competitors. But they might find it advantageous to expand their line of production downward, including pasta made with blends, if only to compete on the markets of countries that have never experienced this sort of regulation. One source of reassurance is the thought that major manufacturers will not lightly run the risk of tarnishing the image of their brands and that, if they do succumb to the temptation to lower the quality of their products, they will take care to market the lower-end pasta under different trademarks. But there is no guarantee to the consumer, especially the French or Italian consumer, that he or she will find the same quality of pure durum wheat semolina pasta that the law requires in the packaging that appears so familiar. Consumers will have to change their habits, and if they once purchased their favorite brand without thinking, they will now have to learn to read the label closely.

the return to favor of artisans For the moment, however, there is no serious threat to the quality of pasta. Quite the contrary. Not only does the international marketplace seem to offer a ringing endorsement of durum wheat—which redounds primarily to the benefit of Italian brands of pasta—but a growing circle of pasta lovers is turning to high-quality limited-production specialties, pastas made from special varieties of durum wheat and/or organically grown crops and produced according to methods 216 the time of plenty

that can be described to one degree or another as artisanal. This sector of the market has enjoyed stunning growth over the course of the 1990s. Just when everyone thought there was room for nothing but large-scale industrial production, which alone could provide returns on the massive investments required for new production lines, there developed and prospered close to a dozen small producers working on an artisanal scale, who have succeeded in elevating this staple food to the status of luxury product. The success of these new producers in a sector that is crowded and periodically subject to crises of overproduction is no accident, and without minimizing the role that brilliant marketing has played in the development of these particularly daring small entrepreneurs, we should place them in the context of a larger disenchantment with the model of large-scale production and efficiencies of scale. In the general atmosphere of uncertainty and questioning at the beginning of this new millennium, swept by fears of ecological disaster and encroaching globalization, with their secondary effects on the food we eat, there has been a reaction against the dumbing-down of tastes and the standardization of the contents of our diets. The popularity in France of José Bové (a farmer arrested for damaging a McDonald’s in France) and the success of the Slow Food movement, a national phenomenon in Italy and, in the last few years, worldwide, are bellwethers of a growing collective awareness that has taken various forms in the developed world, which we can view as a very healthy and reasonable reaction to potentially impending catastrophes. The alarm was sounded with the discovery that foie gras from southwestern France had been “enriched” with duck meat. There have been other minor but fraudulent adulterations of high-cost culinary products as well. We thought that we had scraped the bottom of the barrel with the scandals of ethanol-spiked wines from Italy and contaminated oils from Spain, but these were just a few samples of the catastrophes to come, in the form of mad cow disease and dioxin-laced chicken. And that is not even to mention the “exciting” potential of biogenetics and the array of genetically altered foods that will be coming onto the market in the relatively near future. All this has undermined the confidence of consumers and sharpened their vigilance. Questions about food safety, conveyed and amplified by the mass media, have resulted in a growing demand for natural—that is, organic—and in any case high-quality products. This new attitude, critical of industrial methods of production, has affected the pasta industry, even though it has never been particularly afflicted the time of plenty 217

by cases of denatured or, worse, contaminated or adulterated food products. Compared with other sectors, the pasta industry has, on the whole, maintained an exceedingly respectable level of quality, and while there may have been (and probably still are) some good producers and others who are less good, there have never been any, to our knowledge, that engaged in criminal modifications. But the general interest in healthy nutrition has coincided here with a new culinary sensibility, and it is all to the credit of a few small pasta makers that they have responded to this desire for excellence. Artisanal pasta makers, largely based in Italy, can be divided into two major categories: those who have focused on the market for organic foods and those who have merely adopted selections of special varieties of durum wheat. Aside from their commitment to quality and respect for the product, what is most striking about the new artisanal producers is a determination to revive and perpetuate an Italian tradition that, in their view, has been substantially undermined by the basic logic of mass production. They all insist on what they call artisanal production, a relatively simple way of summarizing their rejection of a system ruled by the laws of productivity and guided by the allencompassing demand for the reduction of costs. Exactly what does “artisanal production” mean? First of all, the quantity of pasta produced is much smaller than that made in an industrial-scale factory: artisanal pasta makers produce thousands of pounds a day while industrial manufacturers often produce hundreds of thousands. The production cycle involves the same mechanized operations as are found in industrial production, with a few rare exceptions, when it is necessary to place the finished pasta manually in the drying chambers. The classic succession of processes, in which mixing the raw materials with water is followed by blending, kneading, extrusion (or pressing), and cooling, is still respected, whatever the scale of the producer and whatever the type of equipment. But where industrial manufacturers made use of die plates covered with Teflon, the artisanal producer makes use of bronze die plates, which have the particular result of creating a rough and porous surface, much better at holding sauce. Artisanal pasta also, and perhaps most importantly, stands out because it is dried at low temperatures (less than 45 degrees Celsius, or 110 degrees Fahrenheit), which naturally lengthens the duration of this essential operation. This is a slow and gentle method that is particularly well suited to preserving the taste and aroma of the pasta.

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The Italian press trumpeted the advent of these new producers in the early nineties. From major dailies to the gastronomic press, and in magazines of all sorts, Italian journalists devoted considerable space to the phenomenon, each struggling to find a rare pearl in the farthestflung regions of the Italian boot, where the contamination of modern society had not yet left scars of any great depth. There were countless articles with headlines like “Italy, Land of the Masters of Pasta,” “The Lords of the Bronze Die Plate,” or even “The Kings of Low Temperature,” as well as numerous culinary guided tours of the country, with detailed lists of the chief attractions of the artisanal tradition, whether preserved or rediscovered. In Castagnero, near Vicenza, there is the special production of L’Origine, a small-scale pasta maker with a particularly fertile imagination, that offers more than twenty different formats of all sorts of pasta. These are simple and aromatic specialties, all made with Sicilian durum wheat semolina, flavored in certain formats with special scents such as nettle, sage, and artichoke. In Brescia, an obligatory stop is the Giovanni Ongaro company, which offers a handsome array of scented egg pasta in traditional formats. The district around Pisa is another mandatory area. The Pastificio Martelli in Lari, which exports more than 40 percent of its limited production, is regularly covered by the specialty press. In the lower Arno valley, a few miles west of Empoli, fans of artisanal pasta must make a stop in San Romano, where the Morelli family, owners of L’Antico Pastificio Morelli, continue to produce pasta with the confidence—indeed, the pride—of an aristocratic dynasty: they have been in this business since 1860, for five generations. Definitely a good place for artisanal production, the Pisa area counts among its maestri pastai Roberto Caponi, a name that is a synonym for excellence in the food-specialty press. And there is never a report on this sector of the industry that fails to include a pilgrimage to the little Caponi workshop in Pontedera, where some extremely rare egg pasta specialties are produced (at a rate of 170 kilograms, or 375 pounds, of pasta a day); their fame reaches as far as Australia. Any tour south along the Italian boot also should not fail to include a detour to Pianella, in the province of Pescara, to sample the vast array of pasta produced by Rustichella d’Abruzzo, specializing in pasta made from selected durum wheats and spelt, extruded through bronze die plates, and dried at low temperatures. Past the bread basket of Italian durum wheat and on to Maglie, a small village in the province of Lecce, one finds Benedetto

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Cavaglieri, who, in the finest tradition of the artisanal producers of Apulia, offers a wide variety of classical formats of durum wheat semolina pasta, dried at low temperatures.35 The selection of choice durum wheats is another trump card for small manufacturers. They are very happy to play the card of Italian authenticity, an effective way of distinguishing themselves from the huge manufacturers that import from the United States and Canada a major portion of their raw materials. Some of the small producers have tried to give their products an even stronger regional identity. The small producer Rustichella d’Abruzzo has reaped the benefits of its attendance at gastronomic fairs and food shows. This company, founded in 1936 by Pietro Peducci, never abandoned the vision of its founder, who insisted on striving for excellence. When Gianluigi Peducci took over from his father, he accepted the dedication to quality and was equally obsessed with the selection of raw materials and the shaping of the pasta, a policy that has gained the firm’s products a loyal clientele among the restaurateurs and specialty pasta shops that have sprung up all over the planet. In this period of market globalization and product standardization, a strong local identity was an essential key in the distribution of Rustichella d’Abruzzo’s specialties, whose growing reputation has helped the entire surrounding region. Some of these small producers take the idea of local identity so far that they identify the variety of durum wheat and the year of the harvest used to make the pasta, as if it were a great wine. The practice of communicating the vintage of durum wheat and identifying the year of the harvest was first launched by Carlo and Carla Latini, owners of the Azienda Agricola Latini. Farmers of durum wheat in Osimo, in the province of Ancona in the Marche region, they began artisanal production of pasta in 1990, in cooperation with the owners of the Pastificio Mennilli in Francavilla al Mare, in the province of Chieti. In time, the Latinis enjoyed growing success with their pasta made with special selected varieties, in part grown in their own fields. Each year the company produces four grands crus of durum wheat including the Senatore Cappelli, a variety that, as is noted on certain packets of spaghetti, was “bred in the twenties by Professor Nazareno Strampelli di Crispiero from Castelraimondo, near Macerata.” The sector that currently offers the best opportunities for growth, however, is certainly the market for organic foods. The trend in that direction is also being adopted by many industrial manufacturers, 220 the time of plenty

who are finding in this field greater opportunities for profit than in their traditional activities. In Gragnano, the historical center of the Neapolitan pasta industry now in decline, some producers that are nearly a century old, such as the Lucio Garofalo company, have already made the transition, and others are likely to follow. The Pastai Gragnanesi, the only cooperative still in operation in the town, has already taken the plunge. After a particularly difficult period in the seventies and eighties, this small semi-artisanal factory, which now employs fourteen people, including the thirteen members of the cooperative, has enjoyed a veritable rebirth under the management of its president, Antonio Marchetti, and has done a great deal to restore luster to the pasta-making tradition of Gragnano. With its advanced, continuous presses and its low-temperature drying cells, the company seemed destined to go out of business in the years of the triumphant large-scale pasta manufacturer, but the very features that had seemed a handicap for so many years are now proving to be invaluable assets. Back on the road to commercial success, the Pastai Gragnanesi cooperative is beginning to experience a new phase of growth with its conversion to production of organic pasta. One could list numerous success stories concerning these new producers, especially in Apulia, Sicily, and even in Sardinia, where the pasta industry had been virtually annihilated. From the north to the south of the Italian boot, countless producers have begun making (or have converted their production to) this type of pasta. Sometimes sold under the Montebello label, the pasta made by Alce Nero, an agricultural cooperative in Isola del Piano in the province of Pescara, is sold in many special dietetic shops and also often featured in retail outlets in the sales networks of organic products in both Italy and France, as well as in other countries. The mastermind behind the success of this cooperative enterprise, founded in 1977, is Gino Girolimoni, a minor celebrity greatly admired in the profession and, over the years, recognized in the mass media for his ground-breaking work in the reorientation of cereal-based production in Italy. He was one of the first, if not the first, to venture into the sector of organic durum wheat, founding his now-renowned cooperative Alce Nero and recruiting an ever-growing number of partners with the increasing success and popularity of the product. In the wake of the success of the organic durum wheat, Alce Nero began making pasta with venerable old methods involving low-temperature drying processes that were revived for the occasion, and the cooperative blazed a path for the the time of plenty 221

niche manufacturers that in recent years have been been conquering larger and larger market share. The major industrial groups have had happy results as well. The most emblematic case is that of Delverde, the large and prestigious family-owned company founded in 1967, in the backyard of De Cecco, in Fara San Martino in the province of Chieti. Even though the company has grown at a spectacular rate and currently produces about 300 metric tons (330 tons) daily of dry pasta and 15 metric tons (16.5 tons) of fresh pasta, it has preserved a reputation for artisanal production and an image as a high-quality producer. Adding value to a brand involves all the elements specific to artisanal production, from slow drying at low temperatures to the quality of the varieties of durum wheat selected and the quality of the water used. The approach forms part of a strongly defended philosophy of “creating quality” and offering “a natural product that, when you eat it, should sing in your mouth.”36 Even giants like Barilla are determined to have a piece of the socalled traditional market, nowadays the only sector where they can hope to increase their sales on the Italian market, which is otherwise quite saturated. That is why the Parma-based company has invested in specialty manufacturing structures, including extrusion presses with bronze die plates, and has introduced a line of prestige products made with select durum wheat semolinas. It is probably safe to assume that simple scientific curiosity was not what prompted Barilla to finance for a number of years a research program on the varieties of durum wheat. A shift in the attitudes and behavior of consumers is under way, and the producers of consumer goods must try to keep up with the trend, whether out of conviction or simply to maintain market share. The phenomenon of artisanal pasta is not limited to Italy alone but is affecting all pasta-making countries, in both Europe and the Americas. And this, of course, is a helpful result of the current worries about the future of our collective diet.

the empire of fresh pasta We could not conclude this chapter without some reference to the success being enjoyed by fresh pasta specialties, whether artisanal preparations sold in retail outlets in cities or long-preservation fresh pasta, now available on supermarket shelves. Fresh pasta shops have 222 the time of plenty

opened not only in Italy but in numerous towns and cities across the United States and in Europe. In conjunction with this local trade, based on a tradition that in Italy dates back to the Middle Ages, an industrial production has recently been developed, based on reliable preservation processes that make it possible to distribute fresh pasta on the mass market, and it is now sold in supermarkets. The development of this new branch of the pasta industry is mainly taking place in Italy, especially in the north, where a dozen industrial-scaled factories are now in operation. As we have described in the chapter on the early developments of the Middle Ages, the tradition of fresh pasta spread in Italy in parallel with the tradition of dry pasta. But in contrast with the producers of dry pasta, who remained for many years concentrated in certain centers along the Mediterranean coastline, producers of fresh pasta were, even in that distant era, present in the main cities and towns of the peninsula. Over the course of the centuries, with the growing popularity of the dry pasta of Naples and Genoa, fresh pasta began to lose much of its appeal, and its production began to retreat to certain northern and central regions of the Italian peninsula, establishing solidly held territories especially in Emilia and, to a lesser degree, in Tuscany. Work was done by hand for a long time. Few producers of fresh pasta used a brake for kneading the dough, and those who did used only small ones. At the start, dough was rolled out only with a rolling pin. Then, as machinery improved, small rollers made their entrance into workshops, the first in a long series of machines that would become increasingly efficient and complex over the course of time. Tortelli and ravioli machines did not make their appearance until the 1920s.37 The development in the techniques of production reflects the progressive expansion in the range of types of fresh pasta over the course of time. As their names indicate, the lasagnari and vermicelli makers of the Middle Ages operating in the towns of the Italian peninsula mainly offered so-called natural pasta: unstuffed, made from a sheet of dough rolled out with a rolling pin, and cut with a knife into strips of varying width. These simple preparations, which chefs and housewives could undertake in a domestic setting, were produced and sold by professionals in only slightly larger quantities. At first made only with soft wheat flour and water, these specialties later came to include eggs in the dough in increasing proportion, nowadays reaching an average of six or seven eggs per kilogram of flour for higher-quality specialties the time of plenty 223

(ordinary pasta is made with no more than four eggs per kilogram of flour). Nowadays, both artisans and industrial manufacturers tend to mix soft wheat flour with durum wheat semolina, in proportions of roughly 50 percent, in order to give the dough a more substantial texture and especially to make the pasta hold up better to cooking. Marketers’ natural inclination toward expansion led them to launch stuffed pasta specialties. We cannot say exactly when the marketing of stuffed pasta began, but we can guess that in regions where such specialties as tortelli, tortellini, cappelletti, and other types of ravioli form part of the cultural heritage, commercial production probably took root much earlier than elsewhere. This, of course, occurred in the context of a retail market, where the product was sold immediately after production, since the lack of methods of preservation made any form of long-term commerce impossible. Nowadays, preserving stuffed pasta is not all that different from methods used for other fresh pasta specialties, and the pasta industry has not failed to take control of the sector, which is currently growing vigorously. The chief obstacle to the development of the artisanal production of fresh pasta has long been the problem of spoilage. With a level of moisture of roughly 30 percent, fresh pasta has a shelf life of just a few days, less if it is stuffed. In the past, producers found a partial solution to the problem through a superficial drying process, but this lowered the quality of the product, since the ideal is always to provide pasta in the freshest possible state. It was not until 1962 that a satisfactory solution was finally found, with the development of a process of pasteurization by the Venetian producer Voltan, now one of the leading companies in the Italian market.38 The Voltan technique prolongs the shelf life of fresh pasta by about fifteen days, which made it possible to begin industrial production. The thermal treatment has been greatly refined and calibrated in subsequent decades; nowadays, steaming is the most common method, though microwaving is becoming quite popular, a process that makes it possible to reduce the intensity of the pasteurization. Pasteurizing, however, is becoming less popular than other methods of preservation that have since been introduced, and it is no longer used systematically except by small-scale artisans. Industrial manufacturers possess more sophisticated techniques, primarily, since the eighties, the technology of vacuum-packing, adapted for the processing of fresh pasta by Giovanni Rana, founder of the Rana company, a world market leader. Packaged in small plastic trays, heat-sealed and perfectly air224 the time of plenty

tight, fresh pasta, whether simple or stuffed, can be safely stored for at least forty days. The universe of fresh pasta extends far beyond the territory of Italy. In Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Spain, Belgium, and France and in the largest towns of the United States, pasta shops have set up business over the course of the last few decades, offering pasta lovers different arrays of special pastas of the day. In some countries, artisanal or industrial factories have been built to supply the networks of mass distribution with vacuum-packed, frozen, or slightly pasteurized fresh pasta. But Italy is still the kingdom of fresh pasta, with the greatest concentration of pasta makers, large and small. According to the unofficial figures that we have received, there are in Italy more than 3,200 pasta producers, employing roughly 10,000 persons.39 Most of these producers are in northern Italy, and the concentration declines the farther south one goes. The inhabitants of the southern and island regions are by tradition lovers of dry pasta, but even there the last few decades have seen a growing interest in fresh pasta, especially stuffed pasta, a culinary curiosity that certain enterprising businessmen have set out to satisfy. Consider the history of the tiny company La Rustichella, based in Montemiletto, near Avellino. When it was founded in 1984, almost no one would have bet on the success of a fresh-pasta company in a small town in the province of Avellino, located midway between the farmlands of durum wheat in Apulia and the birthplace of the dry-pasta industry along the Neapolitan and Amalfi coasts. No one, that is, except Antonietta De Cristoforo, a smart and determined woman who began her business without any particular skill or experience other than knowing how to run a store. The beginnings were modest, because she had to learn everything as she went, but her careful choice of formats and first commercial successes allowed her to get the business up and running. After that, it grew constantly. The product line grew to include stuffed pasta specialties, which nowadays constitute roughly 60 percent of production. The business has a local client base made up largely of individuals and restaurants, with a minimal portion of the production going to a colleague in Naples. The most astonishing fact is that since La Rustichella began business in 1984, nearly ten other fresh-pasta makers have set up business in the province. Antonietta De Cristoforo, however, the owner of a small business that employs eight people, looks to the future with confidence. Indeed, she is currently having construction done to enlarge the premises. the time of plenty 225

At the other extreme of the array of producers of fresh pasta, Giovanni Rana controls an empire that boasts, in Italy alone, more than five hundred employees, four subsidiary companies, seventy licensees, and nearly five hundred points of sale—and that is not counting the two subsidiaries established outside Italy and the twelve distributors that carry its line of products in France, Belgium, Spain, the United Kingdom, and other countries in the European Community. Sales of Rana products amount to some 32,000 metric tons (35,200 tons) worldwide. In short, the man that food magazines call “the king of ravioli” aims high. But his start was fairly humble. After a brief time working in the family company, Giovanni Rana decided to set out under his own steam, and he founded a small factory bearing his own name. It was 1962, and the new manufacturer was just twenty-five years old. Ten years later, the company had become an industrial manufacturer and the leading producer in the sector of fresh pasta, a firstplace ranking that at the dawn of the third millennium no one would dare to compete for.40 From the tiny to the titanic, the remarkable market penetration of producers of fresh pasta offers clear evidence of the popularity currently enjoyed by this specialty. The universal ambitions of the huge company based in San Giovanni Lupatoto, in the province of Verona, are evenly matched by the local but equally intense ambitions of La Rustichella in Montemiletto. While Giovanni Rana sets out to conquer the planet, with Luciano Pavarotti in person as his standardbearer, Antonietta Di Cristoforo works to convert her region to fresh pasta. And if both of these entrepreneurs have succeeded in achieving their goals, it is because each has known how to seize the world “by the tastebuds.”41 This is unquestionably the highest honor that can be paid to fresh pasta, which, as we explore in the next chapter, lay at the foundation of the culinary tradition that is now so widely enjoyed by millions of pasta lovers around the world.

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CHAPTER EIGHT

The Taste for Pasta The leading producer of industrial pasta and the world’s top consumer of this foodstuff, Italy also has most thoroughly explored the culinary field of pasta, displaying unrivaled creativity in this area. As far back as existing sources allow us to look, Italian cuisine stands out for the importance it accords pasta, which has emerged as the symbol of Italian culinary genius. As early as the Middle Ages, pasta became the salient feature of Italian cuisine, both in its national identity and in its regional diversity, resulting in thousands of recipes, a body of lore and knowledge that has continued to swell and diversify from year to year over the centuries. As this unique culinary patrimony was enriched, a gastronomic culture of pasta developed, common to all the inhabitants of the Italian peninsula, unsurpassed anywhere except perhaps in China. Italy spread this culture throughout the world via the unassuming medium of millions of emigrants who, as they established themselves in each new country, also created networks for the distribution of imported foods and restaurants where those foods could be enjoyed. That is how the Italian way of making pasta became a benchmark in

the Western world, a dominant culinary model that we shall use here as a point of reference to trace the main phases of development of the cuisine based on this category of food. “Al dente”—that expression sums up the entire art of enjoying pasta Italian-style. It is practically impossible to translate into other languages yet is perfectly understandable to pasta lovers around the world, and its popularity is no doubt the most eloquent indicator of the dominance of the Italian cuisine of pasta. Everything begins, in effect, with the cooking, an operation that is both simple and delicate and that reveals both the level of skill of the cook and the quality of the pasta. The desired degree of firmness of the cooked pasta is the same throughout the Italian peninsula, and there is a tendency to like pasta chewier, to the point of crunchiness, as one heads farther south, but pasta cooked al dente has become such a universal culinary custom that one might reasonably believe that it is as old as pasta itself. That is decidedly not the case. The rule of cooking pasta so as to maintain intact what the Neapolitans call the nerbo, or “nerve,” is part and parcel of the culinary culture of dry pasta. It was in Naples that a kind of sensuality was accorded to the consistency of pasta, conjugating itself into as many nuances as there are formats, making pasta a foodstuff that is at the same time unique and manifold, what Peter Kubelka describes as “architecture for the mouth.”1 As for the expression “al dente,” today so familiar, it was unknown before the First World War, and not even Artusi, the great codifier of Italian cuisine, had ever heard the term, though he liked his pasta, whether fresh or dry, “briefly cooked in a great deal of water,” especially macaroni and spaghetti, which he recommended eating “almost hard.”2 In time, the expression “al dente” became emblematic of the roots the cuisine of pasta had sunk into contemporary Italian society, a cultural trait that forms part of the national identity and that some people ironically claim is the only true glue holding Italy together.3 From the Alps to the toe of the Italian boot, and throughout the islands, the daily meal now begins with a primo, usually a pasta with sauce. It is an unvarying ritual that seems to stretch back into the mists of time but in reality was only established quite recently. If the taste for pasta came early in Italy, the structure of the menu as we know it today only conquered the kitchens of the peninsula progressively and did not impose itself with daily regularity until the twentieth century,

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with the development of industrial production and the standardization of lifestyles. The last act in this great drama was played out after the Second World War, with the conversion to pasta Neapolitan-style of the inhabitants of northern Italy, traditionally eaters of rice and polenta. The spectacular growth in per capita annual consumption, which rose, as we noted in the preceding chapter, from 14 to 28 kilograms (30.8 pounds to 61.6 pounds) between 1936 and 1954, is not only statistical testimony to an improvement in quality of life and the conversion to pasta with sauce of the last bastions of northern Italy but also an indicator of the success of dried pasta, finally the winner among Italians as a whole,4 after centuries as a poor relation scorned by those who preferred fresh pasta. In fact, if Italy is a privileged land that was able to cultivate at the same time, and on parallel tracks, the traditions of dry durum wheat pasta and of fresh soft-wheat pasta, the culinary focus for centuries has been on fresh pasta alone. The idea of “homemade,” like that of “made by hand”—derived from the pleasure of shaping the dough, found also among the Chinese chefs of antiquity—added to the taste for pasta that melts in the mouth that prevailed until the nineteenth century, gave fresh pasta an appeal that was lacking in dried pasta, considered a staple of the subsistence diet of the populace of Naples. But once dry pasta emerged from its southern cocoon over the course of the twentieth century, it gradually became part of or replaced local eating habits, and the cuisine of dry pasta became enriched with the regional traditions of fresh pasta, while at the same time impressing upon those traditions its own colorful mark. In a sense, this is the ultimate revenge of southern Italy, the Mezzogiorno, which reacted to its annexation by the house of Savoy with a counterinvasion of macaroni that spread through the rest of the country, imposing its own art of cooking al dente and its taste for tomato. Forced to submit to a conquering army, Pulcinella—symbol of Naples—in turn seized the invaders “by their gluttonous fiber,” and in a final flash of cunning wit, in the best manner of the commedia dell’arte, offered a young kingdom, in search of shared values and unity, a national dish that lives in the sign of a solar fruit, the tomato, whose flamboyant hue expresses its working-class, popular temper. This decisive step toward universal recognition of a dish marked by the modesty of its origins crowned a centuries-old struggle against the current of history’s stream.

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a tradition that comes from faraway Ever since the Middle Ages, when the original features of the various cuisines of Western Christendom began to take shape, Italian culinary treatises stand out for the importance they place on pasta dishes. Of the entire array of recipe collections from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, more than one hundred twenty recipes are for pasta.5 Even with some overlaps, these recipes offer a vaster range of dishes than all the preparations found in the writings of this same period in other European countries and the entire Arab world, put together. The richness of the Italian vocabulary alone attests to a culinary creativity in the realm of pasta that had no equivalent in the period: macharoni, vermicelli, taglierini, formentine, longeti, minutelli, ravioli, croseti, gnocchi, strangolapreti, tortelli, tortelletti, orati, pancardelle, schinchinelli: these are all terms from medieval Italian cuisine that correspond to a flourishing selection of formats and an even greater variety of ways to prepare them. In comparison, the ancient Romans knew no other words but lagana and tracta, and these actually indicated sheet pasta. As for the Arab-Muslim world of the time, which is often thought to have invented dried pasta, it was noteworthy primarily for its grain-shaped and stringlike pasta, ready to cook in the dry state and always prepared in broth or in stew. While they may not have invented pasta, the Italians of the Middle Ages certainly invented the art of shaping it and cooking it—and in a very different way from the Chinese. Of this early pasta cuisine, we know only the elegant and refined version created by great professional chefs and described by them in the recipes and cookbooks that have survived. This was a cuisine designed and created for the upper classes of society, with a special attention to fresh pasta and especially stuffed pasta, which together represent two-thirds of the known recipes from that period. We find these two types of pasta in the first cookbook of Italian specialties, described in terms of the techniques of their production, that is to say, pasta made from a dough sheet and rolled out to a final shape and pasta modeled into its final form, obtained by shaping small fragments of dough with the fingers or by rolling them by hand on a table or board. In the first of the two categories, clearly linked to the laganon of Greek antiquity, as we have shown, we find lasagne and all the pasta types cut into different shapes, such as taglierini, pancardelle, longeti, triti, and formentine, as well as various versions of mac230 the taste for pasta

aroni, cut into “strips, or strings . . . the width of one’s little finger” or “cut quite small and fine.”6 Ravioli and tortelli were also part of this numerous and varied family, representing both the fresh and stuffed branches. The category of modeled pasta, which we have grouped under the generic expression “family of vermicelli,” is, by contrast, much less extensively represented in early collections of Italian recipes. Let us mention once again the absence, in the surviving Italian culinary documents from the Middle Ages, of grain-shaped pasta, those small formats made in imitation of kernels or grains of cereals or other crops that would later be described by the generic term pastine and loomed large in the Arab-Andalusian cuisine of this same period. In the writings of Martino, a master chef active in the middle of the fifteenth century, we find millefanti, tiny pellets of breadcrumbs and flour rolled into the shape of grains of wheat or rice, which were to be “dried in sunlight or before the fire”7 before being cooked in meat or chicken broth, but this was not yet pasta in the sense that we defined at the outset of this book. It was not until the following century that Bartolomeo Scappi, chef in the papal palace, reinterpreted this formula, using “pure wheaten flour to preserve it.”8 Scappi’s millefanti were genuine pasta, of the same lineage as the fidaws found in collections of Arab recipes and heralding the vast array of fine soup pasta, or pastine—also called sementine, semolas, or semolinas—developed by the pasta industry. In the eighteenth century, Genoese manufacturers multiplied this category into numerous formats, tirelessly fashioning them “round like green peas, or others shaped like melon seeds, others still shaped like spinach seeds and all sorts of other seeds.”9 It was this fine soup pasta, a refined and noble imitation of the cereal that flavored early gruels, whose tradition seems to have been spread throughout Europe by the Arab world through the Muslim kingdoms of Spain. In the form of minestra soups or other preparations related to gruels or mushes, in Italy only vermicelli were used to dress up broths and meat sauces. Consider, for instance, the recipe for vermicelli in gruel—presented as a soup with a meat broth, enriched with almonds, and heavily spiced—described in a fourteenth-century manuscript published at the end of the nineteenth century.10 This way of using pasta, however, was unusual in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. In fact, the Italians followed from the very beginning an original route that led them to make pasta the subject of a full-fledged gastrothe taste for pasta 231

nomic research project. Abandoning the straight and narrow path of gruel, the chefs of the peninsula, professionals and amateurs, did their best to cook pasta for what it was. This was long before the word pastasciutta was used to identify the culinary concept they had created without fully realizing it. Medieval chefs did understand as early as the second half of the fourteenth century that they were working to establish a culinary category. Master Martino spoke of “pasta dishes,” an expression that was later replaced by “pasta soups.” The culinary terminology remained quite confused, however, only taking on the organized form we know now during the nineteenth century. The term macaroni or macharoni, which Martino used to describe different formats of long, round, hollow pasta or pasta in strips of varying thickness, took on a more generic meaning in the sixteenth century, comparable to the connotation that was later acquired by the word pasta. Scappi’s recipe, entitled “to make a soup of macaroni, called gnocchi,” leaves no doubt on the matter,11 and his colleagues of the same period used macaroni to designate both pasta shaped like taglierini or tagliatelle and pasta shaped like gnocchi, as well as square or diamond-shaped pasta and so on. As late as the end of the eighteenth century, a chef from the Italian Marche region, Antonio Nebbia, listed under the generic title “About macaroni and gnocchi,” his recipes for lasagne and gnocchi of all sorts.12 At the same time, we have confirmation of the appearance of the word pasta, which, while still preserving the broad meaning that covered all preparations involving the kneading of dough, was increasingly used as a synonym for macaroni. The author in 1584 of a treatise on the art of the majordomo, Giovanbattista Rossetti, listed under the heading “Memorie di mangiar di pasta”—literally, “Recollections of eating pasta”—all sorts of pasta dishes.13 During this same period, in southern Italy, the expression pasta d’ingegno, or “pasta from an engine”—“engine” meaning “machine”—began to be used to distinguish dry pasta extruded with an extrusion press from pasta made by hand, generally called pasta da ferro, which takes its name from the iron rod used to make by hand the hollow Sicilian-style macaroni and from the grooved cylinder used to cut lasagne into taglierini. With the growing interest in this type of food, machine-made dry pasta began to find its way to the dining tables of Neapolitan society, allowing the high and mighty finally to enjoy manufactured products that the lower classes had already decided were fit for a king. It took, then, sev232 the taste for pasta

eral centuries for dry pasta to receive the approval of the aristocracy.14 But the fact that this promotion of a lower-class food to the highest gastronomical firmament should have taken place in Naples seems to us anything but surprising.

the gastronomy of fresh pasta While the pasta recipes found in all the Italian culinary treatises mainly have to do with fresh pasta, we do find in the medieval manuscripts that have been indexed as of this writing perhaps ten somewhat repetitive recipes for tri, tria, vermicelli, and macaroni that might, judging from their names and methods of preparation, be meant for dry commercial pasta.

Tria, Vermicelli, and Handmade Macaroni. In a recipe for tria of vermicelli, the compiler recommends using a “vermicelli book,” with no further details.15 Four recipes explicitly refer to drying pasta and to the places where pasta is made and/or sold. This is true of the tria ianuensis (Genoese tria) of the Liber de coquina and of the “Genoese tria for invalids” featured in another fourteenth-century manuscript associated with it.16 The compiler of the latter manuscript offers only a few laconic recommendations: “Put the tria in boiling almond milk, and a bit of salt, and it is ready to eat.” As presented, the recipe does seem conceived for commercial pasta. That, however, is not the case with two other recipes, both written by Master Martino. The recipes for macaroni Sicilian-style and macaroni Genoese-style each include a detailed description of how to make and shape the pasta.17 These were preparations made with soft wheat flour and water, with the addition of egg whites, something quite uncommon in the period. The process for making the Sicilian-style macaroni, which we shall abbreviate for clarity’s sake, is quite long and intricate. The dough ball is cut into small sausage shapes, which are then rolled out until they have the stringlike appearance of a straw, a palm’s length in size. They are then pierced by running a stiff piece of iron wire through each piece of dough as it lies flat on the table and then rolling the piece of dough with the wire inside to seal up any tears and to restore its original shape. At the end of the description of the shaping process, Martino recommends drying the macaroni in the sun, a treatment that, the taste for pasta 233

according to the author, will make it possible to store them for two or three years. Macaroni Genoese-style are made with dough rolled into a thin sheet that is in turn rolled over on itself and cut into taglierini “finer than a length of string.” Once the shaping is complete, the chef offers the possibility of either drying the pasta to cook it later or cooking it fresh. The fact that chefs should have labored to make by hand formats that were probably available in grocery stores in their towns or cities further piques our curiosity, already aroused by the scant mention of commercial dry pasta in cookbooks. We can imagine two explanations for this. First, chefs and other professionals in the higher levels of cuisine were leery of commercial dry pasta, and it was they who wrote the collections of recipes and cookbooks of the period. Interpreters and implementers of the culinary preferences of the ruling class, these great chefs and professionals were, logically enough, reluctant to use products of indeterminate freshness that were often shipped and stored in less than ideal conditions. This mistrust, whether justified or not, coincided with a widespread suspicion of preserved products in general. In the medieval world, preserved products such as salted meat and fish were identified with peasant cooking and with cheap subsistence foods, and dried pasta, like it or not, is a type of preserved food.18 It is thus hard to imagine a master chef with the background of Master Martino, who worked first for the Sforzas and later for the patriarch of Aquileia, creating a stock of pasta to be eaten later on. But then why would he recommend drying Sicilian macaroni? The explanation that seems most reasonable to us is that thorough drying was needed to fix the hollow shape of the macaroni. The addition of egg whites would serve the same purpose, because they tend to reinforce the resistance of pasta during cooking, a detail that probably would not be lost on an accomplished chef like Martino. For that matter, for pasta products that weren’t hollow, such as Genoese-style macaroni, drying is only suggested as a possible alternative, while it is not even mentioned for Roman-style macaroni. There remains Martino’s commentary on the possibility of preserving Sicilian macaroni for considerable lengths of time. It is our belief that the author did not mean to offer this as a recommendation but rather as a certification of the validity of the process or merely an indication of a possible alternative, to be used only in cases of special need. Since Martino was familiar with the long-term preservation of dried pasta, he mentioned it when making these specialities, but that 234 the taste for pasta

does not necessarily mean that he used dried pasta himself. Or, if he did, as a chef he would have been far more comfortable using preserved foods he had prepared himself rather than those purchased from a grocer. Whatever the case, the few indications of drying do not, in our view, argue against the existence in the Middle Ages of an overwhelming preference for fresh pasta. The presence of a professional class such as the lasagnari in most of the towns on the Italian peninsula could not be explained otherwise.

Lasagne, Taglierini, Pappardelle, Formentine. Lasagne are among the earliest pasta preparations known, and they seem to have been very highly regarded by medieval cooks. The recipe for lasagne found in the Liber de coquina made use of a fermented dough, something quite unusual for the period. Flattened out into a thin sheet, the dough was cut up into small squares about three fingerbreadths across that were then cooked in boiling water. After the water was drained, the lasagne were arranged in layers on a cutting board, sprinkled abundantly with cheese and spices (the spices were optional), and finally eaten with the use of a pointed stick.19 A century later, a manuscript—recently published by Ingemar Boström under the title Anonimo meridionale—recommends cooking the lasagne in a capon broth and serving it on a cutting board, sprinkled with capon drippings and grated cheese. Another fourteenth-century manuscript, compiled in Tuscan and published at the end of the nineteenth century by Francesco Zambrini, features a sort of synthesis of the two recipes described above, suggesting that the lasagne should be cooked in a broth of capon, or any other fatty meat, and then placed “in a dish with a rich grated cheese, in layers, as one pleases.” This is approximately the same procedure that is recommended for the period of Lent in a book believed to be of Venetian origin and dating from the same period, although there the lasagne is boiled in water and the sheets of pasta layered with chopped walnuts.20 Some medieval authors recommended using lukewarm water to mix the dough, while others suggested including egg whites, as we have noted, or scenting it with rose water. Sometimes it is recommended that the pasta be allowed to dry before cooking, but this is a very superficial drying, as practiced in home pasta making.21 Coloring the dough, especially with saffron, became customary, a practice that later extended to industrial manufacture and endured for many centhe taste for pasta 235

turies, even after the eighteenth century, when both the Italians and the French began to find the scent of saffron intolerable. As late as 1846, Francesco Chapusot, head chef for the English ambassador to Turin, criticized the macaroni made by Neapolitans, who “mistakenly color them with saffron, so that said ingredient taints the pasta with a detestable odor.”22 Italian cooks in the Middle Ages also showed a special interest in the shape of pasta, which they were already working to diversify to a far greater degree than is documented for other countries. Aside from the classic formats mentioned above, we find croseti, pasta shaped like cupping glasses, the size of a thumb, made by pressing down on the dough with a finger, which seem very close in shape to the present-day orecchiette of Apulia.23 The formentine, mentioned in 1337 by the Emilian physician Barnabas of Reggio as a specialty of his town, were described a century later by Master Martino as shaped like narrow strips, resembling tagliatelle. This format is probably very similar to what the Mantuans of Barnabas’s time called pancardelle24—that is, unless these pancardelle were closer in shape to the present-day pappardelle or papparelle, which Domenico Romoli, renowned majordomo in the sixteenth century, presented as “fine, delicate, and tender lasagne.” This high-ranking chef, Florentine by birth, had worked in the courts of numerous Roman cardinals and was especially fond of the specialty known as pappardelle Florentine-style, which he often put on the menu for meat days.25 The name of this dish, for which Romoli does not provide a recipe, naturally leads one to think of the present-day specialties of pappardelle with hare, typical of Grosseto and Arezzo,26 all the more so when the Florentine chef provides a recipe for hare cooked with pappardelle.27 It is also true, however, that he served pappardelle Roman-style as well, for which he also failed to provide a recipe, and pappardelle appear in other sixteenth-century works without any reference to Florence or Tuscany.28 At the beginning of the modern era, various types of tagliatelle became common, and the range of taglierini began to expand, for example, in the longeti avantazadi described in a northern manuscript dating back to the fifteenth century.29 Add to this already lavish palette strozzapreti (literally, “priest stranglers”), a type of gnocchi made of flour and breadcrumbs, mentioned in a southern manuscript dating from the beginning of the sixteenth century and later to become a specialty of Neapolitan cuisine.30 Scappi described how to 236 the taste for pasta

make maccheroni a ferro, close relatives of Martino’s macaroni Sicilian-style (maccheroni siciliani). Oddly, though he provided a remarkable wealth of detail, he gave absolutely no information about how to flavor them, going no further than to describe how they were made, while noting that they could be preserved for many years.31 Scappi neither used nor recommended the use of durum wheat semolina to make pasta, any more than his predecessors had, even though he was familiar with the product and used it in many other cases. In his time, pasta was heavily sweetened with great quantities of sugar, in accordance with the culinary model of the period, which was dominated by a love of the sweet. Eggs were also used more often and more abundantly, and as time went on they played an increasing role in the basic mixture of the dough. Antonio Latini, a seventeenthcentury chef from the Marche region who enjoyed a career as the chief steward of the first minister of the viceroy of Naples, made tagliolini di monica, for which he used two whole eggs, two more yolks, and a little hot water, for a pound of pure wheat flour.32 Good practitioner of the high bourgeois cuisine of the nineteenth century that he was, Francesco Chapusot, head chef for the English embassy in Turin, prepared the dough for tagliatelle with eight egg yolks for a pound of flour, enriched with an ounce of grated cheese and half an ounce of fresh butter.33 We should probably consider Chapusot as the founder of that fine Piedmontese tradition of vividly yellow taglierini (small tagliatelle), the color given by the incredible number of egg yolks used to make the dough. One rule of thumb says to use eighteen yolks per pound of flour! Beginning in the seventeenth century, chefs began to use milk, either alone or mixed with water, in mixing the dough. Vittorio Lancellotti, chief steward for Pietro Cardinal Aldobrandino, had a soup of sheet pasta served at a banquet given on January 1, 1610, which we can imagine to have been either lasagne or pappardelle “made with pure wheat flour mixed with milk, pignoli, and beaten egg yolks, with broth and a little grated parmesan cheese sprinkled over it.” It was, according to this top-ranked chef, “a dish fit for a king.”34 At the turn of the seventeenth century, the custom of making pasta with milk was revived at a less sophisticated level and used even by amateur cooks. Giovanni del Turco, a Florentine musician living at the same time as Lancellotti, left us one of the rare recipes of the period written by someone other than a professional chef. He describes a recipe for macaroni Venetian-style, made with pure wheat flour and the taste for pasta 237

milk mixed with a little lukewarm water. In a less sophisticated version, the milk is eliminated in favor of lukewarm water mixed with an egg. The macaroni are long strips or squares cut from sheets of dough “not too thin, but rather thick.” Plunged into water just till it returns to the boil, they are served seasoned with fresh butter and grated parmesan cheese and sprinkled with cinnamon. In the same recipe, Del Turco offers a variant that involves pressing either a thick sheet of dough or a ball of dough through a grater to make either tiny round disks or small cylinders.35 This fine gourmet also offers a choice of recipes for tortelli and ravioli in the style of his time, which attributed great value to stuffed pasta. But in that family of dishes, the dough had no culinary value of its own; it served only to protect the delicate stuffing.

stuffed pasta: shapes, colors, and flavors Preparations of stuffed pasta are the aristocrats of the cuisine of pasta, employing fresh pasta and offering the broadest spectrum of aromas, flavors, and textures, with a wide variety of stuffing made of more or less rare and refined ingredients. Two major families, classed under the headings of tortelli and ravioli, contain the entire range of these preparations. There is a further subdivision of dishes for meat days and dishes for lean days, the two opposed registers required by the liturgical calendar. In the context of pasta, however, meat alternated with vegetables rather than with fish.

Meat Ravioli and Lenten Tortelli. On days of abstinence, ravioli were served made with creamed fresh cheese, sometimes with the addition of vegetables or herbs. There are recipes for Friday ravioli, Lenten tortelli, white Lenten tortelli, white ravioli for days of abstinence, and even Lenten tortelli made in the “right way,” which called for “plenty of good dried squash, boiled well, and almonds, carefully cleaned and ground, and plenty of good minced herbs.”36 Meat days were celebrated with “long meat ravioli,” “meat tortelli,” “meat tortelli in broth,” “capon tortelli,” “white tortelli for meat days,” and other “boiled white ravioli for meat days.”37 The names of the recipes constitute a veritable culinary language all their own. Certain preparations are named after the principal 238 the taste for pasta

ingredient: vegetables, mushrooms, and dairy products for ravioli with squash, ravioli with herbs, ravioli with eggs and cheese, tortelli with dried squash, tortelli with mushrooms, and the like; types of meat for tortelli with pork loin, tortelli with pork, and so on. Other names allude to culinary or dietary factors, such as “tortelli of good appetite,” “tortelli for the stomach,” or “tortelli for invalids”; others still place the accent on color: green tortelli, tortelli of four, five, or six colors. And many specialties were identified with a place, such as chicken or poultry tortelli Bolognese-style, or the tortelli of Assisi.38 In this vast assortment, pork was the meat used universally, though there were also ravioli and tortelli stuffed with poultry, especially capon. The most common stuffings were made with cheese, either fresh or aged, seasoned with spices and mixed with leaf vegetables. These had the great advantage of being equally appropriate for days of meat or abstinence. Aside from those stuffed with meat or herbs, which have become classic, certain combinations nowadays are quite unexpected. The stuffing of the tortelli in broth, for example, was made of pork, aromatic herbs, cheese, eggs, dates, raisins, spices, and saffron.39 Other stuffings, made with dried squash or gourd, mixed with almonds, and served sprinkled with sugar, are similar to dishes that are renowned nowadays, such as the famous ravioli di zucca mantovani, or squash ravioli Mantuan-style. The shape of the ravioli and tortelli is rarely mentioned, Scappi’s description of anolini being one of the few. The exotic shapes, such as horseshoe, buckle, letters, or animals, that we mentioned in the first chapter were limited to fried ravioli and tortelli, specialties that do not belong to the category of pasta products as we have defined them. Martino recommended making ravioli for meat days in such a way “that they are no bigger than a chestnut,” which suggests they were small and roughly spherical. In another recipe, the ravioli take the shape of a little sausage “a good finger’s length, and quite large.”40 From the shapes of the ravioli cutters depicted in the illustrations of Scappi’s book, we can guess, however, that the most common shapes were round and square.

Ravioli Without Envelope. As for the dough, it is absolutely superfluous except to contain the stuffing. The authors recommend rolling it out as thin as possible, as if to make it imperceptible to the taste and tooth. Thus the wrapping of the ravioli in venerdie (Friday ravioli) the taste for pasta 239

should be “exceedingly fine, or else they are worthless.”41 In some cases, in short, the best dough is one that does not exist. Salimbene of Parma, whose Cronica covers the last decades of the thirteenth century, interpreted the custom of eating ravioli without wrapping (raviolos sine crusta de pasta) as a sign of the refinement of human gluttony.42 Collections of medieval recipes include numerous recipes for ravioli that are not wrapped in any dough. Master Martino, for example, offers ravioli bianchi, made with fresh cheese such as mozzarella, butter, ginger, cinnamon, and sugar, formed into sausages “the length and size of a finger,” and rolled in flour to consolidate the filling’s structural integrity. He is careful to point out that these ravioli are made without a dough wrapper, adding in parentheses, however, “if you want to make them with a wrapper, do so.” Then he recommends “boiling them slowly so that they do not break, and when the water has returned to a boil, remove them and arrange them in bowls with sugar and cinnamon, and you may color them yellow with saffron.”43 Professional chefs during the Renaissance further developed these types of preparations “without a wrapper (or envelope),” all the same considering them as similar to stuffed pastas, a family tie that was explicitly indicated in the name of the recipe or in the body of the text. Scappi’s recipe for making a soup of ravioli without wrapping (per far minestra di ravioli senza spoglia) is similar to Master Martino’s recipe, except for the handful of chopped aromatic herbs added to the stuffing and the seasoning with abundant sugar and spices. Scappi, moreover, suggested using ricotta as an alternative to the fresh cheese, and he recommended cooking the ravioli for only a short time, in a broth on days when meat could be eaten and in water enriched with butter on days when it was not permitted.44 His contemporary Domenico Romoli offered a long recipe for ravioli in various styles (ravioli in più modi), in which he listed different methods for making them “naked,” fried in oil, or “boiled with or without dough.”45 The idea that the original sheet of dough could be sacrificed on the altar of human gluttony, as Salimbene of Parma saw it, would endure over the centuries that followed. Naked ravioli would become a regional culinary specialty, especially in northern Italy and Romagna. Pellegrino Artusi’s recipe for ravioli Romagna-style is based on a mixture of ricotta, flour, grated parmesan cheese, and egg, mixed together well and shaped into cylindrical lengths, and it seems a worthy heir to the recipes of the Renaissance. The venerable gastronomist and compiler 240 the taste for pasta

of modern Italian cuisine, a native of Romagna, seems to have been comfortable only with the ravioli of his region. Indeed, he stated in perfectly good faith, “Genoese-style ravioli actually should not be called ravioli at all, because genuine ravioli are not made with meat and are not wrapped in a sheet of dough.”46 This decisive comment by Artusi, however, fails to reflect the overbrimming abundance of the array of stuffed pasta that, in his time, was called, variously and depending on geographic location, ravioli, tortelli, cappelletti, anolini, and agnolotti. The great heritage of the gastronomic tradition of pasta, stuffed or not, was handed down during the centuries within the various regional cuisines and then triumphed on the ashes of the high cuisine of the courts, which had fallen into decline following the glory days of the Renaissance and dropped out of fashion altogether in the conquering wake of the French culinary art. The homogeneous style of a cuisine created by professional chefs, all following the same gastronomic principles and values, had been replaced by the diversity and richness of local and regional specialties and styles. This transition, however, was quite gradual.

The Recipes of Tradition. In fact, among the great variety of new pasta recipes that appeared in the sixteenth century, some were already associated with one or another area of northern Italy. Lombardy, in particular, seemed to be particularly fertile in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In the writings of the papal chef Scappi, we find a recipe for tortelli Lombard-style, made with a stuffing of beets, spinach, and cheese, which is found in a similar but enriched version a century later in a book by Bartolomeo Stefani, a Bolognese chef in the service of the Gonzaga family of Mantua. Scappi seemed to be especially interested in the shapes and names typical of certain regions. Describing tortelletti with pork belly, he points out that they are called anolini in the vernacular.47 Anolini, he explains, should be no larger than a bean or a chickpea. The dough is folded into a triangle, two of the points being fastened together to give them the same shape as cappelletti, which is to say, little hats, in which, of course, we recognize as well agnolini, called agnoli in the Mantua area, marubini in the Cremona area, and cappelletti to the south of the river Po.48 The identification of this family of stuffed pasta with southern Lombardy is well established as far back as the the taste for pasta 241

late seventeenth century, when Antonio Latini offered Neapolitan high society a soup of cappelletti Lombard-style.49 Parma and its surroundings are also renowned for the “anolino of Parma” and its kissing cousin, the “anolino of Piacenza,” known in the local dialect as anvein, or the cappelletti of Reggio Emilia. The anolino of Parma, which has infinite variants, has been the subject of a vast body of writing, always offering the “authentic traditional recipe.”50 Artusi chose a recipe for anolini Parmesan-style, which he sent to a Parma-born acquaintance, presenting it as “the recipe for a soup that in Parma is traditional for solemn family occasions.”51 Some audacious defenders of the Parmesan specialty have gone so far as to identify as forerunners of the present-day anolini the ravioli without wrapping described by Salimbene of Parma in the year 1284, saying that he ate them on the feast day of Saint Clare. The same imaginative authors have proposed an etymology for the term anolino, anolini, supposedly derived from ravioli, through the supposed medieval term raviolèn,” whose pronunciation was deformed in everyday speech and transformed into anolen.52 This explanation seems acrobatic, at the very least. Let us note, however, that a manuscript dating back to the late fourteenth or early fifteenth century and written in the region of Lombardy and Venetia offers a recipe for aneloti, without mentioning dough, though it seems necessary to us, indeed indispensable, both to give this stuffed preparation its shape and, especially, to allow it to withstand cooking.53 But it was probably in the sixteenth century that this stuffed pasta dish became especially popular on the tables of Italy outside the small circle of court society, as we see from the less sophisticated versions offered by Giovanni del Turco in a simple recipe for agnelotti in soup.54 In this Florentine musician’s time, the culinary art of the courts of Italy had spread throughout Europe, and stuffed pasta specialties, the epitome of Italian style, were borrowed and reinterpreted well outside the boundaries of the Italian peninsula. At the end of the sixteenth century, Lancelot de Casteau, chef to the bishop-princes of Liège, regularly served rafioles of meat or spinach with parmesan cheese and butter, unquestionably an Italian dish. The Belgian chef, French by culinary culture, also suggested agnoilins, also clearly inspired by free browsing through Italian cookbooks.55 The international popularity of stuffed pasta was to wane with the general decline of Italian high cuisine, while on a domestic scale 242 the taste for pasta

stuffed pastas, in all their infinite versions, entered the category of regional specialties. A return of interest, however, was evident outside Italy at the turn of the twentieth century, when the star chefs of French middle-class cuisine added a few recipes to their repertoires. But the popularity of stuffed pasta was not to revive fully until the second half of the twentieth century, rising thereafter to the summit of gastronomic prestige with the rediscovery of local specialties and the renewed popularity of regional cuisines. The great chefs got in on the act, venturing into this traditional field and reinventing ravioli as a new concept, ideal territory for the most daring experiments. The repertoire, hardly exhaustive, offered by Luigino Bruni in his excellent book on ravioli recipes, Ricette di sua maestà il raviolo, presents a panorama that ranges from “historic recipes” to “original recipes,” along with plenty of traditional regional recipes, a total of over a hundred preparations of all sorts. In a time of rapidly spreading fast food, this superb battery of stuffed pasta specialties appears as a sign of vigor in a culinary culture that has wrongly been said to be in a state of general decline.

dry pasta as an architecture for the mouth Evidence of the scorn aroused by dry pasta can be seen in the opinion of Guglielmino Prato, a grocer from Asti at the turn of the seventeenth century and the author of a short treatise on home economics that contained some recipes for local dishes. Among these were many pasta preparations, including fidelini and macaroni. Before setting forth the recipe for fidelini, he offers the following warning: “It is customary to purchase fidelini made by pasta makers, with the considerable risk of finding that they have been made with very low quality materials or made with old or spoilt flours, especially during famines, and that is why sensible gentlemen will have the fidelini made by his servants.”56 Prato’s reluctance to use commercial pasta, probably supplied by producers in Genoa or along the Ligurian coast, tells us a great deal about how that pasta was generally considered. In the regions of southern Italy (which produced its own dried pasta and therefore experienced fewer problems with preservation), this general mistrust, which has lasted to the present day, was exacerbated by the upper classes’ prejudice against a food that was commonly consumed by the less well-to-do. the taste for pasta 243

Paradoxically, during this same period, manufactured dried pasta first acquired a full right to be present on the dining tables of the Neapolitan aristocracy, and it was thanks to southern Italian cooks that foodstuff, considered “vulgar,” moved out of the shadows. Among those cooks, the great majordomos and stewards of high society were among the first who believed in the culinary worth of dried pasta; in particular we should mention the steward Giovan Battista Crisci, who worked at the turn of the seventeenth century. Scoffing at the slurs leveled at dried pasta in his time, this great cook did not hesitate to place it on the menu of his lord and master, both hollow macaroni and vermicelli made with an extrusion press. His menu of “pasta soups,” rich with a solid dozen preparations of both simple and stuffed pasta, also featured maccaroni di Puglia (Apulia), maccaroni di Palermo, and taglierini di Cagliari, all specialties from the most dynamic centers of the manufacture of pasta.57 We notice with interest an unprecedented product, starch vermicelli, obtained through a sophisticated process the Chinese had mastered as early as the sixth century, as we shall see in the next chapter.58 We know neither how nor by whom these special vermicelli were produced in Naples, nor in what form they were presented, because no other source makes mention of them. Once it had been accepted on the banqueting tables of the Neapolitan aristocracy, dried pasta would gradually acquire its culinary titles of nobility. Antonio Latini, who was evidently not a great lover of pasta, whether fresh or dry, all the same proposed a macaroni soup Cagliari-style, which he described as “an excellent and noble soup,” that consisted simply of macaroni cooked in a good capon broth enriched with parmesan cheese.59 Even so, in the seventeenth century, dry pasta was still uncommon in fine Neapolitan cuisine and had not yet gained entrance to the aristocratic palazzi of northern Italy. Bartolomeo Stefani, the only Italian chef of the seventeenth century to have written a treatise about cooking, offered no recipes for dry pasta, and for that matter he rarely served stuffed pasta at his banquets. As Latini’s writings demonstrated, however, a cultural revolution had occurred among the chefs of the kingdom of Naples, blazing a path for a culinary experimentation that in the end would produce some of the finest specialties of the Neapolitan tradition. The timballo di macaroni would elevate the unassuming pasta of Naples to the peak of the gastronomic hierarchy, and once it had been accepted to the winner’s circle of prestigious dishes, the timballo would be one of the few Ital244 the taste for pasta

ian specialties of the period whose reputation would cross the Alps, even receiving anointment by the nascent corpus of French culinary literature.

The Triumph of the Timballo of Macaroni. “I had never seen macaroni pie, and it is not a dish for everybody. The macaroni had been cooked in a broth of almond milk, sugared and perfumed with ambergris, the finest powdered cinnamon, genuine Corinth currants, pistachios from the Levant, lemon peels, the most delicate little sausages, and garnished with Genoese pasta; it was a true boccone di cardinale [dish fit for a cardinal]. I thought the macaroni were excellent, and if they had served this to us in the monastery, I could easily have become accustomed to it.”60 It was in Sicily, at the table of a true gentleman, that Père Labat discovered this pâté de macaronis, literally, “macaroni pie,” which was, of course, nothing more than a variant on the timbale, and with it the true pleasure of pasta, having had only negative experiences with it up to this point. When he visited Italy at the turn of the eighteenth century, the timbale of macaroni as such had not yet been invented, but various preparations that resembled it closely were already being served by chefs in the preceding century. Crisci had mentioned macaroni as a possible stuffing for calzoni ripieni,61 a specialty that may or may not have been wrapped in a leavened pizza dough but certainly gives the idea of a crust stuffed with macaroni and baked in an oven. Antonio Latini, his successor, suggested a recipe for a pie made with boned turkey cock, stuffed with macaroni,62 which fit somewhere between the pies made with whole chickens or other birds so popular in the Middle Ages and the timbale, the great specialty of Neapolitan cuisine, a recipe for which appears in Vincenzo Corrado’s Il cuoco galante, published in 1773. With macaroni cooked, or half-cooked, in beef broth, then well drained, cooled, and abundantly sprinkled with cheese, one began to fill the interior of a tall-sided mold lined with “flaky sugarless pastry”; then, one added a stuffing made of a mince of sausages, mushrooms, truffles, and ham, all nicely seasoned with a “quantity of dense beef gravy”; finally, the timbale was covered and baked in an oven.63 Like all the Italian chefs of his generation, Corrado was influenced by the French culinary art, and it may be that he borrowed the name of his dish from one of his transalpine peers, as they had long been the taste for pasta 245

preparing all sorts of timbales stuffed with various meats or fishes, flavored with various sauces. There can be no doubt, however, that the idea of a timbale of pasta, especially of macaroni, is unique to high Neapolitan cuisine. The French chefs of the era mention no timbales of pasta, and when they talk about macaroni, vermicelli, or lasagne, they never fail to point out that these are “Italian-style pasta.” Certainly, if we consider the rich variety of timbales that Vincenzo Corrado describes, we can hardly question his expertise, or his creativity. Among the various timbales of lasagne with ham, “dressed” ravioli, gnocchi alla Dama, and rice with truffles, there is even a timbale of macaroni “alla Pompadour,” named after the long-time mistress of King Louis XV in a nudge and a wink at the chefs of France. And for the sheer artistic pleasure of the thing, we must mention the timbale of stuffed macaroni, filled with macaroni themselves stuffed with a fine mince of veal, truffles, beef marrow, and egg yolks. The same great Neapolitan chef served for the first time the sartù de’ golosi, a sort of cake made with macaroni cooked in broth, flavored with melted veal suet and grated cheese, arranged in a tall mold in closely packed layers alternating with layers of roasted beccafico (garden warbler), then topped with slices of fresh cheese, such as mozzarella, and placed in the oven long enough to gain some color.64 Its name—sartù—is certainly borrowed from the French term surtout, which in this period described a central decoration on dining tables, but the dish is the other great Neapolitan specialty, very much a part of the gastronomical culture of that kingdom. Both these dishes would establish themselves as veritable jewels of the Italian culinary art of the nineteenth century, standard-bearers, as it were, of the more general rehabilitation of pasta in good society. The chief Italian culinary treatises of this period offer a large range of macaroni timbales and other pasta dishes, despite the evident allegiance that the authors felt toward French cuisine. Let us begin with the two Piedmontese chefs who dominated the period, through both their skill and their elevated positions: Giovanni Vialardi and Francesco Chapusot. The former, “assistant chief cook” in the palace of the ruling house of Savoy, a house that was not particularly fond of Italian cuisine, clearly amused himself by presenting a broad array of these typically Italian dishes: from the well-named timballa di maccheroni alla savoiarda, literally “macaroni timbale Savoy-style,” to the timballa di maccheroni farcita all’antica, or “macaroni timbale, stuffed in the old-fashioned manner” and the timballa di maccheroni 246 the taste for pasta

decorata alla napoletana, or “macaroni timbale, decorated Neapolitan-style,” not to mention the timballa di maccheroni alla sarda, or “macaroni timbale Sardinian-style,” and, finally, the timballa di lasagne larghe alla genovese, or “broad lasagne timbale Genoesestyle.”65 Francesco Chapusot prefers, for his part, to offer the recipe for a timballo di tagliatelli alla monglas, served with a famous French sauce, perfectly in the spirit of the time. His menus never fail to include maccheroni in timballo all’italiana and, lest anyone be offended, a timballo di maccheroni alla francese, in which only the macaroni are prepared in the French style, the rest being executed in the habitual fashion.66 A prestige dish in Italy during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the timbale was similarly admired and enjoyed in France during the Empire and the Restoration, where it was honored by the greatest masters of the time, beginning with Antonin Carême, unquestionably the most sought-after chef on Earth. In his book Pâtissier Royal, this professional devoted a major chapter to timbales of macaroni, which he called a “fine entrée [that] makes uniquely appropriate use of Italian- and French-style pasta.” The timbale of macaroni Milanese-style (timbale de macaronis à la milanaise), which opens the chapter, is followed by the timbale of macaroni hunter-style (timbale de macaroni au chasseur), then by a timbale of macaroni financier-style (timbale de macaroni à la financière), and a timbale of macaroni sailor-style (timbale de macaroni à la marinière), all prepared with “genuine Italian macaroni.” The great French chef’s recommendation to use Italian pasta reflected no special love of Italy; rather, he recognized its superior quality, fine uniform color and transparency, and, above all, excellent resistance to cooking, unlike the “pasta made in our factories which is dull and grayish in color; its surface is cracked, and when cooked it tends to crumble.”67 The timbale of macaroni was recommended by Alexandre Dumas père, who mentioned the fact that food lovers were not reluctant to inject into the macaroni, “with the use of a syringe, a sauce of fish or meat.”68 Certain pasta dishes of the grande cuisine, which acquired an international reputation at the turn of the nineteenth century, are indissolubly linked to personalities of the arts or the theater. While Rossini, the hero of countless culinary anecdotes, may have never used a syringe to fill his macaroni with foie gras, as the macaronic saga would have it, another colorful character from the Napoleonic era gave his name to a soup tasted and admired by none other than the taste for pasta 247

Grimod de la Reynière. In his Almanach des gourmands for 1804, the “Epître dédicatoire” (letter of dedication), which traditionally was addressed to an individual of especially meritorious achievement in the culinary arts, went to a Monsieur Camerani, director of programming at the Opéra Comique National, “formerly the Théâtre Italien,” and the inventor of a “potage de macaronis.” “Who does not know,” wrote the father of culinary literature, “that you possess the finest Macaroni recipe known; and that anyone who has tasted the macaroni that you sometimes deign to prepare with your own hands for your friends can never enjoy an ordinary plate of macaroni?”69 The actual recipe appears a few pages later: First you must obtain genuine macaroni from Naples, and excellent Parmesan cheese . . . excellent butter . . . about two dozen livers of fat chickens, of a reasonable size, celery and all sorts of soup vegetables, such as cabbages, carrots, parsnips, turnips, leeks, etc. You begin by mincing thoroughly the chicken livers, the celery, and the vegetables. Then cook them all in a saucepan with butter. At the same time, blanch the macaroni, season them with pepper and fine spices, and drain them very well. Then take the tureen with which you will serve at table, and which will also go on the fire. Arrange on the bottom a bed of macaroni. On top of that, a bed of the mince mentioned above. Last, a layer of grated Parmesan cheese. Then proceed according to the same order, and build up the layers of this construction right up to the rim of the tureen. Then return it to a low fire, and allow it all to bubble quietly for a reasonable period of time. This dish, “a delicious meal, and the cause of a fair number of cases of indigestion,” was, according to Grimod de la Reynière himself, “a soup that cost a great deal, but it was the best of its kind that one could eat, and truly outstanding in quality.”70 We find a series of macaroni pies in much the same spirit in Italian cookbooks of the period, for example, La vera cucina lombarda, published in 1890, and La vera cuciniera genovese, compiled a few decades earlier.71 Slightly less complex are the gratins, more rustic and unpretentious, which were to enjoy over the long term greater success in France even than in Italy, doubtless because Gruyère cheese is particularly well suited for the gratin but also because over the 248 the taste for pasta

course of the centuries the Italians managed to develop a much richer and more flavorful art of preparing pasta than ever existed in France, the supposed land of great cuisine.

Macaroni as a Marker of Italian Cuisine. The popularity and prestige of these great dishes gave a culinary luster to pasta as a whole and helped to establish Italy’s reputation as the promised land of pasta lovers. A great many foreigners who visited the peninsula in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries noticed the enormous importance of pasta in Italian cuisine, and they sometimes failed to understand the enjoyment the Italians found in this fairly modest food. “Those who are not well accustomed to this sort of soup could not eat it without some discomfort,” Jouvin de Rochefort warned in an account of his travels, published in 1762, revolted at the mere recollection of that “half-cooked” pasta.72 Jean-Baptiste Labat had an equally disappointing first experience, during a stop at San Remo, a major center of production of the famous pasta of Genoa. In the hotel where the Dominican monk took rooms, he was served “two chickens . . . buried under little bits of pasta known as macaroni, which I was told were excellent and fit morsels for a cardinal, boccone di cardinale. I could not eat them: the chickens had acquired a certain aroma from the pasta that made my gorge rise.” The odor in question was probably saffron, or a by-product of it, that producers used to dye pasta. Labat was able to get a more favorable idea of the Italian cuisine of pasta when he enjoyed that macaroni pie in Sicily. An observant traveler, Labat noted with interest and surprise the great quantity of pasta that was eaten in Italy, a “daily soup” for the Italians, some of whom “would sooner give up bread than macaroni or some other kind of pasta.” He asked the people he met about different methods of preparing macaroni, and he noted the various shapes and sizes. For instance, vermicelli, “little worms [that] are no thicker than a horse hair”; tagliolini and the “festaci” made like ribbons; the andarini, round as little bullets; and the selection of fine soup pasta, with the most varied array of shapes.73 If it appeared in the everyday menus of the hotels where Père Labat frequently dined, we must assume that pasta was a widespread food in Italy. In fact, it was already available in its manufactured form and had become a shared staple of all the inhabitants of the Italian peninsula, as demonstrated by the popularity of the expression “macthe taste for pasta 249

cheroni bene mio” (roughly, “macaroni, my blessing”), noted anecdotally by Jouvin de Rochefort. As we learned from Guglielmino Prato, the Piedmontese had been purchasing pasta from the producers of the Ligurian Riviera as far back as the seventeenth century, and it would probably be a safe bet that most of the kitchens in Asti kept on hand several pounds of dry pasta in case it became necessary to whip up a meal unexpectedly. This ready-to-cook foodstuff was a very useful resource, for both private families and for taverns and hotels, especially those located in isolated or inaccessible spots. When traveling from Florence to Bologna in the company of a young woman, Casanova and his companion stopped at an isolated post station in the Apennines, arriving completely exhausted at one in the morning. “We were dying of hunger and cold,” he wrote. “They told us there was nothing to eat. I laughed in the landlord’s face. He had butter, eggs, macaroni, rice, Parmesan cheese, bread, and good wine; and the idiot failed to see that we had everything we needed to make an excellent repast.”74 A staple foodstuff, pasta was also greatly appreciated on convivial occasions in this period. In Casanova’s day, there were “Macaronic Academies” scattered all over Italy, clubs of bon vivants who were also men of letters; the requirement for membership was the ability to improvise macaronic verse and the capacity to eat large portions of macaroni. When our adventurer arrived in Chioggia, he was invited to take part in the competition of the “macaronic academicians” of the town. Excited at the prospect of “gratifying the academy with the recitation of a bit of poetry and being a guest at the picnic,” he promptly accepted the invitation, and after “reciting ten stanzas” he was “unanimously elected a member.” That initial success was satisfying, but, as Casanova explained: “My success at the picnic was still greater, for I disposed of such a quantity of macaroni that I was found worthy of the title of prince of the academy.”75 The spread of pasta even affected regions such as Trentino, whose inhabitants seem to have been quite familiar with it. A manuscript collection of recipes, compiled toward the end of the eighteenth century by a priest, Don Felice Libera (1734–1792), offers numerous pasta dishes that are not very original but clearly form part of the culinary heritage of the region. Among the recipes described, some interest us primarily because they are written for “maccheroni di Puglia.” The compiler in some cases even uses the generic term, “pasta di Puglia,” which leaves no doubt about the expansion of the 250 the taste for pasta

pasta trade over the entire Italian peninsula.76 The everyday use of pasta that we begin to see in the eighteenth century was certainly not the rule for all Italians, but even then all the elements of the future gastronomic space that pasta would one day fill on a national scale are evident: it already served as the unifying theme par excellence of Italian cuisine. And, in this context, the pioneering role played by the Neapolitans is undeniable.

A Symbol of Working-Class Food. In the capital of southern Italy, the democratization of macaroni, which spread to the humblest hearths of the city, was complete by the turn of the eighteenth century. An amusing story that began to circulate in Naples in this period, which foreign visitors liked to repeat in the accounts of their travels, gives a measure of this development. Pulcinella (the Italian name for the classic character we call Punch or Punchinello) becomes king, and when he learns that he can no longer eat macaroni, deemed to be a lower-class food and therefore unsuited to his new and princely state, he retorts: “Mo, mo me sprincepo” (literally, I will quickly deprincefy myself). In other words, he would sooner abandon the throne than give up pasta. Certainly, to abdicate for a dish of pasta is perfectly in keeping with the character of this maschera of the commedia dell’arte, who symbolized the people in his grotesque role of the perpetually starving pauper, as cowardly and lazy as he is cynical and insolent. Aside from the conventional aspects of this anecdote, however, it shows that in Naples “macaroni is the everyday food of the populace,” as Jérôme de Lalande was able to confirm by direct observation during his travels in Italy in 1765–1766.77 The populace this traveler mentions did not yet include the mass of paupers and lazzaroni, the idle, tattered fauna of Naples that lived by expedients and trickery and fascinated visitors from everywhere; still, we can be sure that macaroni was by this point available even to those with modest incomes. Moreover, the substantial portion of the population that could not afford the best quality of pasta could in all likelihood purchase what nineteenth-century Neapolitans called “le minuzzaglie,” a term that described the “broken and leftover bits of various qualities of pasta,” as well as the lower qualities of macaroni, “which were sold to the poor at the lowest price, and which contained dirt, or a certain degree of acidity.”78 Upon his return to Naples following a trip to Sicily, Goethe wrote the taste for pasta 251

in his journal on May 29, 1787, that “the macaroni, the dough of which is made from a very fine flour, kneaded into various shapes and then boiled, can be bought everywhere and in all the shops for very little money.” After watching the macaroni vendors, who sold their wares steaming hot, straight from the cooking pot, he remarked that “as a rule, it is simply cooked in water and seasoned with grated cheese.”79 Set up for business in whatever shops they could secure, these countless maccaronari were already part of the cityscape and would soon became an essential fixture of Neapolitan folklore, along with the figure of the macaroni eater, who ate with his hands, often presented with the features of the lazzarone. “A man of the people goes to a macaroni vendor,” wrote Giuseppe Gorani in 1793, “and gets a wooden dish filled with this piping hot pasta, upon which grated cheese has been sprinkled: he takes the macaroni with his hands, twisting them around his fingers with a dexterity that foreigners rarely if ever succeed in imitating.”80 These everyday Neapolitan scenes would become, over the course of the nineteenth century, a tourist attraction for foreign travelers, duly indicated in guidebooks to and descriptions of Naples. In 1835 Andrea de Jorio, who wrote several books about his city, recommended that “any one who wants to see macaroni eaten Neapolitanstyle [that is, with the hands], should go in the late afternoon toward the Porta di Massa, along the Marinella and toward the Vicaria. If you will also agree to invite one of the customers and pay the tavernkeeper for a plate, then you will see how they eat, with greater enjoyment, and if not with the same elegance, certainly at least with as much nonchalance as the parasitic aristocrats.”81 All observers of Neapolitan life emphasized how simple it was to prepare macaroni. There was no question of using sugar and cinnamon, as in the sophisticated preparations served at the banqueting tables of the well-to-do. The only flavoring in the broth, according to Gorani, “consisted of a half-pound of pork grease melted in this enormous mass with a bit of salt,”82 and as Goethe rightly noted, the final flavoring was nothing more than a sprinkle of grated cheese. But it was precisely because they had long savored macaroni prepared in this simple manner that the people of Naples had so greatly cultivated a taste for the pasta itself, a refinement typical of connoisseurs who cared as much about the art of cooking as the art of flavoring, captured perfectly in Peter Kubelka’s apt definition of pasta as “an architecture for the mouth.” 252 the taste for pasta

from pasta that melts in your mouth to pasta al dente In the earliest medieval recipes, pasta was generally cooked in a broth of capon or meat on meat days and in water on lean days. Milk was sometimes used but only after a precooking in water, because “milk should not boil as long as vermicelli require.”83 Vermicelli with milk (vermicelli cum lacte) are prepared in a highly original manner: first they are browned in mutton or poultry fat, then they are doused with milk and “poured out three times until you have obtained the rough thickness desired.”84 Martino recommends cooking maccheroni romaneschi, or Roman-style macaroni, which are cut into “ribbons or strings” when the water or broth is already boiling,85 which already demonstrates genuine expertise, even though—much like his contemporaries, his predecessors, and his successors in the sixteenth century—he, too, cooked the pasta for a very long time.

The Taste of Pasta That Melts in Your Mouth. Vermicelli were cooked for an hour, and macaroni Sicilian-style were, according to different manuscripts, cooked for two hours, one hour, or even a half hour, without any indication of whether that spectacular reduction in cooking time is a matter of local custom, a reflection of a progression in culinary practice between the compilation of one manuscript and the next, or simply the result of a sloppy reading of the reference manuscript.86 For stuffed pasta, cooking times were not quite as long, but they were still considerably longer than the present-day norm. Martino variously recommends cooking ravioli for the time required to say “two Our Fathers,” for the time required to say “four Our Fathers,” and “for a half hour.”87 The sole exception comes in the directions for “white ravioli without pasta”: Martino recommends “boiling [them] slowly lest they break” and removing them as soon as the liquid returns to a boil.88 We cannot justify these lengthy cooking times by saying that they were intended for dry pasta, because even if we suppose that the pasta was dry (which is by no means certain in the context of professional chefs), modern-day pasta is equally dry, if not more so, and no one cooks it so long. In any case, that would not explain the lengthy cooking times prescribed for certain stuffed pastas. Rapid, light cooking is not recommended, in fact, for anything but the ravioli without pasta, the taste for pasta 253

which shows that Martino, certainly like his peers of the period, knew perfectly well how to control the cooking of foods. This was a deliberate choice, resulting from a taste for soft pasta, which in a sense confirms the preference for fresh pasta made with soft wheat flour. Subjected to this sort of cooking, pasta products made with flour, low in gluten by its nature and very fine by its milling, must have released much of their starch and become viscous. This consistency was categorized by the physicians of antiquity as glutinosa, and they attributed it to lasagne, which were placed in the same category as gruels and mushes.89 This makes it possible to understand the meaning of the proverbial Tuscan expression “thick as macaroni water” used at the end of the Middle Ages to describe people who were not very bright.90 The cooking times that we find so absurdly long, however, were also customary in that period because popular medical and dietetic recommendations recommended them. Arnaldus de Villanova, a Catalan physician of the thirteenth century, thought that pasta, whether fried or boiled, especially macaroni and vermicelli, should not be eaten too frequently, especially by temperate individuals, for they could lead to serious imbalances, such as bodily blockages or kidney stones. He therefore recommended that those who, despite everything, were determined to eat pasta, should “cook them for a long time and serve them with plenty of almond milk.”91 Medieval chefs adopted these dietetic notions and applied them conscientiously; Martino, for example, was careful to note in a sort of selfjustification at the end of the recipe for Sicilian-style macaroni: “These macaroni should boil for half an hour because all pasta should be well cooked.”92 The custom of long cooking times would last for several centuries before gradually fading away. For the “minestra di maccaroni alla romanesca,” literally Roman-style macaroni soup, Scappi recommends first cooking the pasta in water for half an hour, the time recommended by Martino, his predecessor and probably his source; however, he also invites the reader to taste the pasta and to let it cook longer if it is not sufficiently done after that time. And as if that were not enough, the chef arranges the pasta in three layers on a plate, with grated cheese between each layer, as well as sugar and cinnamon, sprinkling each layer with rose water, and then bakes the dish for half an hour, over hot coals, covered by another plate laid upside down over the first.93 The technique of baking over a slow fire, which would 254 the taste for pasta

be widely used by French chefs in the seventeenth century, seems to have been fully mastered by the time Scappi was writing and was quite common among the best chefs. Domenico Romoli made use of this method to finish cooking his ravioli in dough, which had first been cooked in a chicken broth. Cooking times were rarely specified in the culinary treatises of the Renaissance, but the indications that are given hint that medieval practices had lasted, though cooking procedures were more sophisticated. The goal for the most part was a melt-in-your-mouth dough, and if the dish was a stuffed pasta, as Romoli described, then baking made it possible to prolong the cooking without the risk of the pasta falling apart entirely. He is quite clear about this when he writes about ravioli in soup, for which he recommends rolling out a thin dough and then boiling the ravioli in a capon broth for a sufficiently long time, “out of respect for the dough,” which should then be allowed to sit in the broth, so that the ravioli “swell up nicely and the dough becomes softer and heavier.”94 The consensus in favor of soft pasta does not begin to show signs of crumbling until the turn of the seventeenth century, with the advent of a somewhat different culinary approach that had its roots outside the courtly environment. We see a clear intent to preserve the firm consistency of macaroni in Giovanni del Turco, an amateur chef who took on the task of simplifying the excessively complicated recipes, heavy in sugar and spices, of the great master Scappi. Without specifying the cooking time, which should be “adapted,” he recommends taking the pasta off the fire when it is perfectly cooked and to pour cool water over it, to “stiffen and solidify it.”95 This method, which was probably already quite common at the beginning of the modern era, would become standard practice with the spread of industrially made pasta and would remain customary in family kitchens in Italy and elsewhere. The development toward a shorter cooking time moved progressively but slowly, and this Florentine musician and gourmet appears quite isolated in his determination to break away from the tradition of soft pasta. At the end of the seventeenth century, all the same, two trends distinguished between methods of cooking typical of fresh pasta and methods peculiar to dry pasta. Antonio Latini appeared to be very concerned not to damage the consistency of the tagliolini di monica, the dough for which he had prepared himself, on the extrafine model of the pasta produced in convents. He recommended, in fact, “boiling it in a good broth, taking care not to let it cook too long, the taste for pasta 255

for the pasta is quite fine and needs to be cooked only lightly.”96 We find this same sensitivity to the fragility of the fine formats of fresh pasta in the writing of the anonymous author of the Cuoco piemontese (1766), who boiled his fresh tagliatelle very quickly and then dunked them into cold water, as Del Turco had done, to stop the cooking immediately. After the pasta was well drained, it was arranged in layers on a plate, seasoned with melted butter and grated cheese, and then baked au gratin in the oven.97 But short cooking times had still not truly won the war. Half a century later, Francesco Chapusot recommended cooking his fresh tagliatelle in boiling water for ten minutes and then, after seasoning them far from the fire, reheating them for ten more minutes over the live coals before serving them.98

Pasta al Dente for Everyone. Boiling followed by slow stewing remained the common practice in Italy until the middle of the nineteenth century, except in Naples. Without going so far as to cook the pasta for hours at a time, the great cooks were careful to serve their pasta well done—overcooked by present-day standards. It is amusing to see how some foreign visitors found Italian pasta to be badly undercooked. The French traveler Jouvin de Rochefort, who visited Italy in the middle of the seventeenth century, declared that he was disturbed by “that soup” in which the dough was barely “half cooked.”99 More than a century later, the anonymous author of the Cuoco piemontese—who was so solicitous of his fresh tagliatelle— offered a vermicelli soup in which the pasta was first boiled for a relative short time but the soup was then placed covered in front of the fire for a good quarter hour. Large formats of pasta were cooked for an extra half hour. Chapusot recommended testing whether the macaroni was done by touching it. And for his recipe for macaroni Frenchstyle, which was basically a macaroni pie, he first cooked the macaroni for three quarters of an hour, after breaking them into small pieces.100 Evidently, the great Piedmontese chef had failed to learn from his Neapolitan colleagues, who had long since understood that dry pasta made of durum wheat semolina is best enjoyed still “green”—in other words, not overcooked. This style of cooking pasta took root among the bourgeoisie as a contamination from working-class practice, in which the emblematic figure was the maccaronaro, who, in exchange for a very modest sum of money, would serve the passerby a dish of pipinghot macaroni at any hour of the day. It was probably in the streets and 256 the taste for pasta

alleys of Naples, where the maccaronaro plied his trade, that the culture of undercooking pasta was born, resulting in the preservation of all the pasta’s freshness and nerbo—its elasticity and chewiness. Not everyone, however, appreciated these qualities. Latini, for instance, who worked in the capital of the mangiamaccheroni, did not seem to be particularly interested in how the local specialty was cooked. For his minestra di Maccheroni di Cagliari, or “soup of macaroni from Cagliari,”101 the only dish in which he used dried pasta, he gives absolutely no directions about how to cook the macaroni. Just under 150 years later, the custom of undercooking pasta had become part of the culinary practice of respectable Neapolitan society. Ippolito Cavalcanti, known for his book Cucina teorico-pratica, published in 1839, was the first author to teach the art of cooking macaroni and other pasta in the Neapolitan style. He recommended cooking them a short time, so that they remained “green,” meaning quite firm, and especially warned that it was necessary to cook them “when the broth or water boils right in the middle, otherwise they will become gooey and will have no flavor.”102 The Neapolitan method of cooking pasta was gradually adopted throughout Italy following the political unification of the country, roughly in conjunction with the spread of industrially manufactured pasta. Writing about macaroni, Artusi had already learned the lesson of the Neapolitans, who “teach that they should be boiled in a large pot with plenty of water, and not for too long.”103 With this authoritative endorsement from the author of La scienza in cucina e l’arte di mangiar bene, short cooking became the norm, and after the First World War the expression “al dente” became the accepted way to describe its results. Popularized throughout the world by the Italian restaurants that spread everywhere in the second half of the twentieth century, pasta al dente became the most common messenger conveying the Italian model of cuisine.

pasta and its companions The taste of pasta is also a product of the sauces served with it, which offer a practically infinite variety of aromas and flavors. From the simple and perennial favorite, tomato sauce, to the most sophisticated timbales, from the countless regional specialties to the latest creations of five-star chefs, from the traditional process to accelerated preparation, the cuisine of pasta is made up of thousands of recipes, and the the taste for pasta 257

assortment of culinary interpretations for this single basic product is unparalleled. No other foodstuff offered directly by nature or created by human industry presents the same adaptability to combinations and associations of flavors and consistencies as does pasta. Whether fresh or dry, made of durum wheat semolina or soft wheat flour, with eggs, spinach, cuttlefish ink, or simply water, whether made by hand or mass-produced in automated factories, pasta in all its simplicity is a remarkable foundation for tastes. Neutral in flavor, pasta serves to bring out delicate aromas and to temper the effect of strong condiments. Simple by nature, it can be seasoned with little or nothing and readily lends itself to all sorts of combinations, whatever accompaniment one chooses. Anyone can cook pasta, and no matter how badly one respects the basic rules of cooking it, pasta still keeps its taste, its smell, and its nutritional value. The accompaniments of pasta products have histories of their own. Whether simple natural condiments or elaborate confections, they appear over the course of the centuries, intersecting with the history of pasta as associates in special circumstances or everyday accomplices, marking with their scent and flavor a specific recipe or lending themselves to all sorts of combinations. The companionship of pasta and cheese has been long-lasting and solid, a marriage made for love, consummated in the earliest phases of the cuisine of pasta. Later came sugar, omnipresent, as a final condiment or an integral ingredient in the refined pasta dishes of high court society, which used and abused it for two solid centuries. Last came the time of abundance and diversity, dominated by the bright red color and slightly acid taste of the tomato, which encountered no real resistance except where the rich flavors of butter and cream already reigned or where the bright green of basil had already marked its claim.

The Happy Wedding of Pasta and Cheese. Cheese is the earliest condiment for pasta of which we have documentation. Even before the earliest recipes were written, cheese with pasta was the delight of the bon vivants of the Middle Ages. Describing the eating exploits of a certain friar, Fra’ Giovanni of Ravenna, Salimbene of Parma declared that “he had never seen any one eat more greedily than the way he ate lasagne with cheese.”104 This was in the year 1284, at least two decades before the compilation of the earliest collection of recipes of the Italian tradition that has survived, the Liber de coquina—which includes a 258 the taste for pasta

recipe for lasagne with grated cheese.105 That was the most common way of serving pasta in the Middle Ages. The association is so profoundly ensconced in culinary custom that it is present in the fiction of greed. Let us recall the land of Bengodi, the land of Cockaigne in Boccaccio, where piping-hot macaroni and ravioli emerge from a cauldron of boiling rich broth atop a mountain of grated parmesan cheese, down which they roll, toward their eager consumers.106 Present in all the medieval collections of recipes that feature pasta, grated cheese was often mixed with spices. But not always: for example, though in his recipe for croseti the compiler of the Liber de coquina notes that “for lasagne and for croseti, a great quantity of grated cheese should be added,” in the lasagne recipe, he leaves the addition of spices up to the reader.107 Cheese and spices were used especially after cooking, sprinkled on just before serving. For ordinary ravioli with herbs, for instance, the anonymous author of a manuscript in fourteenth-century Venetian points out: “When they are ready, set them to cook and when they are quite done, sprinkle them with plenty of spices and a quantity of good cheese.”108 The number, quantity, and nature of these spices were rarely specified, but sometimes we find an indication of “sweet spices,” a blend that was usually composed of ginger, cinnamon, and cloves.109 Sometimes the recommendations were more imperative: “These tortelli must be yellow and strongly spiced, serve them in bowls with plenty of pepper and grated cheese,” ordered this fourteenth-century compiler for his tortelli in broth.110 The yellow color, of course, came from the saffron chefs used to dye the pasta. Although it was abandoned by the elite beginning in the seventeenth century, the mixture of cheese and spices continued in popular use. Pasta was served with a carpet of well-aged grated cheese in the taverns frequented by Père Labat at the turn of the eighteenth century. A careful observer of the culinary practices of the countries he visited, the Dominican monk stated that “sometimes a bit of cinnamon or powdered pepper is sprinkled on it.”111 In that period, the cheese was often accompanied by butter, at least for those who, like Casanova, had enough money to afford it. When he was a prisoner in Venice, he prepared with his own hands a dish of macaroni that was meant for another prisoner. “On St. Michael’s Day, Lorenzo appeared very early in the morning with a large cauldron of boiling macaroni; first I put some butter on the stove to melt, and I prepared my two dishes, sprinkled with Parmesan cheese, which he had brought, all the taste for pasta 259

grated.”112 Grimod de la Reynière also liked his pasta with cheese. “Cheese,” he wrote, “especially Parmesan cheese, gives an excellent taste to vermicelli, and it goes very well with all the other types of pasta. One would almost say that, since they both come from the same country, they are happy to be together; whatever the reason, the result of this attraction is a delicious soup.”113 On a less exalted plane, lard was added to the broth in place of butter. According to Gorani, Neapolitan macaroni vendors at the end of the Enlightenment knew no flavoring but a sauce made with broth enriched with pork grease and grated cheese.114 And David Silvagni wrote that, at the time when Italy was being unified into one country, in Naples people of the working class still ate their macaroni flavored with nothing but a bit of grated caciocavallo.115 The cuisine of pasta in this period had also begun to make ample use of sauces, developed in the context of regional and local styles of cuisine by the relatively well-to-do families of Italy’s middle and lower-middle classes, who never wholeheartedly subscribed to the ornamental and ostentatious gastronomical model of the highest classes of society.

Under the Sign of Sweetness. The sixteenth century was the golden age of the Italian sweet tooth, and the haute cuisine of the Italian court was dominated by the influence of sugar, which alone could amplify the force of the spices. The distinction between savory and sweet, so familiar to us now, was not pertinent in this period, and a meal would be composed of sweet and savory dishes mingled freely, while the concept of dessert had not yet been fully defined. The pasta dishes prepared in the great kitchens of the land, of course, kept pace with the spirit of the time. Sugar and spices, especially cinnamon, invaded the entire culinary process, from the making of the dough to the final flavoring, and they were massively present in the stuffings of ravioli and tortelli. Christoforo Messisbugo was the best representative of this new direction of Italian haute cuisine. For this top-ranked majordomo, who enjoyed a successful career at the court of the d’Este family, rulers of Ferrara in the first half of the sixteenth century, no cuisine qualified as noble and refined that did not consist of sweet and spicy foods. In his opinion, the proportion of sugar and spices had to increase as one rose along the social hierarchy.116 And so, when he borrowed certain recipes from his predecessors in the Middle Ages, he took special pains to 260 the taste for pasta

adapt them to the tastes of his time. In his recipe for macaroni Romanstyle, for instance, clearly borrowed from the recipe by Master Martino, he added to the usual mix of flour and water three ounces of sugar, three eggs, and the soft interior of a loaf of bread, soaked in rose water. While Martino served his macaroni flavored with a bit of fresh butter and sprinkled with cheese and sweet spices, Messisbugo added abundant quantities of sugar and cinnamon to the grated cheese.117 In the stuffing for a tortelli recipe, the quantities of sugar and spices were still more massive. To one-and-a-half pounds of meat, twelve eggs, and almost two pounds of grated cheese, he added one-and-a-half ounces of cinnamon, more than a pound of raisins and three-quarters of a pound of sugar. Ravioli made with a fine dough colored with saffron were served, alone or covering poultry, sprinkled with twelve ounces of cinnamon.118 At the end of the recipe, however, he took care to add that the ravioli could also be made without sugar. Chefs of the Renaissance preserved the principle of a final dusting but added sugar to the basic mixture of cheese and spices and reduced the spices to cinnamon. Sometimes the mixture was replaced by a blend of only sugar and cinnamon. Although Scappi made less generous use of this combination, his pasta recipes still bore the mark of that age’s preference for a sweet cuisine. Taking his inspiration from his predecessors Martino and Messisbugo, he offered his own interpretation of the soup of macaroni Roman-style: like Messisbugo, he added breadcrumbs and sugar to the dough, and once the macaroni were cooked he arranged them in layers in a dish that had already been sprinkled with grated cheese, sugar, and cinnamon, interleaving the macaroni with fresh cheese and pats of butter and wetting the whole assembly with rose water. Then he covered the plate and left it to stew for a half hour before serving it.119 The immense corpus of recipes from the Renaissance does contain a few rare pasta preparations that are not totally dominated by sugar. For his poached ravioli, Romoli limited himself to a mixture of cheese and cinnamon alone, though he added sugar to his fried ravioli. And there are already some references to flavoring pasta with special sauces or gravies, the preparation of which would in time come to constitute the other great branch of the cuisine of pasta.

Every Day Has Its Sauce. Romoli served pappardelle without condiment as an accompaniment to rabbit, which he served with a the taste for pasta 261

“savor di peverada,” or pepper sauce. It is true that the pappardelle were cooked in the broth that had been used to cook the rabbit, which should be “dark and full of blood.”120 Scappi, who was not a helpless slave to his sweet tooth when it came to pasta, flavored his Lenten macaroni with an agliata, or garlic mince, “made with crushed walnuts, cloves of garlic, pepper, and crustless bread soaked in hot water,” or else with a green sauce made of aromatic herbs and soaked crustless bread; this had a slightly acid taste and was generally served with boiled or roasted meat and fish.121 Beginning in the Renaissance, new methods of preparing and eating pasta began evolving at the level of everyday, domestic cooking practiced outside the narrow circle of the aristocratic court. Del Turco, differing from his prestigious predecessors and sources, abandoned the use of sugar, though he remained faithful to the use of cinnamon as flavoring. He served his maccheroni and maccheroni alla veneziana, or macaroni Venetian-style, simply flavored with a bit of melted butter and sprinkled with “parmesan cheese” and cinnamon.122 In the same period, Sister Maria Vittoria della Verde, the head chef for the nunnery of San Tommaso in Perugia, used a walnut sauce made with crushed walnuts softened with a bit of the pasta’s cooking water and then spiced with some pepper and saffron. This sauce, which appears for the first time in writing in this nun’s recipe as an accompaniment for pasta, has roots in local culinary practices and differs from place to place. In the Apennines around Parma, it was traditionally made with ricotta and used especially as a sauce for pegai, a type of lasagne made with a blend of wheat flour and chestnut flour used as the first course for Christmas meals. Nowadays, a walnut cream sauce is used in the Genoese area, and, according to Il diario della massaia (Housewife’s diary), published in 1933, it was customary in Latium to eat macaroni with a walnut sauce: the walnuts were set to soak until they could be reduced to a thick paste, whereupon they would be blended with breadcrumbs and sugar.123 All the way to the north of the Italian peninsula, one can find other practices in the little book of home economics written by a grocer from Asti, Guglielmino Prato, who is the earliest author known to have identified culinary practices with certain regions in his writing. He identified a dozen different ways of preparing macaroni (which he preferred to prepare with flour mixed with breadcrumbs and soaked in milk), some of which are not found in any other sources. Consider the giblet fricassee made with duck liver and giblets first roasted and 262 the taste for pasta

then simmered in a bit of meat broth flavored with Malvasia wine; or the sauce made with very finely minced lamb, browned in a bit of lard and then cooked over a low fire, moistened with broth and white wine. Also quite original was a preparation of onions, celery, and leeks, enriched with finely chopped carrots and parsley and finally mixed with boiled green beans. Another recipe features chopped onions fried over a high flame in lard and soaked in milk; this mixture is then simmered over a low flame until it has been entirely reduced. And once the macaroni had been flavored with this sauce, they were sprinkled with grated cheese, pepper, and cinnamon. For lean days, Guglielmino Prato suggested preparing macaroni with Spanish anchovies and pepper from India, otherwise known as peperoncino (chili pepper), “adding fresh butter but no cheese.” But the most surprising and interesting recipe of them all is for macaroni with fresh pork, poultry, or rabbit blood, mixed with marzipan or sweet biscuits and raisins.124 The use of fresh blood was long customary in many preparations typical of Piedmontese cuisine, which includes among its specialties lasagne with rabbit blood. At the dawn of the new millennium, it is safe to presume that this tradition is less common than it might have been in the nineteenth century, when the Milanese chef Giovanni Felice Luraschi offered an interpretation of lasagne with rabbit blood very likely inspired by the Lombard or Piedmontese cuisine of the time.125 The rich palette of preparations that we find in early-seventeenthcentury Piedmont in the writings of this grocer from Asti certainly hints at the existence of pronounced culinary regionalism in the cuisine of pasta. There are not sufficient sources to allow us to evaluate the scope of that regionalism, but the regional cookbooks that appeared in the nineteenth century make clear reference, on the one hand, to local specialties with a strong regional identity and, on the other hand, to the expansion of the culinary region characterized by sauces and gravies, some of which had spread well beyond their zones of origin. The examples of pesto and tomato sauce illustrate both trends.

Green as Basil. The earliest written recipe for pesto was published, to the best of our knowledge, in the Vera cuciniera genovese in 1863, but in the medieval Italian tradition there are preparations that share the conceptual structure of pesto and can be considered forerunners of the great Genoese specialty. How can one help but see an early verthe taste for pasta 263

sion of pesto in the compound served with macaroni Genoese-style described in a manuscript by Martino? After telling the reader how to make the macaroni, the compiler gives the recipe for the sauce that goes with it, made with parmesan cheese, fresh cheese, and arugula chopped very fine.126 This is the only medieval recipe we have found that mixes cheese and a strong-smelling herb as a condiment for pasta, and the connection between the pronounced flavor of arugula and the very aromatic taste of basil, a plant that was not yet in use in the Middle Ages, seems obvious. This recipe, moreover, is specifically described as Genoese in origin. As it was described toward the middle of the nineteenth century by G. B. and G. Ratta, father and son, pesto made with garlic and basil is not very different from the pesto that we enjoy today, except that perhaps it used more garlic and did not include pine nuts. The authors specified that this preparation was ideal for “seasoning on days of abstinence lasagne, taglierini, and gnocchi” and go on to offer a recipe for macaroni al pesto.127 Described by two Genoese authors in a book that claims to be the archetype of genuine Genoese cuisine, pesto was so deeply rooted in local culinary custom that it seemed to be unknown outside the region’s borders. Artusi says nothing about it in his Scienza in cucina e l’arte di mangiar bene, and, even more significant, there is no mention of pesto preparations in the two volumes of the Diario della massaia, in which numerous regional specialties were included in the menus given for each day of the year. Pesto remained a regional specialty for a long time, and even now it is relatively uncommon outside Liguria, save for on the French Riviera, where it is known as pistou and added to a summer soup containing pasta. Tomato sauce, however, followed a radically different path and quickly established itself as the ideal companion for pasta throughout Italy.

Tomato Sauce; or, Pasta in the Colors of the South. By the time pasta encountered the tomato, it already had centuries of culinary tradition behind it, but its association with this colorful fruit from across the Atlantic became so universally popular that it seems to have been retroactively incorporated into the very laws of nature. Their first meeting is shrouded by the mists of time, and the early relations of this couple with such a bright future are known only through indirect and exceedingly rare documentation. Common opinion has it that 264 the taste for pasta

their wedding was held in a teeming alley in the lower-class quarters of Naples or at the very least somewhere in southern Italy, and all things considered this seems like a very plausible scenario. In fact, if the beautiful American import began its conquest of the Old World from Spain, it was certainly in Naples that it first made its entry into haute cuisine through the front door, as a main ingredient, and from that day forward the meeting between tomato and pasta was inevitable, or, to use the words of Jeanne Carola Francesconi, “fatal, like the destiny of two lovers born one for the other.”128 Credit goes, in fact, to Antonio Latini, born in the Marche region and Neapolitan by adoption, for having elevated to culinary triumph this fruit, still considered an exotic curiosity and regarded by Latini’s predecessors, both Italian and Spanish, with a degree of suspicion. As early as 1592, however, a Spanish botanist had recommended using the tomato in sauces, announcing that it was well suited for that purpose, but not a chef or cook in the kingdom was willing to follow his advice, and on the rare occasions they did make use of the tomato, it was strictly in a secondary role, as a garnish or small side dish.129 In Latini’s time, the tomato remained a “Spanish” product, and it was as a marker of Spanishness that Latini used it in his recipes, which he systematically entitled “alla spagnuola” whenever tomato was used as a ingredient. And so it was with the salsa di pomodoro alla spagnuola, or Spanish-style tomato sauce, a variation of which he offered under the subtitle “to make another Spanish-style sauce.” This was a sort of salad made with very ripe tomatoes lightly grilled over live coals, peeled and chopped fine, blended with a mince of onions, wild thyme, and chili pepper, and seasoned with oil, vinegar, and salt. The earliest surviving written recipe for a tomato-based preparation, this “sauce” was presented by its creator (or compiler?) as “quite tasty for boiled meats or other dishes.”130 Of course, we are very far from the classic tomato sauce of the present day, but Latini blazed a path that his successors would explore in greater depth. One century later, when we can accurately gauge the state of Neapolitan cuisine in Il cuoco galante (1773), the tomato had clearly won the battle and significantly expanded its culinary range of action. Vincenzo Corrado, who felt that “tomatoes are nice to eat,” offered more than a dozen preparations, ranging from tomato fritters to tomato croquettes and tomatoes stuffed with rice and truffles or anchovies.131 And yet the tomato had still not been combined with pasta, not, at the taste for pasta 265

any rate, in high-level cuisine, which is the only kind of cuisine of that period about which we know much, though this hardly proves that the two foods had not yet been joined. Oddly enough, documentation of the use of a tomato sauce to accompany pasta comes from France; it dates back to Napoleonic times and bears the signature of Grimod de la Reynière. “It is possible to mix purées and cheese with vermicelli, and sometimes, in autumn, one can replace them successfully with tomatoes,” he wrote in L’almanach des gourmands. And he justifies the practice, which he implicitly compares to Italian customs: “The juice of this fruit or vegetable (as one prefers to call it) communicates to the soups to which it is added a very agreeable acidity, which generally is found pleasing by those who are accustomed to it. For that matter, it goes even better with rice than with pasta.”132 A few decades later, Ippolito Cavalcanti revealed the secret of the timbale of vermicelli, a luscious Neapolitan specialty in which, for the first time, tomatoes were associated with pasta in a recipe. The author, a duke by birth and a fine gourmet by nature, became an uncompromising defender of the Neapolitan art of living and recommended using “tomatoes, whether dry or fresh, so easy to find in our lovely land” or else availing oneself of tomato preserves.133 The use of tomato preserves was quite common in Italy at this time. In his Manuale del cuoco e del pasticciere, published in 1832, Vincenzo Agnoletti, officer of the pantry and the liquor cabinet in Parma, offered his recipes for preparations of preserved tomatoes, among them, a sauce made with dried tomatoes, fresh tomato preserves, dried tomato preserves, and even tomato preserves in bricks. But this food professional working for Marie Louise of Austria, grand-duchess of Parma, did not use any of these preparations as flavoring for pasta. And so it really was the Neapolitans who first ventured to put the tomato together with pasta, and we find this classical association in the second half of the nineteenth century in various works of regional cuisine. While the authors of the Vera cuciniera genovese seem to have preferred pesto and a “veal sauce” for flavoring their lasagne and gnocchi, they did not fail to offer, all the same, a recipe for a simple tomato sauce that could be used to flavor all sorts of dishes, probably pasta among them.134 The author of the Cuoco milanese, which was published in 1863, suggested a tomato sauce,135 and a tomato sauce for soups also appears in the Vera cucina lombarda,136 published in 1890, just one year before the advent of the culinary bible written by Artusi, where, of course, tomato sauce is present, with one special 266 the taste for pasta

variant on the tomato sauce being used to flavor Neapolitan-style macaroni.137 Endorsed by the old gastronome of Florence, tomato sauce was to become an indispensable fixture of pasta products, and it was garbed in their “scarlet mantle” that macaroni “set off on a voyage that would take them to every country on earth.”138

pasta on the menu The dichotomy whereby pasta was at the same time a food for the rich and a staple in the subsistence diet of the poor extended to the position it occupied in the order of the meal. At the tables of the well-todo, pasta was always part of a multicourse menu, but over time it passed from its status as one soup among many to the role of side dish or garnish and finally to the stature of primo, becoming in a way the archetypal soup and the absolutely fundamental element of an Italian meal. In modest kitchens, by contrast, when pasta was on the menu, it was the only dish in the meal.

A Complete Repast. The concept of a dish of pasta serving as the only course in a full meal has existed for centuries and is not limited to humbler consumers. This view of pasta extends from the Middle Ages right up to the Second World War, and it has found a modern translation in the spaghetterie of tourist towns in Italy and elsewhere. Medieval literature depicts pasta as a delicacy that was quite sufficient to satiate the food lover and symbolized a meal. It was a banquet of lasagne that Fra’ Giovanni da Ravenna lavished on himself, under the half-reproving, half-amused eye of the chronicler Salimbene of Parma.139 The ideal meal in the land of Bengodi was an endless abundance of macaroni and ravioli, and the two heroes of Franco Sacchetti share between them a single plate of macaroni.140 We know moreover that macaroni were long the sole dish, the “national food of the Neapolitans,” as Alberto Consiglio once put it.141 The viceroys would offer the populace an abundant macaroni dinner every so often in order to keep in favor. On January 13, 1617, for example, the duke of Ossuna, viceroy of the realm, gave a great banquet for the working classes in the Gardens of Poggioreale. Ten thousand people attended, and according to the chronicler, upon seeing them all eating macaroni with their hands, “His Excellency was the taste for pasta 267

greatly amused.”142 In the following century, the “man of the people” always ate a plate of macaroni for his daily meal, consuming it “in public” with only a “large goblet of sugar water,” a sight that, according to Gorani, never failed to evoke gales of laughter.143 According to David Silvagni, who in 1872 observed scenes of everyday life in Naples, “a worker lived with few expenses: he would eat once a day, consuming a third of a kilogram of macaroni flavored with a bit of cheese and some green vegetables that he would boil and flavor with a bit of oil and salt.”144 In the same period, macaroni was the traditional primo of the daily meal of the well-to-do families of Naples.

Pasta as a Side Dish and Heaped on Poultry. Artusi noted with a mischievous wink that the Neapolitans, unlike most Italians, “cook pasta and serve meat as a side dish.”145 This was not entirely true, but the witticism served to emphasize the importance of macaroni in the Neapolitan diet. Artusi’s jest also indicates that in his time pasta was usually served as a side dish to meat, a custom he himself did not recommend that remained in force for many centuries and survives outside Italy to the present day. Romoli, remember, served hare accompanied by pappardelle.146 But the culinary art of the Renaissance, of which he was one of the most respected protagonists, featured especially the idea of pasta served as a covering for poultry poached in a broth. This presentation, which would persist right up to the Enlightenment, seems to have become widespread between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, beginning in Spain. In Baldus (1517), a burlesque and satirical account written in kitchen Latin, Teofilo Folengo conjures up the feverish activity of a remarkable kitchen scene in which, among the numerous actors involved, there is one who “soaks the ducklings in a yellowish marinade and then covers them with tender lasagne, in the Spanish manner.”147 It is hard to say if the founder of the school of macaronic literature is talking about Spain or the kingdom of Naples, so long under Spanish domination, but it is clear that the custom enjoyed a great popularity in Italy. From Cristoforo Messisbugo, a contemporary of Folengo, to Antonio Latini, who wrote his cookbook at the end of the seventeenth century, all the professional cooks serving in the great homes of the Italian peninsula served poultry “covered with pasta.” Aside from his “meat-day tortelletti, excellent either by themselves or for covering ducks, pigeons, or other 268 the taste for pasta

poultry,” Messisbugo used tortelli Lombard-style to cover poultry, as well as macaroni Neapolitan-style or lasagne and other types of tagliatelle.148 Domenico Romoli described, among other dishes, a boiled capon covered with macaroni or pasta such as ravioli or anolini, although he specified that in his view it was best to stick with macaroni; his book Singolar dottrina also contains a description of tortelli being used to cover boiled meat.149 This tells us a great deal about the importance of the practice, for which dishes other than pasta could be employed, such as blanc-manger. We find the same custom in Scappi, who, in the chapter on boiled capons, suggests serving them covered with tortelli and other types of pasta.”150 Vincenzo Cervio, a carver parfait of great renown, who completed and published his treatise Il trinciante in 1581, served great banquets with capons en croûte covered with anolini and boiled turkey hens covered with naked ravioli.151 The custom of covering fowls with pasta became widespread beginning in the eighteenth century and was even adopted by hotels. When Père Labat ordered a fowl in an Italian inn during his voyage through the peninsula, it came buried under a thick layer of macaroni. This was his first opportunity to taste the famous Italian macaroni, but he was none too impressed. We should also mention a dish of braised beef covered with Apulian macaroni described by a priest from Trentino, Don Felice Libera, in his handwritten collection of recipes from the late eighteenth century,152 testimony to the spread of this fashion throughout Italy.

The Invention of the Primo. Pasta became a culinary category at the very beginning of the modern era, but it did not become a menu category until the turn of the twentieth century, after a slow evolution during which it acquired a major role in the Italian meal. Pasta was long relegated to a subalternate role, both because of the modest basic materials and fundamental nature of the foodstuff but also because of the very structure of menus that prevailed in Italy and the rest of Europe until the second half of the nineteenth century. Without even discussing the European banquet, which involved a gigantic procession of dishes, the everyday menu of high society, as it was described in the Renaissance by Domenico Romoli, was based on a succession of four courses, corresponding more or less to hors d’oeuvres, entrées, rôtis, and fruits (antipasti, lessi, fritto, and frutta) of the French the taste for pasta 269

menu, each including a selection of four or five different dishes. When pasta appeared on the menu, prepared as a dish in its own right, it either formed part of the entrée course or was served at the beginning of the meal. This placement, which already hinted at the coming role of the primo, was not yet entirely consolidated in the Renaissance, because even Romoli himself integrated pasta into different servings: thus pappardelle Roman-style was served at the end of the meal with the fruit, a course that included a collection of sweet and salty dishes, while the macaroni browned Florentine-style appeared with the rôtis.153 Pasta’s place at the beginning of a meal was confirmed over the course of the eighteenth century in haute cuisine and entered into domestic practice in the nineteenth century. The anonymous author of Cuoco piemontese served all his pasta soups as entrées or appetizers. Chapusot did the same, and in his time it was impossible not to notice that in Naples the dominant role of macaroni was at the beginning of a meal. In elegant society, pasta was left out of the menu twice or possibly three times a week, replaced with one or two supplementary dishes.154 No one would have thought of serving pasta as anything other than an entrée and certainly never as a side dish. The custom spread. Already Artusi began all his meals with a soup, primarily pasta dishes. Although it was not yet called a primo, the custom had become fairly well established. And we all know the brilliant future that awaited this first course.

270 the taste for pasta

CHAPTER NINE

China: Pasta’s Other Homeland We begin this chapter on China with the “Ode to Bing,” to which we will refer often. Its author is Shu Xi (264?–304?), a great scholar highly regarded by his contemporaries. He was entrusted in a.d. 281 with the compilation of the Annals Written on Bamboo, the lost historical chronicle of the kingdom of Wei in Shanxi, fragments of which were rediscovered in a tomb in 279, that recounts events that took place between the third millennium b.c. and 299 b.c. Shu Xi also composed numerous odes devoted to themes as varied as the pleasure of reading, the art of living far from the cares of the world, the poverty of peasants, and the encouragement of agriculture. The “Ode to Bing” is the longest of all his works.1 In the treatises of the Liji [Rites] and Zhouli [Zhou rites], it is stated that the emperor ate wheat in the second month of spring and that the morning offering baskets contained cooked wheat. But bing never appeared among the dishes mentioned in the Neize chapter of the Liji. Although eating wheat was

discussed, bing did not yet exist. The advent of the bing, then, is a recent phenomenon. Whether we are talking about angan, juru, or other fritters, Pasta in the shape of dog tongues or piglet ears, Dagger laces, cupping glasses, Or else butou and candles, Some were baptized in the alleyways; There are others whose style comes from other areas. At the turn of the third month of spring, When yin makes way for yang, The cold winds die away, And the heat has not yet risen to the level of the dog days, Then it is time to invite friends to dinner And to prepare mantou. When the fire god rules the land And yang is at its height, Dressed in light cloth, quenching thirst with ice water, Seeking out the cool of the shade, That is when the bing that one eats Are the bozhuang. When the autumn wind becomes violent And Antares tends toward the west, Beasts and birds fluff up their down and their fur, Trees strip off their mantles, One prefers to savor little dishes hot, And it is wise to offer qisou. When the hoarfrost of midwinter Makes it so that everyone you meet in the early morning Has a freezing drop on the nose, Frosting the exhaled breath, In order to soothe the shivering and quench the hunger, There is nothing like the tangbing. Each of these preparations has its own season. Those who respect this will surely benefit; 272 china: pasta’s other homeland

Those who upset the proper order Will be unable to profit from their qualities. Only the laowan From winter to summer Can be prepared all year long And are meet for all four seasons Without unpleasantness. Flour sifted twice, Flying snow of white powder, In a stretchy, sticky dough Kneaded with water or broth, it becomes shiny. For the stuffing, pork ribs or shoulder of mutton, Fat and meat in proper proportion, Cut into small bits, Like gravel or the pearls of a necklace. Ginger root and onion bulb Are cut into a fine julienne, Sprinkled with wild ginger and cinnamon ground fine, Boneset and Szechuan pepper, All mixed with salt and seasonings, Blended into a single ball. Then water is set to boil over the fire. Waiting for the steam to rise, We hitch up our clothes, we roll up our sleeves, And we knead, and we shape, and we smooth, and we stretch. Finally the dough detaches from our fingers, Under the palm it is perfectly rolled out in all directions And without a break in the haste and hurry The stars separate and hailstones fall. In the basket, no spattered stuffing. On the bing not a trace of extra dough. Perfectly lined up, of great beauty, Without breaking, the dough is fine and thin. It swells so that one can guess at the stuffing below, Soft as silk floss in the springtime, White as autumn silk, cooked just in time.

china: pasta’s other homeland 273

The steam billows out into a swelling cloud. The aroma flies in the air and flees into the distance, Trailing away, making the loiterer’s mouth water. Chewing empty-mouthed, the pages glance sidelong, While roustabouts and servants licking their lips, Dry-throated, they gulp in chorus. To dip them into a black sauce, We grip them with ivory chopsticks; Back stretched tight like a tiger waiting in ambush, We sit close, knee against knee, flank against flank. As soon as the dishes are served they are emptied. The cooks slip off and redouble their activity. Their hands are not yet freed, And new requests arrive. Lips and teeth in unison, The mouth gulps down easily. They must serve three times Before the whirlwind is placated and ceases. How did so many contented eaters of millet gruels become greedy consumers of wheat-flour pasta? The transition from eating one type of cereal to another, or from grains of cereal to flour, is by no means an obvious step. In fact, the Chinese continued to eat millet even when wheat had been a familiar crop in the basin of the Yellow River for many long centuries. Thus in China the history of wheat-flour–based foodstuffs is first of all an account of the slow diffusion of a little-known cereal, from west to east, over a period of nearly three thousand years,2 and then from north to south, beginning with the later Han dynasty (a.d. 23–220).Wheat was a foreign cereal, and moreover it was confused with barley, another non-native cereal, described with the same word, mai, until the first century b.c. During the period in which people began to distinguish between the two cereals, we also begin to find in a few rare texts the word bing to describe a new category of food, quite probably made with wheat flour. Occurrences of this word increase in frequency until the third century a.d., which marks the advent of a veritable civilization of bing. The word bing, however, should be understood as a generic term for all dishes made with kneaded wheat flour, including pasta products and also flatbreads and breads. 274 china: pasta’s other homeland

For more than ten centuries, the single word bing served to indicate all wheat-based dishes with a defined shape, as well as becoming the general term for all cereal-based preparations or even any foods that could take on an identifiable shape. In fact, the characteristic peculiar to wheat flour, thanks to its gluten content, of producing a moldable paste when mixed with water was crucial to the considerable popularity enjoyed by bing during the first few centuries of the Christian era. In the sixth century, the earliest recipes for bing, especially those for pasta products, already indicate a remarkable mastery of this material and of the techniques for its preparation, in particular the soaking of the dough ball, which eliminated some of the starch and consequently yielded a dough of great elasticity. With the passage of time, the category of bing became so diverse that, by the end of the Tang dynasty in the tenth century, the word bing had lost its generic sense and could no longer be used for anything but flatbreads. Pasta products had come to be called mian, from the word that means “wheat flour.” Considered a specialty of northern China, wheat-flour pasta was later widely adopted throughout the Yangzi basin in the wake of the political turmoil that followed the steady inroads of the Mongols beginning in the tenth century that culminated in the fall of the capital in 1179. In the culinary cross-pollinizing that followed, the array of pasta products broadened considerably. Pasta also became a more refined foodstuff, requiring new techniques that made it possible to create extremely thin sheets of dough. At the same time, the culinary preparations, which had become exceedingly varied, began to incorporate many of the finest ingredients found in a southern climate. From this era through the end of the Yuan dynasty (1260–1368) and the beginning of the Ming dynasty (1368–1644)—after the inclusion in certain culinary treatises of foreign, especially Arab, recipes, which indicated a willingness to adopt foreign ways that must have been encouraged by the Mongol court—the civilization of pasta products continued to develop without any particular revolutionary changes. Under the Ming dynasty, pasta products became increasingly popular and spread over the entire territory of China. Each region developed its own specialties, and, with the exception of a few very special formats whose renown spread across provincial borders, pasta products came to be viewed as working-class dishes, limited to local cuisines. The history of pasta in China could be thought to stop there, since its production did not develop into an industrial process china: pasta’s other homeland 275

as it did in Italy but remained a domestic or artisanal matter right up to the twentieth century. The Chinese tradition of making pasta rests on three essential factors that derive from its ancient history and in turn affected that history. First, China is the site of a unique civilization of fresh pasta, though the expression “fresh pasta” should be taken in its most literal meaning: pasta products were most often immediate preparations, meant to be cooked the instant they were made or even as they were being made. Durum wheat was unknown in China, which decidedly did not encourage the development of any significant production of dried pasta. Second, it was in China that, for the first time and very early, gluten was isolated from wheat flour, and the use of this substance, with its exceptional elasticity and its remarkable nutritional qualities, began to be explored, especially in vegetarian cuisine. Finally, the Chinese were also the first to develop and perfect techniques for the production of pasta products from the starches of a great variety of cereals other than wheat, as well as those of legumes, tubers, and rootstalks. This aptitude of the ancient Chinese for learning, appreciating, and analyzing the various possibilities of cerealbased products allowed them to recognize immediately the benefits that could be obtained from a material such as wheat flour.

of pasta, breads, and flatbreads: the

BING

paradigm

Starting with the earliest written citation of the word bing in the first century of the Christian era, lexicographers have done their best to explain the underlying reasons behind the creation of this new category of foods made from kneaded dough. Early Chinese scholars came to the conclusion that pasta products could not date back to earliest antiquity, based on the absence in the Confucian Five Classics of both the word mian (wheat flour) and the term bing.3 These standard texts, compiled between the ninth and seventh centuries and the fourth and third centuries b.c., were considered until the nineteenth century to be the oldest Chinese writings, as well as the most revered. The names for cereal-based preparations made with millet were amply represented, and since the absence of a word meant the object it described was comparatively unknown, this implies that wheat-based dishes were new. If they had lived in the present day, these curious scholars would instead have begun their research by consulting the turtle plastron and oracle276 china: pasta’s other homeland

bone inscriptions,4 the thousands of fragments of bovine bones and tortoise shells, etched with written marks, that date back to the fourteenth through eleventh centuries b.c. and were unearthed at the very end of the nineteenth century. These ancient documents, which constitute the earliest Chinese writings now known, contain no word referring to wheat dough or wheat flour, while terms for certain cereals, such as millet, wheat, or barley, are well represented. The first written documentation indicating the existence of a preparation of this sort dates to between the fourth and second centuries b.c. The word bing appears in the Mozi, a work of the Mohist school of philosophy, which was a rival of the Confucian school.5 In it, we read the strange story of a wealthy landowner who possessed vast herds of cattle and sheep and, despite having enough material wealth to satisfy all his desires, could not withstand the temptation to seize unceremoniously bing that he saw being prepared at other people’s houses.6 This fable, which tells us nothing about the nature of these immensely desirable bing, was a moral tale meant to assist in the training of a prince, who should not, like some unrepentant glutton, covet neighboring kingdoms, especially when he already rules over an immense territory that has scarcely been exploited. The story is quite instructive: we learn that in this period bing could provoke greed and be appreciated by aristocrats and the wealthy. It is not until the reading manual Jijiu pian, drawn up in the first century b.c., that we learn a little more. We should assume that by this point this kind of food was relatively well known, because it is mentioned in a document intended for the widest possible circulation whose contents clearly assume a general familiarity, even among children. What are we told in this short educational treatise designed to instruct Chinese children destined one day to become scholars about the things of the world and the names of familiar things and objects? Among the very ordinary foodstuffs mentioned in short, rhyming lists, we find a group of four cereal-based dishes. The word bing appears first, followed by the names of three other grain-based dishes:7 a type of cake that was quite probably made with millet,8 a dish of wheat or barley kernels cooked whole, and a sweet soup of soy beans. The commentator of this text, Yan Shigu (a.d. 581–645) added some interesting explanations concerning both the status of these dishes and their method of preparation. In his view, the dish of wheat or barley and the soy bean soup are peasant or country dishes. Should we surmise, then, that the first two dishes, the millet cake and the bing, were china: pasta’s other homeland 277

considered to be first-choice dishes intended for elite settings?9 Concerning the preparation of the bing, Yan Shigu explained that a mixture was made of mian (wheat) flour and water and then steamed. This information was completed by a remark concerning the perfect harmony of the ingredients that made up the bing. (We shall return to this characteristic, mentioned as early as the first citations of the word and a recurring element in the definitions and the explanations offered in connection with it.) We also know that, in this same period, the word bing had two dialect synonyms, as was noted in a dictionary compiled in this same period, Fangyan (Dialects). Unfortunately, we do not know in what regions these terms were common.10 With the passage of time, mentions of bing became increasingly precise and more frequent. Thus, at the very beginning of the second century a.d., in the first true dictionary of Chinese characters, Shuowen jiezi (Explanation of simple characters and interpretation of compound characters), bing was defined as a “cake made of wheat flour.”11 The word that we translate as “cake,” for lack of a better choice, was used in antiquity to indicate a refined millet-based dish reserved exclusively for the king, as stated in the Liji and Zhouyi, of the fourth and third centuries b.c.12 By that definition, we learn that bing belonged to the family of cereal-based dishes, “fashioned in a certain shape,” such as cakes and all foods made with a kneaded wheat-flour dough. At the turn of the third century, bing made their definitive appearance in the lives of the northern Chinese, as is documented by the dictionary Shiming (Explanations of names). The author, who attempted to make “realities” correspond with their “denominations,” in the spirit of the ancient Confucian doctrine of Rectifying the Names,13 wanted to solve the mystery of words by finding a moral justification for them in terms of the realities that they represent.14 In his view, the dishes called bing were the product of a “well-blended” mixture of flour and water. He listed at least the names of seven different bing, all formed according to the morphological model “x bing,” where x is an identifying qualifier. There were “barbarian bing” (hubing), shaped like tortoise shells; “steamed bing” (zhengbing); “broth bing” (tangbing), bing in broth; “scorpion bing” (xiebing), in the shape of scorpions; “marrow bing” (suibing), in the shape of or made with marrow; “gold bing” (jinbing), in the shape of gold ingots;15 and “lace bing” (suobing), in the shape of laces. The commentary adds that “all these bing are named in accordance with their shapes.”16 Actually, the names of the first three bing have more to do with their cooking methods. In later texts, we read 278 china: pasta’s other homeland

that “barbarian bing” were grilled flatbreads, “steamed bing” were little leavened breads that were cooked in steam, and “broth bing” were noodles that were boiled or cooked in a soup. In any case, for this lexicographer, writing at the turn of the third century, the word bing described a great variety of preparations, all sharing a common characteristic: they were made of a kneaded wheat-flour dough. A few decades later, the “Ode to Bing” of the great historian Shu Xi removes all doubt: the northern Chinese had entered a full-fledged civilization of bing. It was no longer thought necessary to designate them with a compound formed with bing. Of the thirteen different bing mentioned by Shu Xi, some have such enigmatic names as butou, angan, bozhuang, qisou, and so on, while other names, such as “dog tongues,” “piglet ears,” “dagger laces,” “cupping glasses,” and “candles,” referring to a series of everyday objects, are so many distant echoes in time and space of those Italian pastas that are still mischievously called: lingue di passero (sparrow tongues), orecchiette (auricles), nastri (ribbons), conchiglie (seashells), and so on. These are the beginnings, in the earliest centuries of the Christian era, of the bing paradigm, the boundaries of which extended far beyond the definition “pasta product,” in the sense we understand that term today. For the ancient Chinese, what was important was the nature of the material that constituted the kneaded dough. With the term bing, they recognized the existence of a set defined at the same time by its component parts, flour and water, and by the physical nature of their mixture, according to certain proportions. This creation of an alimentary category that groups together all kneaded doughs made with wheat flour, without taking into account, for instance, the opposition between leavened and unleavened dough that was fundamental in the West, demonstrates, if this is even necessary, that there is nothing universal about our classifications. To understand pasta products and their history in China, we must recognize from the outset the vast array of bing and then follow their development in order to identify the moment when the concept of “pasta product” in the way we understand it appeared as a separate nutritional category.

the distinguishing features of a civilization While evidence confirms that wheaten noodles, flatbreads, and bing existed as far back as the early Han dynasty (206 b.c.–a.d. 23), we china: pasta’s other homeland 279

know relatively little about how they were made and consumed or what value was attributed to them. The richness of a poetic text like Shu Xi’s shows that educational works are not sufficient to gain an understanding of what seems to have been a full-fledged social phenomenon. An analysis of the various writings on events that took place between the third century b.c. and the end of the fifth century a.d., whether they be annals, history, or literature, offers the distinct impression that bing were dishes worthy of attention, markers of a culinary sensibility and true gastronomic culture expressed within a specific context.17 Bing are listed in the food sections of the earliest encyclopedias, compiled before the tenth century, sharing with meats and alcoholic beverages the honor of constituting a recognized category of food. These three categories certainly represent the three emblematic elements of the culinary life of northern China in the periods of the Han dynasty (206 b.c.–a.d. 221) and the Three Kingdoms (a.d. 220–280), at least as it was imagined by the encyclopedists. One of the myths is from an episode from the life of the founder of the Early Han. Emperor Gaozu (ruled 206–195) is reported to have ordered the construction, within the circle of the capital’s walls, of an exact replica of the tiny Jiangsu village where he had been born, in order to comfort his father, who was suffering from homesickness. The new emperor’s father, a humble peasant just a few years before, was happily reunited with his friends, inhabitants of the village specially moved to the replica—along with a butcher, a tavern keeper, and a bing merchant—and, thanks to this act of filial piety, recovered his spirits. Apparently, a few peasants and these three emblematic merchants were enough to re-create rural life, or at least that is what the author of this chronicle, written long after the events described, would have us believe. But the presence, at the very foundation of the Early Han dynasty in 206 b.c., of a bing vendor, a recurring character throughout the centuries that followed, seems quite unlikely, given the rare occurrence of the word itself in sources of the period. In later historical sources, which largely focus on events in the lives of important personages and recount stories in the service of a moral vision of history, it is often hard to say whether the word bing was used to describe pasta products, flatbreads, or ordinary breads unless it was explicitly stated. In effect, it was less the nature of the food that counted than its mere presence in certain circumstances, a presence that was often considered an indication of a way of life, an ethical choice, or a character trait, thought to express the profound meaning 280 china: pasta’s other homeland

of the event. In other words, to speak of bing was a way for the chronicler to allude to a political orientation or perhaps to criticize a form of behavior that was either morally deplorable or simply open to reproof. Although it is necessary in general to enter this second level of analysis in order to understand the true scope of these texts, it is possible to observe at the same time that the concrete status of the bing evolved over the centuries. It was unquestionably a prestigious, imperial food in the oldest accounts, but as its consumption began to spread downward through society, its place in the food system changed: at first, little, refined dishes to be eaten freely between meals, bing later entered the menu as a basic element, until it finally became a staple food, a subsistence food for those who had nothing else to eat.

An Imperial Privilege. Just as millet cakes were considered as adjuncts in the ancient diet, bing at the court of the Han dynasty probably played no more than a decorative role in meals as a whole. Considered as treats rather than staple foods, bing appeared to have been snacks in which one indulged at one’s pleasure. The personal tastes of many emperors were documented, such as those of Xuan (ruled 73–49 b.c.), whose inclination for bing was traced to his childhood, which was spent in complete freedom with his mother’s family. Since the emperor always purchased his bing from the same vendor, and since he honored that vendor with frequent visits, his purveyor became quite wealthy, according to the chronicler.18 Emperor Xuan eventually became the patron of all bing vendors, at least according to an author during the Song dynasty (960–1279).19 The term hubing (barbarian bing) indicates that he favored flatbreads, which were also greatly enjoyed three centuries later by the emperor Ling (ruled a.d. 168–189). Ling’s fondness for exotic tastes, which was not limited to foods, was viewed very critically by historians, who saw it as detrimental to the proper conduct of the affairs of state, the exclusive and sacred task of a sovereign. An excessive interest in foreign fashions on the part of an emperor could not help but undermine his mission. Bing were instrumental in the death by poisoning of the young emperor Zhi (a.d. 138–146), at the tender age of eight.20 The nature of the dish made it easy to add the poison, just as the precise targeting of the assault was facilitated by the fact that bing were eaten alone, as a snack. Zhi ate the fatal dish, without witnesses—as would be the case with a light snack meant to satisfy a tiny pang of hunger— china: pasta’s other homeland 281

and quickly fell ill and called for help, taking his last breath right after he managed to tell his relatives the type of food he had just consumed. While the story was told only to emphasize the evil of the misdeed— indeed, when the criminal was identified, he immediately committed suicide—there can be no doubt that the zhubing, literally, “bing cooked in broth,” that Zhi ate were a preparation made with a pasta product as we would define it. It seems to have been a type of food that was popular with regicides: two centuries later, another emperor perished the same way as Zhi.21

Delicacies and Banalities. Beginning with the end of the Later Han, bing were no longer choice delicacies reserved for kings. Princes and ministers enjoyed them as well, at times in an exceedingly ostentatious manner, to the great disapproval of historians. Nothing better discredited He Zeng (a.d. 199–278), the high minister of the Western Jin, than his great spending on luxuries, summed up in a single foible: he would refuse to pick up with his chopsticks a steamed bun unless the swelling crust had popped, creating a tiny cross, proof it had been perfectly cooked.22 Shi Hu, prince of the Later Zhao, who ruled from 334 to 349, was a small-scale imitator of He Zeng. He also loved plump steamed buns, and he preferred buns stuffed with dried fruit. When reverses of fortune resulted in his being tossed into a dungeon, he found some comfort in the memory of those lost pleasures, regretting, however, that he had ever turned up his nose at those buns that seemed to him insufficiently plump.23 The moral was clear, for once: Shi Hu was paying for his former sybaritic ways. We shall not linger over the subject of barbarian bing, which seem to have played an especially important role under the Later Han dynasty. There are references in the sources to sumptuous gifts of hubing, in some cases as many as ten thousand individual flatbreads. These extravagant numbers suggest that the value of the material of which the gift was composed must have depreciated to some degree.24 In this period, despite their excellent culinary reputation, a single bing, a single barbarian flatbread, or a single steamed roll no longer amounted to much. That is why, when the supreme general and poet Cao Cao (155–220) learned that one of his marquesses had exchanged the insignia of his investiture as high officer for a single small bing out of mere gluttony, he could hardly believe it and could not help laughing loud and long at the thought.25 Likewise, a renowned third-century calligrapher, Wang 282 china: pasta’s other homeland

Xizhi, must have completely flown in the face of social convention when he received the envoy of a high minister while sprawling on his bed dressed in very casual garb and chewing idly on a barbarian flatbread. He later enjoyed the fruit of his daring, however, for when the envoy returned home and made his detailed report, the high minister was so charmed by Wang Xizhi’s nonconformist behavior that he made him his son-in-law!26 In both these instances, though bing were still the object of greed, they played a symbolic role, with a connotation of the quotidian and the trivial, a personal detail that should not be mixed with one’s social life or career, both much more serious matters. If, however, the standing of bing as dainty pleasure foods had been devalued because they had become available to anyone who chose to eat one, they continued to appear on the menus of prestigious banquets,27 and they even played a role as a subsistence food in some cases.

The Special Occasion and the Ordinary Occasion. The annals include the story of one of these banquets, probably because a dish of bing played a starring role. The action takes place in the era of the Three Kingdoms (a.d. 220–280), when China was split into three fiefdoms following the collapse of the Han dynasty. The sovereigns of these fiefdoms waged war without quarter, each hoping to conquer and reunite the territory of the entire kingdom. It was a time of incessant combat, dark machinations, betrayed alliances, and in some cases unswerving loyalty.28 One of the three protagonists, Sun Quan, king of the realm of Wu, invited an emissary of his ally with the firm intention of publicly humiliating him. When Fei Hui appeared at the time and place indicated, the other guests, already seated, continued to eat without paying the slightest attention to the new arrival. Fei Hui, mortified and choking with rage, took a seat nonetheless and, using allusive and poetic language, conveyed to the others that he had been expecting quite a different welcome. He was forced to think quickly, however, when Zhuge Ge, one of Sun Quan’s generals, answered him in the same manner, urging him to go back where he came from if he was not happy with the reception he had received. At this point, according to the text, “Fei Hui suddenly stopped eating his bing and asked for a brush, whereupon he improvised on the spot an ode to . . . wheat.”29 With this curious reaction, evidence of a remarkably prompt wit, Fei Hui hoped to sway the gallant comrades of Sun Quan, whose valor had certainly not hardened china: pasta’s other homeland 283

them to the beauty of poetry. By passing in a flash from the eating of bing to the praise of their basic component, he was launching a challenge that Zhuge Ge could only ignore at risk of a tremendous loss of face. Zhuge Ge seized a brush and in response composed an ode to the . . . mill wheel. The contest ended in a round of applause for both literary duelists who, one after the other, had shown great talent.30 Just as any educated man of the time was expected to be able to do, they managed to improvise, in call and response, in a perfect mirroring of the trivial reality offered by the meal: the mill that produced the flour necessary for making bing answered the theme of the wheat inspired by this food. Zhuge Ge was considered the ultimate winner of this exchange, however,31 because a mill unquestionably triumphs over the wheat by crushing it and grinding it into flour. The important but coincidental role played by bing in the trap Sun Quan laid for Fei Hui has less to do with their culinary renown and more to do with their emblematic value as the product of human genius applied to an edible material. The poetic duel between Zhuge Ge and Fei Hui referred to the steps along the technical chain that culminated in kneaded wheat dough: the raw material of grains of wheat; the mill, a fundamental tool for grinding that wheat; flour, the product of the processes of transformation and the most important ingredient of the dough, which was an alimentary material of manifold potential. In that same era, bing were not merely pretexts for brilliant literary compositions during princely symposiums; they could also serve a life-and-death function. This was the case for Wang Huan, a poor man of letters under the Jin dynasty (265–419), who was overjoyed at the gift of a skewer of steamed bing.32 That day, his poor wife, whose pallor betrayed her sad condition, was finally able to eat to her satisfaction and perhaps even took on a little color. This particular packaging of certain bing on skewers suggests they could be transported easily, could withstand travel, and were not necessarily homemade. We have already made brief reference to the vendor of bing who was the official purveyor to the future emperor Xuan in the second half of the first century b.c. This is the first appearance of this unassuming personage in historical sources, but with the passage of time the bing vendor became an increasingly common character.

The Bing Merchant, Incarnation of Small-Scale Commerce. Bing could in some cases definitely be considered as merchandise, and this 284 china: pasta’s other homeland

dates back to the end of the earliest Han. Their trade network was strictly local, however, and they were never mentioned in the chapter on the economy in the Hanshu (History of the Later Han),33 in contrast with the makers of alcoholic beverages, who, repeatedly subjected to state monopoly and constantly regulated, were the subject of lengthy analysis. The bing vendor was a small-scale merchant at the lowest level of the commercial pecking order, about whom we know nothing but who often attracted the wrath and contempt of historians for all he represented: the narrow vision of a small shopkeeper, chained to his food stall and entirely caught up in the lust for money, however small the sums. In dynastic histories, this shopkeeper plays the role of scapegoat, exemplifying the merchant class that men of letters always suspected of trying to profit from policies that might benefit merchants but harm the most essential activity, agriculture, to which they thought the emperor should devote himself completely. And so, in deploring the wrong-headedness of the monetary and economic reforms of the usurper Wang Mang (9–23) during the interregnum between the Early Han and the Later Han, Ban Gu, the compiler of the Hanshu, states that they even helped to make the fortune of mere bing vendors.34 If a bing merchant, who occupied such a lowly position in the larger hierarchy of merchants, could profit from the reforms of Wang Mang, that meant that the big merchants at the top of the ladder must have richly lined their pockets. Such, in any case, was the official interpretation of Chinese historiography. Despite the constant presence of the bing merchant in historical sources,35 more than anything else an excuse for ideological discussion, these texts never provide any information about the concrete practice of the profession, and neither do they tell us anything about the precise nature of the articles of trade. Was the seller of bing also a maker of bing, or did he do no more than sell a product made by others? Was he merely a link in a chain of production that culminated in food supply and consumption? One observation cries out to be made immediately: the lack of connection between the status of the profession and that of the actual article being sold. How can we explain the fact that the bing themselves escaped the opprobrium heaped on those who sold them? In truth, they did not escape entirely, if we think about the anecdotes recounted above, especially those that reflect the development of the china: pasta’s other homeland 285

status of bing: at first they were an imperial delicacy, but in time they became enjoyable little snacks, enjoyed by everyone, or almost everyone. A distinction should probably be made between ordinary bing, flatbreads and steamed rolls, and pasta products cooked in broth, a dish requiring the use of chopsticks to eat and the rare references to which always concern royal or princely consumers. From this, one might suppose that the famous bing merchant sold flatbreads or small steamed rolls but probably not genuine pasta products. We are the more persuaded of this when we read the work of poets, who were much more interested than historians in describing bing in all their variety and showed special interest in pasta products that were plainly made to be consumed immediately, which meant they could not have been the object of trade at all.

favorite food of scholarly society It was because of their standing as savory foods that bing became a full-fledged literary theme beginning in the third century a.d. This poetic propensity should be placed in the context of the fashion of this period, well demonstrated in the story of Sun Quan. Anyone who had literary aspiration had to be capable of improvising on any occasion an ode, known as a fu, to show off his skill. Zest and speed counted every bit as much as actual poetic talent, and the choice of subjects did not exclude any object that happened to be within one’s field of view at the moment.36 Whether they were occasional compositions or not, the poems and quotations on bing handed down to posterity show us that these foods played a considerable role in the cooking and fine cuisine of the time. They also describe techniques of production that show considerable skill in the field of pasta products several centuries before the appearance of the first recipes known, which date to the sixth century. In fact, the ode of Shu Xi and the poems about bing mark the beginning of a new era. From historic sources, we know that from the end of the Han dynasty and the era of the Three Kingdoms, these cereal-based foods had an unclear standing: they could be little tidbits to be gulped down without formality or appear on the menus of banquets, ordered by a host to honor his guests. But the historians who had recounted stories in which bing served as evidence, hints, or foils were not interested in them as foods. 286 china: pasta’s other homeland

One gets an entirely different impression from the texts of Shu Xi and other writers who, like him, devoted poems to the bing. Not only did they take pen in hand to describe their subject completely and/or metaphorically, but they chose to show its ordinary, everyday use, which in turn influenced the elegant customs of the circles in which they moved. And when the consumption of bing involves manifest gluttony, this is not interpreted as a mark of moral depravity. Instead, it is presented as one of the aesthetic pursuits of men of letters, and one can guess that it was destined to become fashionable. What is most striking in Shu Xi’s ode is the constant allusion to gatherings that involve a collective sampling of bing. In the springtime, we banquet and eat mantou;37 in fall, when the north wind obliges us to eat warm foods, we offer qisou to our friends; and in winter, when people gather in the chilly dawn, we comfort ourselves by taking a bowl of noodles in broth (tangbing). As for laowan, which must have been particularly delicious dumplings, we eat them gladly at any time, shoulder to shoulder, our chopsticks reaching out to the same container of flavorful sauce. These few verses reveal the existence of a genuine social system revolving around bing and punctuated by the passing seasons of the year. They evoke what have been described as “pure chats” (qingtan), a type of free-wheeling nonconformist group discussion that was fashionable in literary clubs from the third century on.38 There can be no doubt that the participants in these scintillating gatherings accompanied their conversation with drinks and food that often included bing.

An Aesthetics of Delicacies. The culinary passion expressed in these texts points to a genuine aesthetic practice, focused in this case exclusively on pasta as food, as if it alone deserves praise for its beauty. Admiration, however, does not require one to forgo satisfaction of appetite, which sometimes requires the consumption of several bowls of “noodles in broth,” as noted by Hong Junju, one of Shu Xi’s contemporaries: When chef Cui made bing steeped in tea, He would fry onions in oil. He would filter the tea infusion through silk. With a light feather he would brush the flour. He kneaded the dough to the right consistency. china: pasta’s other homeland 287

Then he would drop it into the water In long strings White like autumn silk. In half a bowl of soup, We would gulp them down all at once. After ten bowls in a row, A smile would come to the lips, the body would relax.39 Despite the evident satisfaction that comes from eating the bing, it is not primarily their tastiness that is the focus here. The precision of the actions required for their preparation, the harmonious succession of those actions, the beauty of the long strings of dough seem to interest Hong Junju most. Technique is in some sense put to the service of the happiness of consumption. Previously, Shu Xi had devoted more verses to the details of making the wrappers for laowan and mixing the components of their stuffing than to the description of their taste and flavor—though there is a hint of malice in his evocation of the mouth-watering smell that tempts those who will not be enjoying a taste of this dish. Although these texts do not always deal with the same types of pasta products—Hong Junju apparently describes long pasta, which has nothing in common with the wrappers of dumplings—the comparisons and images are similar. The production of wheat-flour pasta is compared to the production of silk: in Shu Xi, the dough evokes the softness and whiteness of silk, while Hong Junju refers to the fine long strands of silk and pasta. For that matter, Shu Xi may have taken inspiration from the few verses that Fu Xuan (217–278), a renowned statesman of the Western Jin and a respected philosopher, had devoted, years before, to the making of an unspecified dish whose preparation mimics that described by Hong Junju: 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 stretched out into long strings That are lighter than a feather in the wind. They are as fine as the first threads of the cocoons of Shu And as brilliant as the threads of raw silk from the land of Lu.40

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In the writing of Fu Xuan, as in that of Hong Junju, the pasta is described as being stretched out in water, in Chinese, shui-yin, a figurative expression that is eventually used to describe, through metonymy, a type of pasta, as we shall see in the first recipe for making it, dating back to the sixth century. It was unquestionably the way they are made, the shaping of the dough, and the perfect whiteness of the flour that caught the attention of the two poets. That the process of stretching out a dough should have been compared to the unwinding of a silk cocoon derives from a cultural reference that is at once concrete and prestigious. There is a certain kinship between the two operations: the shuiyin—according to later recipes—were processed in water, just as the strands of silk were teased out and then entwined into a single plait from cocoons floating in boiling water. And this likening of shaped dough to the precious product that issued from the cocoons shows that it, too, was a valued product. The image of the cocoon and the silken thread is so evocative that it seems to have become obligatory when speaking of bing, even when, for once, a poem goes against the commonly held opinion. Yu Chan was not in agreement with his contemporaries, and to make that clear he wrote the “Preface to an Ode on the Detestable Bing.”41 This man of letters, appointed governor of the Linling command under the Eastern Jin, took pen in hand to express his disappointment after eating bing, a dish praised by one and all and, as he recalls (inaccurately, as it happens), compared in an ode by Shu Xi to the “softness of autumn silk.”42

Between Knowledge and Myth. The “Bingshuo” (Dissertation on the bing), written a century later by the talented historian and poet of the Southern Liang dynasty, Wu Jun (469–520),43 deviated to some extent from the concrete and precious views of his predecessors. In one portion of the text, he describes a dialogue between the future founder of the Liu-Song dynasty (420–479) and the chief cook in charge of beverages and “delightful foods” for the king of the Later Qin dynasty (384–417), who had lost his throne with the advent of a new dynasty. The chief cook, a certain Cheng Ji, was respected for his intelligence and his subtlety. What wisdom Cheng Ji possessed! When his new master asked him what would be the best dish to serve

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in the current season, Cheng Ji very sagely defended his personal selection: 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 only say one word: bing! Encouraged by the sovereign with the sound of a ringing: “Excellent!” Cheng Ji continued his poem in the form of a complex debate, listing the many supposedly indispensable ingredients used to make bing, without failing to mention their provenance: wheat from Anding ground in the mills of Luoyang, spring onions from Hedong, veal from Longxi, lamb from Fuhan, black bean paste from Zhangye, orange zest from Dongting, Szechuan pepper from Chouchi, and salt from Qizhou.44 Then he concludes in the manner expected for a culinary poem: Fine as jade powder from Huashan, White as silver paste from Liangfu, Their aroma will inebriate you before you lift them to your lips And your heart will pound at the mere sight of them. The text ends with a second word of approval from the king, who repeats once again: “Excellent!” With this “dissertation” of Wu Jun, the praise of bing changes register. The reader has no need now to learn the secrets of how to make them, laid out in a poetic fashion in the style of Shu Xi, for bing no longer constitute a novelty. Wu Jun, for that matter, does not say what kind of bing he is talking about (although, considering the list of ingredients mentioned—flour, meat, flavoring—it is reasonable to suppose that this is a stuffed pasta). And, in contrast with the poems mentioned earlier, this poem does not refer to a concrete culinary experience, with clouds of flour and dripping stuffing, nor does it refer to the workshop in which silkworm cocoons are unraveled. We have almost attained the level of myth. The bing are made not just of wheat but of the very finest wheat, from Anding, and all the ingredients are raised to a heroic plane: the lamb, raised in Fuhan, chopped into 290 china: pasta’s other homeland

mincemeat perfumed with zest from the famous oranges of the lake island of Dongting, is exquisite, unrivaled. The color and delicacy of these bing is no longer compared with a mere manmade product, such as silk. Their fineness is that of the most beautiful jade, from Huashan, while their dazzling whiteness is like silver paste from Liangfu. Aside from these two comparisons to highly prized products of the mineral world, which place Wu Jun’s discourse in the context of pure aesthetics, the array of high-flown references involved in listing the ingredients derives from a specific gastronomical culture of ancient codification. Cheng Ji’s litany, as recounted by Wu Jun, fits into a tradition established by the Lüshi chunqiu jiaoshi (The spring and autumn annals of Lü Buwei), an encyclopedic and philosophical compendium written by Lü Buwei, a wealthy merchant who fell out of favor with the Qin emperor in 235 b.c. and committed suicide. One of the chapters of this text, “Fundamental Flavors,” recounts the saga of the virtuous king Tang, future founder of the Shang dynasty (sixteenth to eleventh centuries b.c.), who was sufficiently farsighted to have selected as minister the wise cook Yi Yin.45 Yi Yin offers a political lesson to his sovereign in the form of an allegory that is nothing less than a theory of cuisine. In order to cook well—read, in order to govern well—it is necessary, according to Yi Yin, to know the five flavors and, with one’s mastery of flame and water, succeed in harmonizing those flavors, in terms of their yin and yang, with the elements of the animal and vegetable worlds. The identification of the best among them that is proposed by Yi Yin delineates a veritable geographic map of China. In the same way, the culinary geography laid out by the chief cook of beverages and “delightful foods,” Cheng Ji, suggests a trip to the lands of northern China. With the exception of the orange, which is grown in central China, all the other ingredients, including the jade and the silver paste, are specialties of the northern provinces,46 all quite distant from Jiankang (Nanking), which was located on the southern bank of the Yangzi River and was the capital of the Eastern Jin dynasty (317–420), which Cheng Ji’s new master served before seizing power himself and founding the new Liu-Song dynasty. The praise he gives Cheng Ji confirms the excellent reputation of bing, a foodstuff specific to the north, which is where wheat pasta comes from. Why did Wu Jun, the author of the poem, who was from southern China and had a successful career in Jiankang, feel the need to report china: pasta’s other homeland 291

this anecdote and turn it into a poem? Should we consider the poem as nothing more than an expression of appreciation on the part of a southern Chinese for a celebrated northern Chinese dish, or does it rather express admiration for Cheng Ji’s knowledge, encouraged by the good taste of the sovereign? Or perhaps Wu Jun was being ironic, gently poking fun at the snobbery of a few elitists and a culinary specialty necessarily available only to a minority? Another poem by this author, entitled “Changing Meals,” suggests this might be the case: in it, he lists the refined dishes that are everyday fare for princes, while he, a “little man,” is expected be satisfied with rough foods, and never complain: In the prince’s kitchen, meat rots, While I would not hesitate to dine on bran. The prince eats ortolans to which I have no right. I would like, with my stomach of a little man To know how it feels to be in the belly of a prince.47 We know from Wu Jun’s biography that he was of modest origin and that he achieved his success through his exceptional talent. He was greatly admired for having managed to express brilliantly the resentment and feelings of injustice experienced on occasion by the poor man of letters that he once was. Whatever the motives behind it, the text by Wu Jun written at the end of the fifth century testifies to the perfect integration of the bing in literary culture and to their reputation, which extended all the way to the southern regions of China. This integration implies regular consumption, as we see indicated in the ode of Shu Xi and other earlier texts.

Every Season Has Its Bing. Cheng Ji’s speech in the “Bingshuo” begins by matching an appropriate bing with the season of the year, in this case, autumn. The differences among types of bing made it necessary to serve them in the proper season, according to their composition and shape, and this necessity was theorized around the beginning of the Christian era. The agrarian almanac Simin yueling (Monthly instructions for the four classes),48 compiled by Cui Shi (110–170), tells us that in the “fifth month of the year, we are still a long way from the beginning 292 china: pasta’s other homeland

of autumn” and it is therefore inappropriate to eat either “bing cooked in broth” (zhubing) or “bing made with water” (shuisoubing). A commentary explains this recommendation: “The summer is the season when we drink water, now if we drink water with these two types of bing, they harden [in our stomachs] and become difficult to digest. . . . To test this, try dipping them in water: only bing made with cereal wine [jiusoubing] will dissolve if dipped in water.” Thus the consumption of certain bing in the wrong season would be harmful to one’s health. Probably, those bing made with wine should be considered breads, or at least leavened doughs, because the wine stimulates fermentation and aerates the interior of the bread, making it lighter and easier to digest. This habit of matching the consumption of this or that type of bing with a particular season was so solidly established in daily practice that the ordeal of the philosopher He Yan (a.d. 190–249), forced to eat a bowl of noodles in broth during the heat of the summer dog days, remained in the collective memory. He Yan, a young and brilliant metaphysician of great personal beauty, whose writings the Wuming lun (Treatise on the nameless) and the Wuwei lun (Treatise on nonexistence) marked an era, aroused both admiration and jealousy because of his porcelain complexion. So great was the jealousy that the poet Cao Pi, who also happened to be King Wen of the Wei dynasty (187–226) and felt no great love for the young philosopher, came to suspect that He Yan powdered his face, a fairly common and accepted practice in this period.49 The sovereign wanted to be sure, however, and so he waited till the heart of summer, when he had He Yan served a bowl of noodles in broth (tangbing), a winter dish that Shu Xi, in his ode, recommends for withstanding the hoarfrost of midwinter. He Yan stoically ate the royal offering, and great drops of sweat stood out on his forehead from the twofold heat of the weather and the piping hot broth. When the young man finally wiped his forehead with the cuff of his sleeve, the suspicious monarch and the entire company of onlookers were forced to believe their eyes: the whiteness of He Yan’s complexion was entirely natural. It was a gift of heaven.50 This episode, which took place several decades before Shu Xi wrote his ode, demonstrates the very ancient existence of a seasonal rhythm for the consumption of the various bing. Thus, just as the succession of various fruits and crops marks the seasons of the year, the different bing, either by corresponding to the weather or helping to combat its harmful influences, construct an china: pasta’s other homeland 293

alternate temporal structure. It was no longer the season of cherries that announced the beginning of summer but the season of bozhuang, and when leaves were heaped in great piles in autumn, it was possible to find some consolation by preparing qisou. But when Shu Xi advises his readers to respect the seasons of bing, he seems to be expressing a utilitarian concern. He does not seem to imply that consumption outside the usual season could harm one’s health, as the author of the Simin yueling did; in his view, it would simply be out of place and make it impossible to obtain any of the benefits assured by a perfect concordance between the time and the type of bing in question. Shu Xi’s recommendations jibe with a dietary system that fits into an overall order in which the progression of the seasons, the ages of life, climates, and places, the incompatibility or harmony between this or that food are all fundamental factors on which one can base a variety of daily prescriptions concerning nutritional conduct. This vision of a world order interacting with the tiniest details of human life is in keeping with the ancient cosmological view that first took shape in China during the early formation of the empire51 and, to a certain degree, continues to structure Chinese representations to the present day. In his poetic approach, however, Shu Xi displays absolutely no dogmatism and issues no prohibitions. On the contrary, for those fanatics of bing who cannot make do with a single type of bing for each season, he recommends laowan, which can be eaten year-round. This implies that the regulations suggested by Shu Xi, although probably based on the practices of his time, are nothing more than a series of dietary and gastronomic guidelines, a response to imperatives of appetite and the enjoyment of food. This is not true of other texts of the same period whose authors attributed a propitiatory function to the precisely dated consumption of bing in general or of this or that particular bing. Thus it is enough to eat some “on the hai day [twelfth day] of the tenth month to ward off illnesses.”52 But the propitiatory value of bing could extend well past the individual person of the consumer when these preparations were used as ritual offerings.

the worshipful

BING

Offerings of cereal-based dishes such as millet or rice cakes were quite unusual in antiquity. But although fresh meats and alcoholic bever294 china: pasta’s other homeland

ages were the usual food offerings in the ceremonies of the emperor cult, blood sacrifices were not always the only alternative: cured meats and certain fruits were also acceptable. Most texts say nothing about the nature of the offerings,53 but there is never any indication that pastry or any prepared dish was featured in official ceremonies. For more everyday cultural practices, however, the diversity of offerings is well attested. The philosopher Huan Tan, who lived around the end of the Early Han dynasty and the advent of the Later Han dynasty, described the crowd of pilgrims who went to the tomb of Confucius to honor his memory. He noted that “those of the highest standing sacrifice cattle, sheep, poultry, or pigs in his honor, while others express their respect with offerings of wine, cured meat, or hanju.”54 (Hanju were a type of pastry—a fritter, it appears—made of rice or millet, already quite familiar in the fourth century a.d. and for which we have a recipe dating back to the sixth century.)55 Offerings and sacrifices varied according to the social condition of the person making the offering and the ritual context in which the ceremony was taking place. There is a huge gap between the cow, sheep, or pig slaughtered for the imperial “great sacrifices” and the more modest offerings for family feasts or the holidays of the calendar.56 One can imagine that the cuisine of sacrifice expressed the diversity of society at large and that it also varied over time. In the fifth century a.d., for example, an intense Buddhist fever affected all levels of society, notably the court, in the person of the emperor Wu of the Liang dynasty, who, in 517, prohibited blood sacrifices during official rituals. Blood sacrifices were replaced by bing, probably “large flatbreads,” about which we know relatively little but which made it possible to spare lives, in keeping with Buddhist ethics.57 During the four centuries in which China was divided after the collapse of the Han empire, bing, which were already quite commonplace in the everyday life of men of letters and often in the everyday life of the common man, rose to the status of offerings in various family and seasonal rituals. This is clearly indicated in a number of long-lost “private ritual guides,”58 certain passages of which have been partly reconstructed.59 These texts document that bing started being commonly used in offerings between the second and fourth century a.d. And just as the consumption of bing in Shu Xi followed the rhythm of the year, bing offerings were also regulated by the calendar. Unfortunately, the great divergence of the authors’ points of view and the corruption of the texts—which do not always allow us to identify cerchina: pasta’s other homeland 295

tain bing—make it very difficult to determine a single common set of rules for the use of this or that bing according to the season. It is possible to identify a few constant factors, however. “Milk bing” (rubing) were summer offerings, “(white) ring-shaped bing ([bai] huanbing) were winter offerings, and “bread rolls” (mantou) were spring offerings.60 These texts, despite their divergences, also include names of bing with which we are already familiar: shuiyin, “(pasta) stretched out in water,” winter offerings;61 suibing, “marrow bing,” spring offerings; laowan, “dumplings,” and angan(te), year-round offerings;62 and, last, zhengbing, “steamed bread rolls,” summer offerings.63 These guides, which took the form of catalogs, tell us nothing about the actual value of bing as offerings. They do, however, allow us to form an idea of their place among other foods: they were most often found with seasonal fruits and cooked meats or cured meats.64 All types of bing were represented, those that we would call “pasta,” such as shuiyin, and others, such as zhengbing or other rolls or fritters such as rubing. The prescriptions were seasonal without being precise down to the specific day, in contrast with those recorded in the Jing Chu suishi ji (Record of the annual seasons in central China), compiled in the sixth century. In this text, in fact, eating certain dishes amounted to celebrating the festival: it symbolized the feast and at the same time took on a religious or magical meaning. Thus it was for tangbing, “noodles in broth,” which were supposed to be eaten during the fu feast on the hottest dog days of midsummer and were thought to ward off evil spells.65 The link between the nature of the food offering and its supposed effect remains, however, difficult to pin down. Noodles in broth were originally a typical winter dish, as indicated in Shu Xi’s “Ode to Bing,” and this is confirmed by the story of He Yan. It is therefore especially surprising that they should be mentioned as the ritual specialty of a midsummer feast. This apparent incongruity has perplexed more than one commentator on the Jing Chu suishi ji. In the period when the Jing Chu suishi ji was compiled, this question had already been examined. A certain Dong Xun observed that, in the seventh month, millet was ripe and at the height of its yang and therefore many like to eat a gruel of millet but that “the people of the north prepare noodles in broth and have lost the custom of cooking millet gruel.”66 No explanation is supplied for this shift in customs, considered a novelty, but neither is any particular meaning attributed to it. This injunction to consume out of season could have been for pur296 china: pasta’s other homeland

poses of health, in the view of a modern historian. Ancient Chinese medical theories held that sweating heavily in midsummer after eating a piping hot soup would help to expel harmful spirits from the body, hence the belief in the power of noodles in broth to ward off evil spells. According to the Sinologist Derk Bodde, a great expert in the history of Chinese holidays, among other things, this dish was the last remaining vestige, heavily corrupted for that matter, of the fu feast as an occasion for exorcism, before it was entirely secularized under the Han dynasty.67 Bodde states that, under the Early Han dynasty, the tombs of one’s ancestors were supposed to be honored twice a year with ceremonies to expel pestilence: at the fu feast in midsummer and at the la feast at the beginning of the year, when the Great Exorcism was performed, expelling all the evils, demons, and pestilences of the preceding year. From this, we might suppose that consuming noodles in broth during the full heat of summer to ward off evil was a way of tacitly evoking the greater significance of the Great Exorcism of the winter, to the degree that this everyday dish best symbolized the rigors of the cold season. This is nothing more than a hypothesis as to the ritual role and meaning of noodles in broth. But whether it is true or not, this dish, clearly of northern origin, in time became an emblematic preparation of Chinese cuisine that could be found in various forms. In fact, it is the form or, better yet, the various forms of bing that interest us here. For if we have spoken about bing, without always knowing exactly what this word meant, and if we have retraced—thanks to Shu Xi’s “Ode to Bing” and other poems—certain details of how they were made, the mystery of their allure remains intact.

the allure of pasta and the original form With this offering of noodles in broth, we have reached the sixth century a.d., the period in which the first bing recipes appear, with a history that was already rich and far-ranging.68 One cannot help wondering why this foodstuff became so successful in the course of just a few centuries, especially if we compare its rapid ascent with the slow rise of pasta in the Western classical world. How did these dishes made with wheat, a new cereal relative to the ancient millets, manage to win over palates and dislodge from memories and conversation all the little pastries made of various cereal grains that had long been so china: pasta’s other homeland 297

familiar and had so delighted the monarch that they were his exclusive privilege? How can we explain the allure bing exerted, which had been so well described in poetry? When we look back on our sources, we are struck by the imbalance between, on the one hand, the abundance of observations on the ingredients, the techniques for making bings, and their appearance and shapes and, on the other hand, the infrequency of any appreciation or description of their taste. If the poet does nothing more than to suggest with rapid allusions the rapacity of the greedy diners, entirely intent on satisfying their hunger, he is much more explicit when he is describing the kneading of the dough, its color, and its pliancy. This contrast cannot be the fruit of chance or a product of habitual poetic rhetoric. The modes of poetic expression were circumscribed by a long tradition that dates back to the earliest definitions of this foodstuff in the most ancient Chinese texts of lexicography. What was most important in the view of the authors of these didactic writings was the way bing could take on various shapes and be named according to those shapes. Already, appearance was more important than flavor (not that the observer was interested in form alone). In order to understand this odd propensity to describe this food in terms of its shape and not its flavor or nutritional value, especially in a culture that developed in the earliest antiquity a full-fledged theory of the “fundamental flavors,” it is necessary to delve into the supposed etymology of the word bing to describe all flour-based preparations.

Bing: Acting Upon Matter. An archaeological find dating back to 1973 offered a clue. The last thirty years have witnessed a complete modification of our historical knowledge of ancient China through new developments in archaeology. The trove of treasures that have been, and continue to be, found in caves practically on a daily basis, and are currently being deciphered and interpreted, is not limited to artifacts; often, discoveries include scrolls and books containing texts or versions of texts that were previously unknown. Certain princely tombs from the Han dynasty, for instance, have yielded significant collections of funereal furnishings as well as inscriptions and manuscripts. A text containing an ancient reference to the word bing that forms part of a medical collection of more than three hundred prescriptions, written on silk, was found with other medical texts in the tomb of the son of the marquess of Dai in Mawangdui, Hunan. The 298 china: pasta’s other homeland

date of burial is indicated in an inscription in the tomb itself, so this text unquestionably dates back to 168 b.c.,69 and since then it has undergone no alteration whatever, except for the deterioration of its silk substrate. This is exceedingly rare among the ancient texts we now possess, which have often been corrupted, altered, or mutilated in the course of transmission, as well as being loaded down with twenty centuries of commentary and analysis. Until the discovery of this text, the oldest reliable information concerning bing came from the reading manual Jijiu pian, dating back to the first century b.c. (Difficulties with the precise dating of the Mohist philosophical work that told the story of a wealthy man consumed with greed for bing cast doubt on whether its mention of bing is earlier.) The word bing is only mentioned once in the collection of recipes called Wushier bingfang (Recipes for fifty-two ailments) from Mawangdui.70 The word appears in a prescription for the care of a wound that has nothing to do with pasta products, flatbreads, or breads. This use, which is not a borrowing, an error, or an alteration of the text, is evidence of a hitherto unknown meaning—and a very ancient one, since this may be the earliest attestation of the word. What does bing mean in this medical context, so distant from the kneading trough and the kneading board? Oddly enough, it is not used to describe a product or an object; instead, it describes an action: it is a verb, not a name. It indicates the action of “mixing,” “agglomerating,” or “compacting” a pasty mixture composed of wine and a medicinal powder. It is not hard to guess at the purpose of the maneuver: to form a small pellet of medicinal paste that will later be roasted over wood charcoal. This would take place in the laboratory of an apothecary, whose profession was to make medicaments, sometimes in the form of decoctions, syrups, and sticking plasters and at other times in the form of tablets or pills. So indicates this ancient codex, the first in a long tradition, one that specialists do not hesitate to date back at least to the end of the third century b.c., making this occurrence of bing the earliest known. All at once it becomes important to understand the etymology of the word, which in its earliest-known occurrence does not describe the set of foods made from kneaded wheat pasta, unlike all the other attestations of later texts, beginning with the reading manual dating from the very end of the following century. What relationship can we establish between the action of “agglomerating” a material that was certainly pasty and foodstuffs made with a kneaded wheat dough? china: pasta’s other homeland 299

Bing: A Form of Conditioning. If we are to develop any hypotheses on this subject, we must return to the definitions of the word found in the earliest Chinese dictionaries. In the dictionary Shiming, dating from the very beginning of the third century a.d., the author not only listed a number of bing whose names referred to their shapes but also offered a commentary on the term bing, saying that it meant to “mix wheat flour in such a way that it joined together.” For this author, the name of the thing stood for an operation that made it possible to mix water and flour thoroughly. But he went further still in his commentary of another term meaning a millet cake (ci), this time using the word bing as a verb meaning precisely the process of “compacting” or shaping a cake.71 In this work, then, the word bing is understood at the same time as describing a set of objects—pastas, breads, and flatbreads of all shapes—and as representing a special action on a certain type of edible material—the shaping of a dough consisting of cereal flour and water. If we look a little further back in time, about a century, we will find, through a careful reading of the most ancient Chinese dictionary, the Shuowen jiezi, that the word bing had yet another implied meaning, alongside the meaning we are accustomed to assign to it. This second meaning is found only in the commentaries, as if the lexicographer assumed that it went without saying and could be used without explanation as part of the generic description of a certain type of leaven (bingqu).72 It refers here to the special method of conditioning those products (leavens), probably presented in a compact, assembled form, specifically intended for the production of cereal wines. While we can only speculate about this, four centuries later we have recipes for a series of leavens, among which there is a clear distinction between those that are relatively powdery by nature and those that can be shaped by placing them in a mold and were called, moreover, bingqu.73 Reading between the lines of ancient dictionaries, we can see that the word bing, from its very earliest definitions, could imply, depending on context, both a way of doing, such as assembling, agglomerating, or shaping (a malleable material), and the product of this operation, that is, an object, a thing, a product that has the characteristic of possessing a specific, definable shape. But what was this artificial shape created by human ingenuity? In other words, what was the shape of the first bing?

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The Shape That Emerged from the Hollow of the Hand. Oddly enough, when we consider the earliest lexicographic sources, compiled between the second century b.c. and the beginning of the second century a.d., there is no information concerning the appearance of bing or the objects that were thought to resemble them. As for texts dating from after the the second century a.d., their authors insist above all on the variety of the shapes bing took, in imitation of everyday objects. Cooks would surely not be satisfied with mixing and shaping the material for wafers and leavens without giving them specific shapes. Once these objects were made, they could be cataloged, as is indicated by the syntactic use of the word bing, which implied a certain regularity of shape. Of course, nowadays, in modern Chinese, we know perfectly well what the word bing, still in use, describes and, especially, what shapes it designates. The word is currently used for any food preparation with a round flat shape, especially if made with a cereal. It is used for biscuits, flatbreads, breads, pancakes, and so on, whatever their size, as long as they are round and flat. How were bing formed using a manual operation that involved compacting an ingredient for future use, like leaven for the producer of alcoholic beverages or tablets for the apothecary? Having moved from the kneading table where pasta was made, to the apothecary’s laboratory, and then on to the workshop of the producer of alcoholic beverages, let us now visit the workshop of the metallurgist. The products of metallurgy tend to endure over time, in contrast with such perishable items as pasta, leavens, or tablets. Among the various types of money dating from the Early Han dynasty and the Warring Kingdoms (475–221 b.c.), unearthed in recent years, especially in certain sites of the Kingdom of Chu, archaeologists have identified small golden ingots that were called jinbing, “golden cakes.” These gold pieces, which actually do resemble little cakes, have diameters ranging from about an inch and a half to two and a half inches and an average weight of 8.5 to 9 ounces. The earliest mention of them under the name jinbing is found in a compendium of lexicography dating at the earliest to the third century b.c.74 This name recurs frequently in subsequent historical sources, unquestionably referring to an accounting unit of gold. But, as has been suggested by a Chinese historian and numismatist, the first use of these gold pieces was not monetary in nature.75 The “golden cakes,” instead, are thought to have been used as a raw material in the further production of small golden objects or jewelry. It just

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happens, luckily for us, that the packaging of this precious metal in the form of a flat, slightly bulging disk about the size of the palm of a human hand existed earlier than a known occurrence of the word bing. The original form that we are seeking is indeed the shape that nowadays typifies the foodstuffs known as bing: a flat disk, like a flatbread. Although these gold ingots were produced by the simple act of pouring molten metal onto a flat surface, a technique that has nothing to do with the process of mixing and kneading a doughy material, the fact that they were named after a flatbread that was produced by the kneading and shaping of a dough with a pair of hands indicates that this shape, naturally produced by the hollow between the palms of two joined hands, was considered the shape or form par excellence. This primordial form, in a sense, became the underlying principle of Form, the opposite of the diffuse, the scattered, the formless, as in the case of leavens for alcoholic beverages, whose packaging offered concrete instances of both form and formlessness. Symbolizing the very concept of Form, the word bing in time came to represent all of this form’s concrete implementations, among them, pasta shapes or forms. What at first seemed like a contradiction in our attempt to define the word bing, between the unique shape of the flatbread and the infinite array of shapes imitating all types of objects, is thus resolved.

Wheat Pasta: A Malleable Material. But there is more. The production of bing would not have been possible without the essential utensil of the human hand, as we have suggested above, but neither would it have been possible without the equally important raw material of wheat flour. The processing of this material becomes even more significant if we place it within the context of a technological worldview that served to structure the two most important activities of preimperial China: the production of statuary made of terra-cotta and the science of working metal, especially bronze. It is fair to assume that these two spheres of human endeavor—in which the ductility or malleability of raw materials and the actions of shaping and molding were of paramount importance—to a certain degree inspired the concrete and imaginative techniques applied to wheat products. Wheat flour was thought of as a raw material, and kneaded dough made of wheat flour was exploited as a building material, ideal for the creation of artificial objects. And how can we help comparing wheat flour dough to potter’s 302 china: pasta’s other homeland

clay? Like clay, it can be formed into shapes set by subsequent heating, and it offered the Qin and Han Chinese a new material that would stimulate their cogito of kneading, to use the expression of Gaston Bachelard.76 The technique of molding was used to make, with a limited number of modular shapes, the heads, bodies, and limbs of the seven thousand soldiers that composed the terra-cotta army entrusted with protecting the eternal sleep of the first Qin emperor, Shihuangdi, who died in 206 b.c. (the army was discovered in its mausoleum by chance in 1974).77 In comparison with this extraordinary creation, the kneading and shaping of wheat-flour dough may seem quite humdrum. There are shared traits, however: the need for a wellmixed and compact raw material; in the earliest period, the use of the mold formed by placing two palms together to create a hollow, producing the ideal shape of the flatbread; and, later on, the possibility of creating artificially and in quantity small, identical edible shapes reproducing certain elements of everyday life, similar—though on a different scale, of course—to the mortuary models of everyday objects found in Han burial structures.78 Even today there are still similarities between the processes involved in the preliminary working of clay and those used for dough: mixing, kneading, shaping the ball into a large sausage, and dividing the sausage into regular disks, the dough to be flattened by hand or rolled out with a rolling pin and the clay to be thrown or turned on the potter’s wheel.79 Dough made with wheat flour had a seductive quality for the Chinese, accustomed to the sticky consistency of mixtures made with starches and flours of millet or rice. Because of its gluten content, wheat flour alone can be used to create a dough that is perfectly malleable, shapable, plastic, and elastic that, like clay, can be shaped into various forms that will not be destroyed during cooking. This remarkable property caught the attention of the earliest lexicographers, always anxious to match the reality of things with their names, so that those names would be “correct.” This explains the constant insistence found in their definitions and later in the descriptions—even the poetic descriptions—of the appearance and texture of bing. The significance of the shape, round and flat, expressed by the word bing would wind up taking on such importance that it was also used to describe preparations made with other flours or starches and even certain dishes that contained no cereal at all but resembled flat disks. An example is offered by a collection of the earliest recipes for bing, dating back to the sixth century a.d. china: pasta’s other homeland 303

the first recipes The set of fifteen recipes provided under the heading “Methods for Making Bing” is included in the earliest treatise of Chinese agriculture that survives intact, Qimin yaoshu (Techniques essential for the subsistence of common people). This voluminous work is composed of ten chapters, three-quarters of which are dedicated to agricultural activities, and it includes a “household” section, including about three hundred recipes for “para-agricultural” products, such as alcoholic beverages or preserved foods, but also for full-fledged culinary preparations.80 It thus constitutes the earliest Chinese culinary treatise with a gastronomic dimension, the author, Jia Sixie, having offered instructions on how to prepare the most prestigious dishes of his time.81 These recipes are exceedingly diverse,82 and they surprise someone who expects to find a collection of recipes for pasta products or breads and flatbreads, all preparations made exclusively with cereals. In fact, of the fifteen recipes collected under the heading bing, only three are for what we consider wheaten pasta products, although a fourth, of millet and wheat flour, is made in a similar manner. The collection also contains recipes for “white bread” (baibing), flatbreads stuffed with mutton (shaobing), cakes made with marrow and honey, (subing), all sorts of fritters made with wheat flour and sticky rice, omelettes, vermicelli made of starch, and even “pork rind cut in the manner of bing,” a starch-based pasta that imitates the gelatinous appearance of pork rind and evokes the capon-skin lasagne made by Master Martino in sixteenth-century Italy. That the generic term bing was used to describe such diverse preparations offers a good illustration of what we pointed out previously concerning its semantic content. Considering the variety of ingredients required for the production of these dishes, the only justification for using this word to describe them is that all possess a specific shape: some of them, such as the omelette, are shaped like round disks, resembling flatbread, the original shape of the bing; others have specific and easily identifiable shapes that are clearly described by the author. We thus have a demonstration that by the sixth century a.d. the word bing, originally used exclusively to describe preparations made with wheat flour, had become a term with such a broad meaning that it eventually fell into disuse, and wheat-flour pasta products came to be described with another term, mian, after the name of their essential ingredient. 304 china: pasta’s other homeland

The earliest paintings depicting people working to prepare what could be a dough for making bread rolls date from the Northern Wei dynasty. At least, various specialists interpret two scenes in tomb no. 3 of Jiayuguan, in Gansu,83 which depict numerous kneeling individuals, as illustrating the process of kneading. In one of these scenes, the background is filled with dishes holding small round balls that suggest so many balls of bread dough left to rise before being cooked.84

Stretched Out in the Water. The author of Qimin yaoshu grouped the recipes for wheat pasta products into two distinct culinary categories: the first made up of shuiyin (stretched out in water) and botuo (of which the meaning is unknown); the second made up of qiemian (cut noodles) and luosuo (likewise undefined). How were these different pastas made? Both shuiyin and botuo are made with the same basic dough, a mixture of good cold meat broth and wheat flour sifted through the finest sieve available. Only their shapes are different. While shuiyin, as is suggested by their name, “stretched out in water,” are long fine pastas, botuo are shorter and broader. The method for preparing both is quite unusual and, in our view, has no parallel in the Mediterranean world. Before shaping shuiyin into long, flat, narrow, and quite thin noodles, like “leaves of Chinese onion grass,”85 one cuts the dough ball into sausages roughly the thickness of a chopstick and “the length of a foot” (around 9.5 inches).86 Then one soaks the pieces of dough in water.87 The procedure is exactly the same for botuo, except the rolls of dough are bigger around, roughly an inch, and much shorter, roughly two inches long. After the soaking, the duration of which unfortunately is not specified, the botuo are shaped with the fingers into flat noodles that are “extremely thin,” according to the text. Both shuiyin and botuo are then cooked in boiling water over a very high flame and, the author informs us, “not only do they become lovely, white, and glistening but also incomparably slippery and delicious when they are eaten.” Once again, the appreciation of pasta seems to have as much to do with its appearance as with its taste and texture. Also worthy of note is the mention of slipperiness, a quality that is still sought after in certain foods in Chinese gastronomy. The technique used to make this pasta, especially the soaking of the dough, excites our curiosity. The soaking must have been very important, because the name of the long pasta is “stretched out in water.” china: pasta’s other homeland 305

What was the purpose of the soaking? No doubt, it was to make the pasta as white, glistening, and slippery as possible, as the author specifies. Soaking the dough would rinse it, partially eliminating the starch content of the flour; afterward, the dough would have a high gluten content and therefore be softer, more elastic, and glistening but also less sticky (and therefore more slippery) after cooking than pasta that had not been soaked. As we discuss later, this technique was later improved to the point of producing a substance quite close to pure gluten, which the Chinese—having understood very early the value of this component of wheat flour—exploited long before the Bolognese Jacopo Bartolomeo Beccari discovered its nutritional properties at the turn of the eighteenth century.88

They Are Cut and Dried to Be Stored. Qiemian and luosuo pastas are made entirely differently, and, although their recipes are classed together, the methods for their production are quite dissimilar. Only qiemian are wheat pasta products in the sense that we understand. They are made by kneading a wheat-flour dough that needed to be quite firm. This dough was shaped into little sausages about the thickness of one’s little finger and then rekneaded with flour and rolled into the shape of chopsticks. These shapes were then cut into small sections that resembled the pieces used in the game of go. After being tossed in a coarse sieve to eliminate the excess flour they were steamed. When the individual bits of pasta were transparent, they were spread out in a thin layer on a clean mat in the shade to allow them to cool, shifted around from time to time to prevent them from sticking together. They were then hung up in a bag for storage. When it was time to eat them, they were cooked in boiling water and flavored with a meat broth (huo). This type of pasta is quite solid and does not crumble or dissolve, according to the text. Qiemian was thus a precooked pasta, meant to be stored and used when needed. Luosuo pasta, which was presteamed and then dried in the sun, was used in the same way. The raw material, however, was not wheat flour but kernels of millet that were partially steamed, soaked in water, drained, and then mixed with flour. The “pasta” thus obtained was shaped into grains roughly the size of a bean by pressing it through a sieve. These grains were then dried in sunlight. Dried luosuo were cooked in boiling water as needed and then flavored with meat broth after they were drained, like qiemian. 306 china: pasta’s other homeland

Different Technical Processes. These recipes are indicative of a welldeveloped and diversified tradition of making pasta products, structured according to a system of classification quite similar to the one developed by the Italians in the culinary texts of the sixteenth century. Shuiyin and botuo, the former being long pasta, the latter being short-cut pasta, are fresh pasta meant to be cooked as soon as they are made. Qiemian and luosuo—whose names, in fact, are associated with the term for gruel (zhou)—belong to the category of pasta that has undergone a drying process, the final preparation of which includes the addition of meat broth. In this sense, they are reminiscent of the “fine pasta” of the Arab-Andalusian treatises of the thirteenth century, which was used for a similar purpose. Both the term luosuo and the production of this type of pasta are fascinating. The names of Chinese pasta of this period are either metonymic designations describing a process involved in their production, such as stretching or cutting, or else compound words containing two rhyming syllables, such as luo-suo or bo-tuo, that have no particular meaning89 other than to indicate the pasta in question. There is a considerable temptation to attribute a foreign origin to these latter words, which do not sound particularly Chinese, although that interpretation is open to dispute.90 This notion was suggested, in a way, by Shu Xi in the preface to his “Ode to Bing,” when he said that certain bing come from “distant lands.” From what distant lands could they have come or, rather, what could have been the origin of these purely phonetic names with their striking sound? Between the fourth and sixth centuries, China was divided between northern and southern dynasties that had extensive contacts with central Asia. The Northern Wei dynasty (386–534), during the rule of which Jia Sixie wrote his book, were of Xianbei stock—an ethnic group of nomadic steppe dwellers—an origin the ruling class, once the Wei were perfectly sinicized at the turn of the sixth century, did its very best to conceal. It is possible, then, that Jia Sixie’s agricultural treatise—at the same time a compendium of the Chinese tradition of pasta and a master text to which that tradition’s heirs would constantly refer—was subject to foreign influences, all the more so given that those influences might have been completely assimilated. This, however, remains unproven. Whatever the case, the word luosuo would not outlive Jia Sixie, and the very technique of making them would also vanish. We must therefore presume that this type of pasta was peculiar to the Northern Wei china: pasta’s other homeland 307

dynasty. It is interesting, however, to note the existence of this way of making little kernel-like pastas at the far eastern extremity of the Eurasian continent. When we consider that this type of pasta shape is also attested in Spain and northern Africa some seven centuries later, we can hardly help ascribing a universal nature to this type of preparation, still present throughout the Mediterranean basin in a great many variant forms.91 Specialists debate furiously whether these preparations made by kneading flour or semolina should be considered pasta or couscous, not only because of how they were made but also the way they were subsequently used in the kitchen. The question of terminology is not easy to resolve, inasmuch as we are obliged to make use of present-day vocabulary to describe these products, even though they were neither exactly couscous nor precisely pasta products, at least according to standard modern definitions. These edible manmade kernels testify, in any case, to the existence of an immense continuum of cereal-based preparations, ranging from the whole grain to flour, passing through various stages of transformation: from minuscule pastas conceived as artificial reconstructions (spindle-shaped, worm-shaped, and so on) of grains and kernels of every size to the family of pasta products proper, made from sheets of dough, sausages of dough, pellets and disks of dough, and so on. While the selection of recipes for so-called pasta products provided in Qimin yaoshu includes a great many pastry preparations (in terms of how the dough was worked), there is no mention either of stuffed pasta or of the marvelous laowan dumplings described so well by Shu Xi. It would seem that, in Jia Sixie’s view, the work of making pasta products concerned only the pasta itself. On the other hand, the collection of bing recipes contains preparations that are unprecedented and show how wheat bing had served as models for similar preparations made with different cereal-based ingredients.

Starch-Based Pasta. The treatise by Jia Sixie is the first text in which we find documentation and, more important, detailed explanations of the process of making “pasta” based on cereals other than wheat, which would in time make China world-famous for this type of preparation. Luosuo were made with grains of millet as the basic ingredient. But there is more. Two recipes for bing are formulas for making pasta products with millet starch (fen). Since starch-based pasta possesses no elasticity and therefore cannot be shaped before 308 china: pasta’s other homeland

cooking, it was necessary to invent a technique other than kneading in order to transform the dough into pasta products. This technique, still in use today, consists of fixing the shape of the pasta by partially gelatinizing it. First, one passes the soft dough through a sieve held over boiling water. Once their shape has been fixed in this manner, the starch vermicelli are drained and then dried for later use. Here are the instructions for fenbing in Jia Sixie’s treatise: Use a very hot meat broth to mix with the very best starch. (If you use less fine starch, the result will be grainy to the tooth, and that is not good; if the liquid is not sufficiently hot, the pasta will be partially raw and will be inedible). For “ring pasta,” we must first of all mix [starch] with liquid in order to obtain a firm dough; then knead it vigorously by hand to make it very soft and uniform. Add more broth and dilute it until the dough glistens and has a good texture. Take a cow horn, and cut it so that has roughly the size of a [large] spoon. Make six or seven small [round] holes, through which a rough hemp cord could pass. If you want to make shuiyin pasta, you should take another horn and cut three or four small slits, through which a scallion leaf could pass. Take two squares of fine new silk, a foot and a half square. Cut a hole in the fabric the diameter of the horn, and sew the material to the [edge] of the horn. (To do that, you must make holes [at the edge of each horn] and stitch very fine so that the dough cannot pass through. After using it, wash the silk and hang it up to dry; in this way, it will last twenty years). Fill the horn with starch dough, gather and join the four corners of the silk strainer, and then press the dough over the boiling liquid. Cook. Flavor with meat broth. Seasoned with a sauce of fermented milk or a sesame paste, this type of pasta is white as jade and soft, and sticks to the tongue. They are also just as good as wheat pasta. (They are also called nuobing [pressed pasta]. When they are seasoned with a sauce of fermented milk, they should not be made with meat broth but with clear water instead). We should also mention a recipe for imitation pork rind, made with millet starch diluted in hot water to make a gruel. The principle is exceedingly simple but not necessarily easy to implement. First of all, one must place a round metal tray on a pot of hot water. china: pasta’s other homeland 309

Then one pours a spoonful of starch gruel onto the tray and immediately spins the tray so that the liquid forms a perfectly round and uniform pancake. When the pancake has formed properly and heat has solidified it, one removes it from the tray and drops it into boiling water. It will become a translucent and gelatinous sheet reminiscent of pork rind. All one needs to do then is to cut it and flavor it as one chooses. This type of preparation in all sorts of variants would in time enjoy enormous popularity. With this technique, it was possible with relative ease to make edible sheets with which one could wrap other foods or which one could use as envelopes for delicious stuffings that, thus protected, could be cooked properly so as to develop their flavor fully. With these methods of production, we are leaving the domain of kneaded wheat dough, but there can be no doubt that the extreme interest in wheat bing served to stimulate the Chinese imagination in this area. Let us note that, although the Chinese had discovered how to process millet in the earliest antiquity, in the time of Jia Sixie, millet starch—at any rate, the finest and whitest millet starch—was still considered to belong to the field of cosmetics: it was a face powder, as suggested in the story of the metaphysician He Yan with his porcelain skin, and it was used very widely in this period, when one powdered not only one’s face but also one’s shoulders.92 This use is specified in the recipes for the production of numerous types of starches in the treatise Qimin yaoshu, which are classed in a separate section on beauty products. Millet starch, obtained through a long and complex process involving fermentation, was a valuable product, and its use in the kitchen was an indicator of some degree of luxury. Still, the author of the treatise acknowledged this option in a note, pointing out that “one can also use [millet starch] to make bing to offer one’s guests.”93 This remark harks back to the “Ode to Bing,” in which these pasta products are generally presented as a social food, a food for entertaining. Such they remained, as we shall soon see. Even though the chapter devoted to bing only contains a few recipes for pasta products as we define them and notably no recipes for dumplings, it still marks the beginning of a major diversification of production techniques according to the various types of cereals used. This unquestionably means that these cereal-based foods were quite widespread by this point, in both northern and southern China. Moreover, the techniques suited to the processing of millet starch could easily be applied to rice starch, thus allowing the south310 china: pasta’s other homeland

ern Chinese, more familiar with rice than with wheat, to consume a product similar to the wheat pasta that was so enjoyed by the northern Chinese.

the popularity of

BING

throughout china

During the four centuries that extended from the end of the Northern and Southern Dynasties (420–581) until the Northern Song dynasty in the tenth century, pasta products and other wheatflour–based preparations enjoyed enormous popularity. This was doubtless the result of the immense increase in the cultivation of wheat, both in northern and southern China. Beginning with the Tang dynasty, crop rotation (rice/wheat) was practiced in the central and lower basin of the Yangzi River, and beginning with the Northern Song dynasty, the cultivation of wheat extended further south, to the point that it began to displace millet.94 Under the Tang dynasty, flour was also produced on a very large scale by a number of milling facilities located along watercourses, irrigation canals, or even within the capital city, Chang’an. Under the Tang dynasty (618–907), these businesses, owned by monasteries as well as rich landowners or members of the imperial family, brought in considerable revenue for the state, through taxes.95 We also begin to find an unquestionable iconography of the making of dough, most notably in a tomb picture located near Beijing and dating back to the Liao dynasty (937–958).96 This time, there can be no doubt about it: the woman depicted in the wall painting is definitely kneading a substantial lump of dough on a board that is raised just slightly above the ground (fig. 23). The kneader is crouching or resting her haunches on her feet, her arms uncovered and the palms of her hands flat. It is possible to infer from the position of her body, leaning slightly forward, that she is rocking back and forth, so as to impart the force required to knead properly. Tan Tanaka, a Japanese specialist who has studied scenes of food preparation in wall paintings from the Han dynasty to the Yuan dynasty (1279–1368), points out that the preparation of pasta, and therefore kneading, seems to have been an activity delegated to women, though men and women are generally depicted as relative equals in the paintings of food preparations that he has studied. All the same, in spite of the fully acquired visibility of the processes china: pasta’s other homeland 311

involved in working dough and the development of the milling trade, which implied an intensification of the production of pasta products, we actually have less information about pasta than for the preceding period. Could this be because pasta had become commonplace? It was now familiar, well accepted, and eaten on a daily basis, and yet there are no recipes from this period, and it was rarely honored in poetry, aside from the occasional specialty renowned for its refinement. Huaiye lengtao, for example, a “cold green pasta made with the leaves of the Chinese scholar tree,” that was eaten in the summer in the imperial palace inspired a great poet of the Tang dynasty, Du Fu (712–770), to write a poem: The topmost leaves of the scholar tree Are gathered for the chef. The sap is squeezed from the leaves And mixed with fresh flour from the marketplace. Cooked through the good offices of the cauldron, At lunch, they remove all affliction.97 There is still documentation of botuo, but the word seems to have acquired a much broader meaning under the Tang dynasty, at least according to the author of a very short text dating from 856 and devoted to the definition of certain food products.98 The botuo, for that matter, had become butuo, and from the changed spelling of their name, it is clear that they were no longer elongated, broad, and short, as under the Northern Wei dynasty. By this point, the word described a variety of pasta with differentiated shapes and appearances: broad, thin, and finely crimped; long and stringlike; square and shaped like tree leaves; and thick cut. As the text specifies, “they bear different names, but they all belong to the category of butuo.” One method of culinary preparation with the astonishing name gutu butuo, “butuo attacking like a bird of prey,” was even given as an example: “cover several slices of raw mutton with butuo in the hollow of a bowl, and pour over that a broth scented with the five perfumes; finally, mix it all together after adding butter and Szechuan pepper.” This dish is comparable to Vietnamese pho soup, which is prepared by pouring very hot aromatic broth over already cooked vermicelli and finely sliced raw meat. The meat is cooked rare and remains very tender, with an appetizing pink color. Should we interpret the strange name of this dish as a metaphorical allusion to a bird of prey swooping down china: pasta’s other homeland 313

on its victim? Do the butuo that entirely cover the meat play the role of voracious birds of prey? Whatever the case, this sort of heroic comparison suggests that pasta products under the Tang dynasty were still highly valued by those men of letters who took up their pens to write about them. From this text, so rich in information, however brief it may be, we can learn much about the vocabulary and categorization of pasta products. First of all, the word bing does not appear in it, as if it had been replaced by butuo, used as a generic term. Moreover, the word mian (flour), which would later become the generic term for describing pasta products, appears here in the compound term qiemian, or “cut pasta,” as in the treatise Qimin yaoshu. We thus see that the Tang dynasty constituted the passage toward a differentiation in two categories: on the one hand, bread rolls, flatbreads, and other products made with dough and, on the other hand, noodles and pasta products, a transition that would be marked by the elimination of the term bing to describe the second group of products. Another important observer ate botuo. The celebrated Japanese Buddhist monk Ennin, who wrote in his journal about his travels in China and noted the contents of many of his meals, was offered botuo three times in 839 and 840. These were rather special occasions, and the botuo were prepared in his honor, as a sort of homage. He savored them appropriately: most of his meals were quite meager.99 Far to the west, along the borders of China during the Tang dynasty, at Dunhuang, an oasis town located at the edge of the Gobi desert along the caravan route linking China with the Western Territories and India, it was common practice to eat botuo as well as all sorts of other bing. The account books of the numerous Buddhist monasteries in the town tell us that during certain festivals, a great number of hubing, the famous barbarian flatbreads of olden times, were eaten, as well as lengtao, botuo, and plenty of other bing whose names are nowadays obscure and difficult to interpret.100 (The manuscripts of these account books, dating from the fourth to tenth centuries and found in 1899 among more than thirty thousand documents concerning daily and religious life, constitute an inestimable source for scholars of Sinology, who had until then been obliged to rely on printed texts, the earliest of which dated from the eleventh century.)101 And, as if to confirm this type of consumption, in 1959, in Astana, near Turfan in Xinjiang, about 435 miles west of Dunhuang, a set of tiny fossilized dumplings, perfectly preserved, was found in a 314 china: pasta’s other homeland

tomb dating from the Tang dynasty (fig. 24). They are in every way similar to the dumplings generally called hundun that are eaten today.102 Oddly enough, even though the dumplings themselves have survived, preserved by the sands of Central Asia, the word hundun, so common under the Song dynasty, occurred rarely at the time of the Tang dynasty. It is mentioned, however, in a few documents,103 in particular, in an imperial menu including a course of twenty-four different types of hundun, shaped, according to the text, in the form of flowers and filled with various stuffings.104 With these two references documenting the expansion of the civilization of pasta products over a vast area subject to Chinese cultural influence, we can now safely assert that these dishes had become indispensable elements of everyday and ceremonial life. We also know from a number of poems that under the Tang dynasty there was a custom known as the tangbing yan, “banquet of pasta in broth,” which was served to celebrate the birth of a son.105 For that matter, as Ennin among others suggests, it had become customary to welcome a guest by preparing fresh pasta, an enjoyable ceremony mentioned as early as the sixth century that appears again under the Song dynasty.

pasta products of the north spread to the south With the Song dynasty (960–1279), the evolution of pasta products appears to have experienced a sudden acceleration.106 (True, it is also much easier to follow the development of pasta because texts, thanks to the invention of printing around the tenth century, were much more numerous and, especially, better preserved.) The period was marked both by the traumatic memory of the transfer in 1126 of the capital of the Northern Song dynasty from Kaifeng to Hangzhou, south of the Yangzi River, and by the surrender in 1279 of the entire Chinese territory to Mongol power. The growing consumption of wheat pasta, which historians have noted, was partly the result of the political and economic turmoil in the wake of the Mongol conquest, which was to last nearly three centuries. With the advent of the Song dynasty, followed by the transfer of their capital as a result of a powerful and relentless barbarian offensive that began around the tenth century and culminated with the fall of Hangzhou, the center of Chinese civilization slowly shifted south. With this shift came a progressive modification of customs and tastes, and pasta products gained in china: pasta’s other homeland 315

popularity. Pasta, originally a northern dish, was forcibly acclimatized in the south. And the sudden influx of population from the north, with new culinary and dietary practices, caused at the very beginning of the Southern Song dynasty (1127–1279) a sharp rise in the price of wheat. The administration therefore encouraged the cultivation of this crop, already well developed in the south, by exempting those who grew wheat from taxes, which caused a substantial increase in the acreage planted.107

Pasta Products Distinguished from Bing. Because this policy resulted in an increased production of wheat flour, it became increasingly difficult to continue using the same generic term, bing, to designate dishes that were radically different, such as the entire spectrum of pastries and all the pasta products that were sold in the numerous shops and workshops of the two capitals of the Song dynasty. The general term now used to describe wheat-based pasta products was mian, the original significance of which was “wheat flour.” If it happens that we still find occurrences of the word bing to describe pasta during the Song dynasty, this is because the author of the text wanted to emphasize his yearning for an idealized past. The same is true of the word botuo, which was heavily used under the Tang dynasty to describe noodles in broth and replaced by mian. This was confirmed by Gao Cheng (active around 1078–1085), the compiler of a dictionary on the origins of things, when he stated that in his time botuo was simply a synonym for mian.108 It is possible to document the occasional use of the word botuo under the Song dynasty, but it no longer seems to have the generic connotation that it had previously. This separation, by now definitive, between the preparations called bing and those described with the word mian is further attested in the chronicles of the ancient capital of Kaifeng. These state that bing were prepared in what we would nowadays call bakeries or pastry shops, equipped with numerous ovens, which produced a wide variety of cakes at an astounding pace. Mian pasta appeared on the menus of specialty restaurants, called mianshi dian, or “pasta shops,” but also selling other kinds of food. This pasta was the essential element of cooked dishes such as sanxian mian, or “three-freshness noodles,” or jisi mian, “minced chicken noodles,” and in contrast with bing it never seems to have been sold to be cooked later at home. Mian dough was prepared at home or by a craftsman, and it was consumed immedichina: pasta’s other homeland 317

ately, not stored. Under the Song dynasty, then, mian was a fresh pasta. The tradition of preserved, dry pasta documented in the treatise Qimin yaoshu appears to have been forgotten entirely, at least judging from the recipes for pasta found in the culinary texts of the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries. Those texts contain an extremely varied and refined repertoire of fresh pasta, both simple and stuffed. For simple pasta supposedly made of wheat flour, we find the following names in the texts: qizi, gudou, mian, tao, and botuo, but we only have recipes from this era for the last three. The stuffed pasta was called hundun, a word that became the classical term for tiny dumplings cooked in broth that are still made today under that name.

Variety of Formats. Among the four types of mian pasta found in the corpus, shuihua mian, “pasta slipped into water,”109 was the most frequently mentioned. The way it was made is reminiscent of the manner in which sixth-century shuiyin, “stretched out in water,” was prepared. Small fragments of dough, this time in the form of pellets, were soaked in water to eliminate the starch and make the pasta slippery. In the recipe found in the treatise Zhongkui lu (The cooking record of Madame Wu), when the pellets are taken out of the soaking water they are stretched out and then immediately dropped into boiling water (it is recommended that one work very fast when stretching the dough out with one’s fingers). As for flavoring, it differs completely from what Qimin yaoshu recommends: meat broth, fermented milk, and sesame paste. Instead, though sesame or almond paste is used as a condiment, it is accompanied by dried salted bamboo shoots, cucumber in soy sauce, eggplant steeped in a pomace, or else various pickled vegetables such as ginger, scallions, or cucumber, finely julienned. As the editor of the modern edition indicates, the author of the text was almost certainly from southern China (Zhejiang, to be precise), and she did not hesitate to give a southern air to preparations that until then were clearly marked with the northern seal of meat or dairy products. An interesting type of mian pasta that was very popular under the Yuan dynasty was made by combining wheat flour with juice extracted from a plant. This was the case with luofu mian, “radish pasta,” a recipe of medicinal inspiration made with the juice of small radishes mixed with wheat flour. Lin Hong, the author of the recipe, 318 china: pasta’s other homeland

which is collected in his Shanjia qinggong (The simple foods of the mountain folk), informs us that this pasta was thought to prevent hair from going white, although he hardly seems convinced.110 This type of pasta, like baihe mian, “lily bulb pasta,” made with dried lily bulb flour, is a dietetic preparation, and it is not at all certain that it was consumed widely. Lin Hong was an unusual man of letters who decided to live far from the madding crowd and recommended to those of his peers who wished to imitate him the rules of a simple but refined life. This inspired his interest in a cuisine of plants, as natural as it was healthful. Nature was also a source of poetic inspiration for him, as were the great men of the past, whom he constantly took as models, quoting them and paraphrasing their ideas and words. This may explain why he was the only author, or almost the only one, in the Song corpus who continued to employ the antique bing and tangbing to refer to pasta products, even though he was perfectly familiar with the modern terms. The popularity of cold pastas does not seem to have declined after Du Fu’s evocative poem about “cold green pasta made with the leaves of the Chinese scholar tree.” (This renowned poet of the Tang dynasty is one of those whom Lin Hong quotes in his Shanjia qinggong.) Cold pasta was eaten as far away as Dunhuang, and under the Southern Song it was regularly sold in Hangzhou shops. But only in a recipe for cuilü lengtao, “cold tao in turquoise strings,” by Chen Yuanjing, author of Shilin guangji (Encyclopedia of material life), during the rule of the Southern Song dynasty, does it become clear where the appellation tao comes from.111 This word is a verb that even today means “to wash in a sieve,” as one once cleaned impurities from goldbearing sands or now cleans rice before cooking. The encyclopedia describes not only how to knead the dough with the juice of young Chinese scholar tree leaves, roll it out, and cut it into thin strips but also how to cook and flavor it. Once tao noodles were cooked, they were immersed in cold water. But if they were typically a summer dish, designed to cool the palate, they could also be eaten warm, as Lin Hong suggested in a recipe entitled Ziai tao (My favorite tao). The food-loving hermit preferred them flavored with sautéed Chinese chives with a drop of vinegar, a sprinkle of sugar, and some pickle sauce or else with tofu and cottage cheese. In either case, before eating them, a bowl of the hot broth in which the noodles had been cooked was added to the preparation. china: pasta’s other homeland 319

Although the word botuo in the Song dynasty seems to have been nothing more than a synonym for mian, the pastas described with that word all share the same characteristics: they are made with a mixture of wheat flour and a liquid other than water, such as juice from a plant or broth. Thus the hongsi botuo, “red tagliatelle,” in the encyclopedia are made with flour to which is added the juice of raw shrimp.112 When they are cooked, these noodles become transparent with a slight red tinge. They are then flavored with a concentrated chicken broth to which is added a broth made from the crushed shells of the shrimp. This extremely sophisticated recipe allows us to conjecture that the term botuo might also have been a chic name for a type of pasta the making of which conferred a high degree of refinement. Whatever the case, there can be no doubt that botuo belong to the category of mian when we read two short poems by the great Lu You (1125–1210), both found under the heading: “One fine morning, my stomach was crying out in hunger, and I ate some exquisite mian pasta with pickles, whereupon I rejoiced.” This pasta is none other than botuo, which Lu You ate in great quantities and compared to manna from heaven.113

Hundun: Stuffed Pasta as a Metaphor for the Original Chaos. The Song dynasty witnessed the culinary debut of hundun, even if they are documented in earlier periods. These tiny dumplings, made with an extremely fine dough, were most often prepared in broth in that era. They are still the glory of Cantonese cuisine, under the name of wonton. Under the Song dynasty, hundun were made in a wide variety of shapes and were stuffed with a great number of different fillings. But first of all it was necessary to make the wrapper. Wheat flour and salted water are mixed into a dough; this is then allowed to sit for a brief while and then kneaded again. Afterward, one breaks off some small fragments and rolls them out very fine, sprinkling the working surface with mung bean starch to prevent the dough from sticking; the four corners of each wrapper are rolled especially thin, but one must ensure that the dough remains sufficiently solid that the stuffing does not pierce it. This is a classic method for preparing square hundun wrappers, much as they can be purchased nowadays in Chinese food stores. The sheet of dough used for making the wrappers, called “hundun skin,” is so thin that it was used at the time for making other types of

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pasta, for example, the small and charming shapes described in the recipe for meihua tangbing, “plum blossom pasta in broth,” in the treatise Shanjia qinggong: First soak white plums and powdered sandalwood in the water that you will mix with the flour to make the dough. Roll out the dough as you would to make wrappings for hundun. Cut out shapes depicting a plum flower with a five-fen (2/3-inch) iron pastry cutter. Cook in boiling water, then serve in a very clear chicken broth. Here, Lin Hong is proposing a culinary and, at the same time, an aesthetic creation, embodied in the very form of the pasta, enhanced by the culinary preparation. Nothing could be more appropriate than serving such a creation in a chicken broth, light to the palate and transparent to the eye. In one of Lin Hong’s other recipes, the hundun are shaped like honey locust pods.114 Here, the shape and form matter as much as, if not more than, the flavor, as there are very few recipes for stuffings, which, in Lin Hong, are mostly made with vegetables. Once again, the shape of the hundun seems to have played a primordial role, something that might be surmised from their name.115 The characters for this word contain, in each syllable, a semantic unit indicating the edible nature of the object in question, as do other graphic elements, similarly pronounced hundun, that have philosophical meanings dating back to the earliest antiquity. Hundun means the original Chaos, before the separation of Heaven and Earth. The word hundun used for dumplings may then have preserved, implicitly and facetiously, this idea of an indivisible totality, representing the Supreme Unity in the perfect solidarity of its elements, appearing here in the form of a wrapper hermetically sealed around stuffing.116 We know that hundun were sold in specialty shops in both Kaifeng and Hangzhou. They consequently appear to have enjoyed some popularity as restaurant food. All the same, when reading Lin Hong, one sees that this pasta and others like it, served in broth, were important elements of the rustic culinary life that he recommends. Although he had withdrawn from the world, he had not cut himself off from a social life, for one of his favorite pastimes was to join gatherings of his friends to talk, play music, or compose poems. These

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gatherings were always accompanied by delicious meals, and hundun often appeared on the menu.

Pasta of the Literary Tradition in the North, Technical Innovations in the South. As under the Tang dynasty, pasta, especially what were called tangbing, “noodles in broth,” was one of the obligatory dishes to offer friends or guests. When Lin Hong explains how to make “plum blossom pasta in broth,” he never calculates fewer than two hundred pieces of pasta per guest. When he served chungen hundun, “hundun stuffed with Chinese cedar root,” a dish he often offered guests who came all the way to his mountain home for a visit, he counted on at least ten pieces per guest. In a recipe for another type of hundun, stuffed with a mince of bamboo sprouts and fern tips, Lin Hong recalls nostalgically his previous life, when he took part in fellowship meals organized by one of his colleagues in Jiangxi; the meals always began with a sampling of hundun; then everyone sat in the shade of the porch and together enjoyed a tea made with aromatic sprouts of some plant renowned for its perfume. The ancient tradition of eating pasta products during literary symposia, mentioned in Shu Xi’s “Ode to Bing” nine centuries before, seems to have endured. By contrast, the custom of singling out a season in which certain pasta dishes could be eaten seems to have declined in importance. Reference to it is found only in the chronicle Wulin jiushi (Ancient matters of Wulin), in a proverb recommending that hundun should be eaten at the winter solstice.117 By this period, they had become dishes that were at once popular and sophisticated (in their more luxurious and refined versions), and they had lost all connotations of good omen. The need to quote a proverb in order to call to mind an old custom shows that, if the custom still existed at all, it was quickly entering the realm of folklore. Beginning in the Song dynasty, the making and cooking of pasta moved in a new direction, as is documented by culinary writings. The texts we have mentioned come from southern China, and in this connection they offer evidence of a cuisine whose ingredients and gustatory inflections are quite different from what we find in the sixth-century treatise Qimin yaoshu, compiled in the north of China, probably in Shandong. We have already noted this in reference to the vegetable accompaniment suggested by Madame Wu in her recipe for “pasta 322 china: pasta’s other homeland

slipped into water.” Not only was there a greater variety of flavorings, but there was also a more extensive use of vegetables (the earliest recipes and the most ancient descriptions of pasta tended to associate it more frequently with the finest meats). By moving to Hangzhou, we have entered the rich, humid, warm, and verdant universe of China’s Yangzi basin, renowned for its green vegetables, rice, fish, and shellfish. Thus we now find recipes for dishes such as “red tagliatelle,” made from a dough incorporating the “juice” of raw shrimp, a typical ingredient of the coastal regions of Fujian, probably created by Chen Yuanjing for inclusion in his encyclopedia. The laowan dumplings praised by Shu Xi and made quite differently from hundun are entirely absent from the texts. These laowan were made with a kneaded dough and shaped one at a time, each dumpling formed with a disk of dough that was then filled with a stuffing made of good chopped meat flavored with spices. Like today’s jiaozi, which are eaten in northern China, the dumplings probably had somewhat thick wrappings and were fairsized. These qualities are not appreciated by the southern Chinese, who are particularly fond of fine pasta and delicate stuffings. This dislike for the pasta made in the north was expressed as early as the Southern Song dynasty by certain men of letters from the south, who preferred rice vermicelli to wheat pasta, considered to be difficult to digest and harmful to the health.118 Hundun are another indication of a preference for light, fine pasta and equally subtle stuffings. Lin Hong allows us to guess that the wrapping for hundun, called “skin,” was very thin, like a sheet of dough, which remains the case today, when hundun are almost transparent. The “plum blossom pasta in broth” could only have been made with a very thin sheet of dough. The exceedingly thin sheets of dough preferred by the southern Chinese was made possible by the rolling pin, which, while it is not explicitly mentioned in texts, is implied by the use of the verb gan, “roll out,” in reference to the making of hundun, which could only refer to the process of rolling out dough with this sort of a utensil. This is further corroborated by the practice of sprinkling starch on the working surface in order to facilitate the operation and prevent the dough from sticking to the surface (starch is still used in this way).119 There is no need for such an operation when making pasta with the hands, as was the practice in the north. The use of the rolling pin to roll out the dough—even if it is only documented by the use of a specific verb—and the reliance on pasta-making techniques that are the direct consequence of the use of that utensil—as in the employment china: pasta’s other homeland 323

of pastry cutters to make pasta in amusing or charming shapes, like the “plum blossom pasta in broth” that Lin Hong offered his guests— marked a break with the tradition of making pasta by hand that still exists in northern China. There, dumplings are still made one by one, even though the edge of each envelope is crimped with the use of a small roller—a concession to southern influence?—which does nothing to change the underlying spirit of the process.

The Discovery of Gluten and Gluten Pasta. The technique for making “soaked” pasta such as the shuiyin, “stretched out in water,” and the shuihua mian, “pasta slipped into water,” can be considered a first step in the process of entirely eliminating the starch of a wheatflour–based pasta, keeping nothing but the gluten. As we have already seen, the Chinese had early mastered complex techniques to extract starch from millet, as is stated in the sixth-century treatise Qimin yaoshu. It is therefore no surprise that they tried to unravel the mystery of the elasticity of wheat-flour–based pasta, especially when we consider that they had always been fascinated by its astonishing properties when compared with the flours of other cereals. By placing their skill at decantation, which makes it possible to obtain starch, at the service of their enormous curiosity concerning the physical properties and behavior of foodstuffs, the Chinese were soon successful in isolating gluten, called mianjin in Chinese, literally “muscle of flour,” and especially in understanding the culinary and nutritional advantages of this substance. The earliest mention of a technique for obtaining gluten dates back to the eleventh century. Interestingly enough, it emerges from a comparison with the refinement of steel. Comparing the jin, “nerve” or “muscle,” that is found in the heart of flour to steel, which is found in the heart of iron, the scholar Shen Guo (1031–1095) explained in his work Mengqi bitan (Observations noted at Mengqi), that the process of refining iron into steel was similar to the way in which one “washed wheat flour dough until its muscle emerges.”120 Shen Guo’s use of this comparison means he felt certain that it would be understood by his readers, which implies that gluten was already quite well known and considered to be an everyday food product. Many other references, from only slightly later, confirm that gluten was quite familiar under the Northern Song dynasty. Beginning with the Southern Song dynasty, we know that it was sold in certain shops in 324 china: pasta’s other homeland

the capital and in southern towns, under the name of fujin. It seems, however, that it was used in Buddhist monasteries, served to monks who were obliged to observe a vegetarian regime, before it spread to the population at large.121 Eventually, gluten and all gluten-based preparations would become the meat substitute in vegetarian regimes in China. But if gluten was to constitute one of the essential ingredients of a specific Chinese cuisine, it would also be used in a great number of other elaborations before being cooked. This viscous and gray raw material, obtained through soaking, could be subjected to numerous and varied operations of precooking, preliminary fermentations to provide other basic ingredients that were then cooked further according to complex recipes, in some cases with the ambitious objective of imitating in every slightest detail the taste and texture of meat. Gluten remained unrivaled in its remarkable degree of versatility, serving as one of the foundations of China’s great vegetarian cuisine, prepared in perfect imitation of meat. Even now, vegetarian banquets or menus served in some temples or in specialized restaurants are composed of dishes produced solely from plant-based substances, especially gluten, but bearing the ordinary names of meatbased dishes.122 We can safely say then that with the end of the Song dynasty, on the eve of the Mongol conquest, we have entered a new era in the history of pasta. And the number and variety of pastas increased more under the influence of the conquering civilization, which adopted Chinese ways in a genuine cultural—but also culinary—syncretism.

exotic flavors, methods, and preparations The period that extends from the advent of the Yuan dynasty (1279–1368) to the middle of the fifteenth century constitutes a period of exceptional growth in the consumption of pasta products across the entire territory of China. The sheer abundance of culinary sources available today may produce an impression of wealth and diversity, but the fact is that after the fifteenth century the array of pastas known on a national scale throughout all China diminished, especially with the disappearance of a “foreign” body of recipes that had previously been very popular. Regional specialties increased in richness, but they remained restricted to certain geographic areas. china: pasta’s other homeland 325

Heritage and Value of a Repertoire. Under the Yuan dynasty and afterward, culinary literature shows roughly the same selection of pastas as under the Song dynasty, but with more formats in each category of pasta and much more information about how the pasta was made. Many previously unknown types of pasta also appeared. In particular, the family of mian increased substantially, and we still have not counted all the names of dishes including pastas cooked and named according to their flavoring. Along with the shuihua mian, “pasta slipped into water,” and hongsi mian, “red tagliatelle” of the Song dynasty, we should add the impressive list of jingdai mian (fettucine [belts]), shanyao mia, (yam pasta),123 suomian (spaghetti [strings]), guamian (hanging pasta), tuozhang mian (palmettes), cuilü mian (turquoise vermicelli), jizhua mian (chicken foot pasta), shoupie mian (hand-stretched pasta), shoucuo mian (hand-rolled pasta), juemian (cut pasta), ximian (fine pasta), and goumian (hook pasta). Clearly, the names of most of these pastas were derived from their shape, their color, or the way in which they were made. As for botuos, they are mentioned only once, in the Jujia biyong shilei quanji (Household encyclopedia), from the turn of the fifteenth century,124 the latest source in our corpus. Its recipes for shanyu botuo (sweet potato botuo) and linlong botuo (gold and jade botuo), however, share no characteristics that justify placing them in the same category. The decision to apply the term botuo to these two types of pasta appears to be a whim of the author, who may have used it merely to introduce a degree of variation into the terminology, both culinary and general. Tao remain, but those which so inspired the poet Du Fu make only one appearance. By this period, they were more often white than green and were seasoned in an exceedingly refined manner, as if the flavoring were more important than the pasta itself. Ni Zan (1301–1374), a renowned southern painter, offers a marvelous recipe for them in his Yunlintang yinshi zhidu (Dietary system of the Yunlin studio): he serves them with jellied fish scented with Szechuan pepper.125 The author of the Jujia biyong suggests serving them with an extremely elaborate vegetarian condiment, made with fried gluten and pickle, that had the color and appearance of eel. This era was marked by some particularly interesting developments. This is the case with the fine pasta, qizi, literally, “pieces from the game of go,” a name that dates back to the Song dynasty, although we have no idea how that early pasta was made. Qiemian, or “cut pasta,” mentioned in the treatise Qimin yaoshu, were compared in 326 china: pasta’s other homeland

terms of shape to qizi, and during the Yuan dynasty, the very word qizi lost its original meaning, coming to indicate only “fine pasta.”126 Thus we find dingtou qizi (nail-head qizi), xiangyan qizi (elephant eye qizi), liuyanqizi (willow leaf qizi), and even qianyan qizi (sapeque-hole qizi), whose name refers to the size of the little square hole cut into Chinese coins (sapeques) to allow them to be strung as necklaces. The Jujia biyong also explains how to make mixin qizi, “rice heart qizi,” which are cut and then cut again from a sheet of dough rolled out exceedingly thin and then tossed in a sieve to eliminate the excess flour. This pasta is well named, indeed, since it is chopped so fine that each piece is no larger than the core of a grain of rice. The bits were cooked in boiling water, and when they were done, both pasta and broth liquid were poured into cold water to stop the cooking. Afterward they were drained and flavored with sesame paste, chopped meat flavored with ginger, melon, finely chopped cucumber, and fresh coriander. This recipe is evidence that “fine pasta” was no longer dried for possible storage, as had been the case in the sixth century. In the area of stuffed pasta, people continued to enjoy hundun, which were often made in the shape of tiny pillows. The painter Ni Zan explains in great detail how to make them, and he specified the correct method of cooking them: it is necessary to stir the boiling water and only then add the hundun, letting them cook without covering the pot. When they float to the surface, they are cooked, and you should not touch them again! But the great new development of the period was steamed stuffed pasta, and the variety of stuffings was infinite, with such names, in the tradition of the laowan of Shu Xi’s “Ode to Bing,” as mantou, jiao, and baozi. (These pasta preparations cooked with steam have survived to the present day, but if the jiao, “triangles,” and the baozi, “packets,” are still charming little steamed pies, the mantou have become simple leavened rolls, also steamed.) These dishes were all made from the same basic dough, the recipe for which is provided in the Jujia biyong. What the author of this text was truly interested in, however, was the stuffings, raw or cooked, and he recommends an immense number of compositions, varying according to the season or the style of the meal, whether festive or routine.

Tastes from Elsewhere. The Mongol conquest of China also led to the adoption of a great many foreign recipes in the cuisine of the inhabitants of the northern provinces, especially at court, as is extenchina: pasta’s other homeland 327

sively documented in the treatise Yushan zhengyao (The true principles of eating and drinking), compiled in the fourteenth century by Hu Sihui, the personal dietician of the emperor at the time.127 This text is riddled with transcriptions of foreign words (Turkish, Mongol, ArabPersian) and contains a large number of non-Chinese recipes for very refined dishes. The word tutumashi occurs in numerous texts of the period. This word, also spelled tutumasi, is supposedly a phonetic borrowing of the Turkish term tutmac, meaning “pasta,” which, in the Middle Ages, was also found commonly in Arabic and Persian and in various forms from one end of Asia to the other. Even now, it describes a type of pasta product in numerous Asian and Eastern European languages, such as Armenian, Serbo-Croatian, and Romanian.128 In the Jujia biyong, the recipe for tutumasi was clearly understood as foreign, because it was included in a series of Muslim recipes. It was made in the manner of shuihua mian, “pasta slipped into water”: pellets of dough were left to soak in water and then fashioned in the palm of the hand into small thin disks. The flavoring of this “western pasta” in Yushan zhengyao and in a Chinese reading manual for Koreans is plainly of Turkish or Arab-Persian inspiration, because after cooking it was mixed with a fermented milk sauce flavored with garlic and basil.129 This type of flavoring is used in many dishes described in a thirteenth-century Arabic culinary treatise, from Baghdad.130 Tutumashi is not included in all the culinary texts of the Yuan dynasty, but it is not at all surprising to find it mentioned in a text written by the personal dietician of a Mongol emperor, whose job it was to acquaint his sovereign with all the infinite wealth of flavors in his immense empire, or in a manual addressed to Koreans traveling in China, who were accustomed to sampling all sorts of foods alien to their own culture. The point of view of these authors certainly differs from that of the nonconformist painter Ni Zan (1301–1374), whose cuisine appears generally inspired by southern Chinese food and who made absolutely no reference to the foods of the conquerors from the frozen northern steppes. The author of the Jujia biyong, however, writing long after the Yuan dynasty, felt that he needed to include a selection of foreign recipes, including one for tutumashi. His was an encyclopedic and deliberately open viewpoint, inspired by his predecessors. He even speaks of the admiration that Mongol manners excited among the first Chinese emperors of the new Ming dynasty. After the fifteenth century, however, tutumashi disappeared once and for all from culinary literature. 328 china: pasta’s other homeland

When Pasta Is Not Only Wheat Based. An inventory of pasta products under the Yuan dynasty would not be limited to traditional wheat pasta. While wheat flour was often used alone, it was also combined with starches made from legumes and other flours and mixed not only with water but with plant juices, sheep’s blood, purées of cooked vegetables, and even such ingredients as mutton suet or minced raw meat. Starchy products of all sorts could be used in the making of pasta products, and so the Yushan zhengyao contains no fewer than five recipes for different pastas made with a mixture of legume starch and starch made of the seeds of the Gorgon plant, a starchy plant of the same family as the water lily, used since earliest antiquity and highly valued for its therapeutic qualities. Certain texts from the Yuan dynasty attest to a tradition of pasta made from millet starch, of which we have documented the existence as early as the sixth century. The description of making this pasta by the painter Ni Zan is not precise, but Jia Sixie’s agricultural treatise makes it possible to understand the process described by the painter: one passes a thick starchy mush through a sieve held over a pot of boiling ash water, which fixes the shape. The starch pastas in the treatise Yushan zhengyao are rarely made with a single type of starch. Instead, they produced from mixtures of flours and starches from numerous types of cereals or legumes, such as barley, sticky rice, and soy beans. Unfortunately, the procedures for making these types of pasta are not specified, and it is therefore difficult to say what they looked like. The ancient tradition of the sheet of starch dough, mentioned in the treatise Qimin yaoshu in recipes that bear the title douzi (sac) and nowadays called fenpi (skin of starch), had another variant in the Yuan corpus. The sheet of dough, or “skin,” as it is called in the Jujia biyong, is made with a blend of wheat flour and vegetable starch, in a proportion of two parts wheat flour to one part vegetable starch. The dough is kneaded with hot water and rolled out like a wheat-flour dough and then steamed along with its stuffing. In the Jujia biyong, this dough is multifunctional and is used for all stuffed preparations. The difficulty that we experience in categorizing these pasta products according to their basic ingredients demonstrates that this field was still in development, such that the author of the Jujia biyong classified different dough-based preparations in various distinct categories. china: pasta’s other homeland 329

Moist Pasta, Dry Pasta. In the Jujia biyong, the various pasta recipes are arranged in two chapters, entitled “moist pasta dishes” and “dry pasta dishes.” The distinction has to do with the methods of cooking: the “moist” pastas are cooked in water or with a broth, while the “dry” pastas are steamed. With the exception of hundun, none of the so-called moist pastas, such as mian, qizi, or even botuo, is stuffed, while the dry pastas are all stuffed: mantou, jiao, baozi, douzi, and so on. This distinction is quite similar to that observed in Italy between pasta in brodo (pasta in broth) and pastasciutta (literally, “dry pasta,” meaning pasta in a thick sauce), except that in China this classification also entails a distinction between simple pastas and stuffed pastas. The different varieties of simple pastas, whatever their shape, were rarely prepared with a sauce but generally served in broth, which itself constituted a component of the dish. The same is true today. Stuffed pastas are always steamed, except for hundun

Perfecting Techniques. The differentiation between the methods for preparing the diverse pastas had its effect on their techniques of production. While ordinary dough was generally made with cool water, often drawn at a well, pasta to be steamed was made with boiling water to precook the dough ball and facilitate the steaming process later. This practice is still in use today. This attention to methods of making pasta is especially noteworthy in certain culinary writings from the Yuan dynasty. With the exception of the Yushan zhengyao, which focused more on the assortment of dishes and indicates ingredients without necessarily discussing procedures, the treatises often describe quite precisely how to work the dough, noting the temperature of the water, the amount of time the dough balls should be left to soak, the intensity and duration of the kneading, the importance of sprinkling the working surface with starch to prevent the dough from sticking, the shaping of the dough, and so on. The Jujia biyong is a model in this regard. For the first time, we find a recommendation of two hours of soaking for “pasta slipped into water.” This text also talks of a tool that had not been mentioned before. Although we were able to infer the use of a rolling pin under the Song dynasty by the presence of a verb suggesting the operation of rolling out dough, the Jujia biyong calls it by its proper name, guluchui, literally, “mass that rolls,” or “roller.” There is more: once 330 china: pasta’s other homeland

the mixture of flour and water has been completed, the dough ball can be quite firm and therefore difficult to knead. In that case, the author recommends using an aobang, a “pinching stick”—in other words, a brake—to compress the dough about a hundred times, much as was done in the Western world as early as the Middle Ages. The dough for jingdai mian, “fettucine” or “tagliatelle,” was subjected to two successive passages of a hundred strokes under the brake, separated by a short resting period. The text also outlines in considerable detail the other technical processes that punctuate the process of making the pasta. For the shuihua mian, “pasta slipped into water,” nothing is left to chance: Use flour of the very best quality. In spring, summer, and fall, take water freshly drawn from the well, and add to it salt and oil. First mix the flour and water in such a manner as to obtain a softening, then slowly add more water, knead the whole thing, and form a dough ball. Break off small bits with the hand. Rub on oil and sprinkle with water, knead with the fist a hundred to two hundred times. Repeat this process three or four times until the dough is slightly soft, as if making flatbreads. Lay the dough on a surface and with the aid of a brake, compress the dough a hundred times. If you have no brake, you may simply pound it with your fist about a hundred times, doing so until the dough has reached a good texture. Only then can you roll out little sausages of dough the thickness of your finger. Let them soak for two hours in cool water. Wait for the dough to reach the proper stage for cooking. Make the pasta thin or broad as you prefer. In winter, make use of lukewarm water for soaking. One last tool of great importance for the preparation of certain fresh pasta also made its appearance under the Yuan dynasty. It is mentioned in the treatise by Wang Zhen, Nongshu (Book of agriculture), which dates back to the turn of the fourteenth century. Used in connection with buckwheat, a cereal crop typical of northern China, specifically Shanxi and Hebei, along the border marked by the Great Wall, the utensil in question is a small-scale manually operated press called a helou, which would give its name to the type of pasta that it was used to make.131 Although the tool is not described in the text, the characteristics of the pasta to which it lent its name give us a hint: it is made with a buckwheat dough, which is very difficult to knead and china: pasta’s other homeland 331

equally hard to shape. The use of a small manually operated press made it possible to obtain a pasta similar to spaghetti. The press was placed directly over a pot of boiling water so that the noodles dropped into it directly. This tool is still in use in the northern Chinese countryside, where there is a strong culture of pasta made with wheat and other cereals.132 The way in which different types of pasta were cooked is not always a foregone conclusion, and certain authors provide exceedingly detailed commentaries on the subject. The painter Ni Zan explains how one should proceed when “cooking pasta” (zhumian), in this case, fresh pasta. He explains that if one wishes to eat at noon, one should awaken quite early, so that the dough, well kneaded, can be set aside and then kneaded again until it attains the proper consistency. Later, in order to cook the noodles, one plunges them into boiling water and then immediately stirs them. When they are transparent, one should immediately dampen the fire, cover them, and let them sit. Then one should rekindle the fire, allow the water to return to a boil, and drain the pasta. Then add the flavorings. These few examples demonstrate that in China in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, there existed a genuine cuisine of pasta based on a thorough understanding of everyday procedures and techniques that had been observed, used, and improved, before being handed down. The texts are not always as clear as one would wish, even though generally they are very satisfactory in that regard, but when they are unambiguous, they show a remarkable precision in small details that indicate they were the work of close observers and practiced cooks, surprising as this may be for a group of authors who were men of letters or artists, not necessarily enthusiasts or professional chefs. The technical skill involved is the product of a true gastronomical tradition that assembled elements from every influence, whether originally from the north or transformed in the south. With the exception of Ni Zan’s treatise, which reflects the cuisine of the Yangzi region in the Yuan era, the other texts present a mixture of pasta techniques and customs. The fortifying pasta of the north was transformed by the condiments and vegetable accompaniments of the south. The hand, the essential tool for the creation and processing of pasta, is here complemented by the brake and the rolling pin, the latter allowing the dough to be rolled out into exceedingly thin sheets, more in keeping with southern tastes. The great mixing bowl that allowed both north and south to become better acquainted in culinary 332 china: pasta’s other homeland

terms accommodated all sorts of foreign influences as well, even tutumashi, decidedly an exotic addition to the medley. Their contribution did not stay in favor long, but only a people already fully appreciative of pasta could have included in their already rich repertory another variety of pasta.

the end of a history, the richness of a heritage The beginning of the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) marked the end of the history of pasta products in China, especially that of pasta made with wheat flour. Their development had reached its peak, and there were no more major revolutions, with the exception of the occasional interesting innovation, such as the development of egg pasta under the Ming dynasty,133 or the invention of the famous yifu mian. This variety of egg pasta, thought to be the work of the chef of a famous scholar of Yangzhou, during the reign of the emperor Qianlong (ruled 1737–1796) of the Qing dynasty, was precooked twice, once boiled in water and once deep-fried, before being poached and flavored and could be considered the ancestor of industrial instant pasta.134 Following a path dating back to the first few centuries a.d., this evolution produced an immense heritage. The production of pasta remains an essentially domestic and artisanal field, and there was no industrialization until the twentieth century. It was not until the very end of the nineteenth century that industrial-scale mills were built in Shanghai, and in 1913 there were only roughly fifty mills of substance in all of China.135 Never having cultivated or exploited durum wheat and durum wheat semolina, it remained a great civilization of fresh pasta, which it exported throughout eastern Asia. Despite the expansion of rice crops to the north of the country and the spread of wheat noodles to the south of the Huang River, wheat-flour–based pasta products continued to be seen as a distinctly northern food. Wheat-flour pasta made in the northern style thus retained a slightly rustic connotation, even though it was consumed throughout China. And starch pasta, appreciated in all its forms throughout the country, preserved its reputation for being light and easy to digest. The diversification of both the culinary preparation of pasta and the possible stuffings for dumplings, which is documented as early as the beginning of the Ming dynasty, was enriched by countless china: pasta’s other homeland 333

regional and local versions that together form an immense mosaic of methods and flavors. Nowadays the most common and widespread method of cooking pasta, whatever its shape and whether simple or stuffed, is to prepare it in broth. Raw or precooked pasta is boiled in water and then served in broth, either in a bowl or on a large tray, flavored by various condiments, herbs, vegetables, poached eggs, fish filets, shellfish, or bits of meat. The pasta is the basis of the complete dish; the broth serves mainly as the medium that melds it to the other ingredients and is not necessarily eaten. Each region possesses its own renowned specialties of pasta in broth, seasoned with the various local products. But there are plenty of other ways of cooking pasta in China. It can be mixed thoroughly with a thick sauce, or sautéed with meat and vegetables, or fried, or presented exactly as it emerges from cooking, accompanied by a light dipping sauce. And let us not forget cold pasta, sold ready to eat by street vendors in the heart of summer. These cold dishes are certainly not as refined as the summer specialty of Kyoto: very thin noodles flavored with just a bit of mustard and served in an iced broth, but they remain interesting preparations, suited to the weather and thus reflecting the traditional concern with finding a correspondence between the season of the year and this or that type of pasta product.

Fresh Pasta and the Passage of Time. While the food markets of China today offer the buyer a handsome array of dried pasta products: pale butterflies and seashells made of soft wheat flour, packaged in burlap sacks, or great skeins of translucent tagliatelle, whose colors—green, gray, white, and yellow—reflect the hues of the sweet potatoes, yams, broad beans, or mung beans used to make them, fresh wheat pasta still occupies a fundamental role in the dietary life of the Chinese. Before China opened up to the world in the 1980s, wheat was, along with rice, the aristocratic cereal by definition, and therefore fresh wheat pasta constituted a choice dish, the stuff of dreams when famine struck the countryside of northern China. In such times, dumplings were viewed as the dietary emblem of leisure and prosperity. Linking a pasta and a stuffing, their composition symbolized, no longer the unity of the primordial Chaos (as hundun had once done), but the very structure of a well-balanced meal: a portion of 334 china: pasta’s other homeland

cereal with its flavorful accompaniment, much like the bowl of rice served with its various companions. In certain northern provinces, such as Shaanxi and Shanxi, regions with venerable traditions of pasta, no dish expresses as well as dumplings the idea of conviviality and spending time together. Like other fresh pastas, they are made to be eaten immediately. In fact, they are specially made for an occasion or for a person. Their extreme freshness, exemplified in the short period of time that passes between their preparation and their consumption, is testimony to a maker’s respect for his guests and an awareness of the fleeting moment. The occasion might be a calendar-based festival, such as the Chinese New Year, traditionally observed with a feast of dumplings, made with the assistance of every member of the family, thus symbolizing their unity and harmony. A simple gathering of friends or the arrival of a guest is also a good reason for sharing a dish of fresh pasta. The customs linked to this cultural specialty of northern China even operate in some rural areas as a veritable language. Thus, in northern Shaanxi, hundun, dumplings, eaten on an everyday basis, also serve as markers of each step on the way to marriage. The first indication of a possible union between two young people introduced by a marriage broker is signaled by the presence or absence of hundun at the first meal eaten together. If simple pasta (not stuffed) is served instead of hundun, the marriage broker understands there is no point in insisting: one of the two parties is not willing to explore matters further. An engagement is marked by a meal that must culminate with a large dish of hundun. And on the couple’s wedding day, before the groom goes to the house of his brideto-be, he must first eat a bowl of hundun, as a favorable omen.136 If northern China still observes traditions reminiscent, among other things, of the banquets of pasta in broth organized under the Tang dynasty to celebrate the birth of a male heir, certain customs have conquered all of China. This is the case of the meal celebrating the birthday of a grandparent, which absolutely must feature a dish of long pasta in broth, representing a hope for long life on the part of family and friends. Once again, pasta is there to give meaning to the passage of time and the ephemeral. In present-day China, fresh pasta is found everywhere, in family meals, in small restaurants, and in the booths or shops of street vendors. It is eaten both as a substantial dish and as a light snack (xiaochi) between meals, to satisfy a passing peckishness. And so in Beijing there are both full-fledged restaurants specializing in the preparation china: pasta’s other homeland 335

of all sorts of dumplings and open-air shops in which the owners prepare fresh pasta in full view of the street. Dumplings are not ordered by the piece but by the pound—and never less than a pound. If you have no appetite, perhaps you should abstain! In the city, there isn’t a street where you cannot find a dish of dumplings or a bowl of noodles. Pasta is prepared on demand: it materializes, as if by enchantment, in the cook’s hands, and is instantly plunged into the liquid kept constantly aboil in a wok close at hand. This epitomizes the singular features of this civilization of fresh pasta. The love and concern for freshness go so far that a cook will mix, shape, and cook the pasta in one uninterrupted sequence, so that preparation includes both the production proper and the cooking of the finished pasta. This absence of any interval between production and cooking entails very specific techniques based entirely on the use of that multipurpose utensil: a pair of human hands.

The Hand as Tool and the Virtuosity of Gesture. The example that best illustrates this continuity is xiaomian, “planed pasta,” which are cut close to the cooking pot, the gesture of the planer sending each bit of pasta into the boiling liquid along a handsome trajectory. A very firm dough ball with an oval shape is laid flat in the left hand, while the right hand cuts the dough into regular and flared triangular shapes with the use of a large curved blade without a handle. The fragments of pasta thus cut are launched forward by the force of the gesture, and they fall directly into the boiling broth as they are cut. The technique requires great dexterity, because the pieces of pasta must all have the same shape and the same thickness. The secret is in the angle of the curved blade on the dough, the regularity of the cut, and the rhythm used by the planer. There is certainly no fresher dish than this planed pasta, a little thick, perhaps, but with an elastic, firm, and pleasing texture in the mouth. As we have noted repeatedly throughout this history of pasta in China, hand and gesture are essential to production. Thus, while Italian ravioli and Chinese dumplings are quite similar in conception, profoundly different techniques are used to make them. Italian ravioli are made by rolling out a sheet of dough, dotting it with dollops of filling, covering it with another sheet, and then cutting the assemblage with a crimping tool into regular shapes, thus enclosing the stuffing. The wrappings for Chinese jiaozi dumplings are basically 336 china: pasta’s other homeland

made by hand, one after the other, beginning with a sausage of dough cut into small regular fragments pinched off with the fingers. The final sealing of the edge of each envelope with a small roller is only a final refinement that does nothing to change the customized nature of the production process. Likewise, if planed-off pasta requires the use of a special blade, it is the gesture of the hand that does everything else. In other cases, both hands work together as a finely calibrated special utensil. The remarkable technique used to make lamian or shenmian, what are now called “stretched pasta” excites the admiration of passersby and customers when it is practiced in the street, as is so often the case in open-air broth-noodle shops. The principle is simple, but its execution is quite complex, involving the folding and subsequent stretching of a strip of dough. The trick lies in properly handling a dough, already perfectly homogeneous and elastic, to endow it with even more elasticity by making it stretch and twist on itself through its own weight, hanging between the two hands of the pasta maker. A part of the dough ball is then stretched into a long strip held between the two hands, folded in two, and then stretched again. This process is repeated until a bundle of strings of dough is obtained, their length and thickness depending on how many times the folding operation has been performed (fig. 25). This operation is almost never done at home and is generally performed by professionals whose dexterity is at times truly flabbergasting. For everyday cooking, six folding operations are used to produce sixty-four “spaghetti,” and any ordinary noodle seller working in a small street restaurant is perfectly capable of doing this. But the longer one goes on alternating the folding and stretching operations, the greater the number of strands of dough, and the thinner each strand becomes. Twelve repetitions yield an astounding skein of 4,096 incredibly thin strings of pasta, called longxumian, or “dragon mustaches.” As soon as they are formed, they are deep-fried (at this point, they can no longer be cooked in water), and the dish is completed with a sprinkling of white sugar. This remarkable method of making spaghetti with one’s hands alone is unique to China. The earliest mention of it dates back to 1504, the date of publication of a book by Song Xu, Songshi yangsheng bu (Mr. Song’s book of preserving health), which describes them briefly.137 Nowadays, stretched pasta is made by great specialists, and the techniques for its production have become considerably more sophisticated. According to a recent culinary treatise specifically devoted to pasta and china: pasta’s other homeland 337

pastry of the Shanxi province, one of the cradles of the civilization of wheat pasta, there are numerous types of stretched pasta.138 Aside from “dragon mustaches” and other simple stretched pasta, it is also possible to use the same method to make hollow stretched pasta and stuffed stretched pasta. In the first case, sugar has to be added to the original dough ball; in the second, the pasta is hollowed out and filled with meat stuffing. After the dough is carefully closed, it is stretched into strings as usual. During cooking, the sugar melts, leaving an empty space that changes the consistency of the finished pasta. As for the meat, it completely transforms the taste and texture of the finished dish. Needless to say, these two specialties are dishes that represent the highest level of gastronomy, requiring extraordinary skill to make. Another type of stretched pasta is stretched in water, produced using a method reminiscent of that used for the ancient shuiyin described in the sixth-century treatise Qimin yaoshu. This variety does not have a great deal in common with the types previously mentioned, even though they, too, are “stretched out.” The principle behind the production of this final specialty can be summarized in the sentence: “They never leave the water, the water never leaves them.” The dough, shaped into a sausage about the thickness of a finger, is rolled into a spiral on the flat bottom of a receptacle filled with water. After soaking for a certain period of time, the sausage is stretched regularly over its entire length, and the long spaghetto thus obtained is immediately cooked in boiling water. In Fujian, these stretching techniques, as in Europe, result in the creation of sheets of translucent dough, which are called in this region qizi mian, or “checkerboards of dough.”139 The complex techniques of stretched pasta are known throughout China and practiced in the context of the finest cuisine, where great chefs use their own secret recipes, with their own proportions of flour, water, salt, and other additives such as soda or oil, considered indispensable for the production of certain shapes. We would need many long pages to describe the countless specialty wheat pastas from northern China, named qiupian (gnocchetti of water dough), ca gedou (grated pasta), hele (pressed bigoli—like large spaghetti), getuo (open macaroni), mao erduo (cat’s ears), liuye mian (willow leaf pasta), and so on, all made by hand and immediately cooked in boiling water.

Every Sort of Cereal: Pink, Gray, and Yellow Pasta. In a region like Shanxi, for instance, the importance of pasta products is so great that china: pasta’s other homeland 339

nowadays people try to transform every cereal available into pasta. While China’s reputation is solidly established in the field of vermicelli and dried long pasta made of rice or bean starch, especially the mung bean, such as the famous Longkou fensi, delicious translucent vermicelli made in Longkou, Shandong, it is less well known that China also boasts a rich tradition of fresh pasta made with other cereals. In fact, however, in China every sort of starchy plant may be made into pasta. Certain starchy roots were already being used in the Song and Yuan dynasties to make dietary pastas. While in northern China wheat was considered the noble cereal, ideal for making pasta products, in places like Shanxi less refined cereals, such as oats, buckwheat, sorghum, millet, and corn were always cultivated as well, and their flour or their starch was used to make fresh pasta products. Although there are cases of flours other than wheat being made into pasta—Japan’s soba noodles, or pizzocheri from Italy’s Valtellina, are made with buckwheat flour, for example, while dried chestnuts are used in the Apennines near Parma in such very local dishes as i pegai—the Chinese use different kinds of flours on a much larger scale—if often mixed with a small amount of wheat flour to add the binding action necessary for shaping the pasta. Fullfledged and recognized specialties have resulted. Kaolao, for instance, a type of oat-flour–based pasta, with a strange shape and appearance, is a specialty of northern Shanxi (fig. 26). Kaolao, with their grayish-beige color, are shaped like little thimbles pointing upward, just over an inch tall, and pressed one close to another. They are served in the basket in which they are steamed and eaten dipped in a spicy sauce made of concentrated broth and soy sauce. There are other formats of pasta made with oat flour as well, mixed and kneaded with boiling water, the transformation of which demands certain technical contrivances and exceedingly complex procedures. Sorghum flour, also called “red flour” (the sorghum imparts a reddish tinge) is used with wheat flour or other starches to make a number of pastas, such as capian, a kind of grated pasta that was cooked in water. Buckwheat flour, mixed or not with wheat flour, produces dark green pasta that is considered a great delicacy. Qiaomian qiqi, “qiqi with buckwheat flour,” cut into various shapes from a rolledout sheet of dough, is immediately cooked in boiling water and flavored with minced meat or tofu and always with a drop of vinegar to enhance the flavor. Buckwheat flour is also used for qiaomian hele, “hele with buckwheat flour,” a pasta extruded from a press directly 340 china: pasta’s other homeland

over the boiling broth like all hele, whatever the basic ingredient. More surprising is the pasta made with cornstarch. Often blended with other starchy powders, cornstarch is transformed into hele or else into yumi sitiao, thick “tagliatelle” that are roughly a fifth of an inch broad and cooked in boiling water as soon as they are formed. Last, and more classic, are such millet flour pastas as the xiaomi hele or xiaomi liangfen, a pasta that was cut out of a polenta, cooled, and then flavored with a mustard and garlic vinaigrette. That it is called pasta has more to do with its shape and method of culinary preparation than with its basic nature. Cold millet pasta, too, is not pasta at all in the narrow sense of the term, though it has the same appearance and is cooked in the same manner as wheat pasta. In the footsteps of Parmentier, who understood that in order to make the potato popular in France it would be necessary to transform potato starch into bread, the Chinese have done their utmost to make pasta from all the cereals available, even when those cereals are completely inappropriate for the purpose. Nowadays, the movement back to natural foods has affected China, and dishes made of unassuming cereals that might once have been scorned as peasant food are very popular for their nutritional qualities. Suddenly, their often rustic flavor, stronger than wheat pasta, is praised as part of a genuine tradition.

The Realm of Instant Noodles. No traveler in China today can escape an encounter with fangbian mian, literally “convenience noodles,” which are in fact instant pasta sold absolutely everywhere and seem to be required fare in all train stations. The popularity of instant noodles has grown in recent years, with the liberalization of the marketplace, the improvement of the quality of life, and certain changes in everyday customs, and they are probably here to stay. Invented in Japan on August 25, 1958, a date that has since been regularly commemorated as the “day of noodles” in that country, instant noodles are an industrial product that has enjoyed considerable success in eastern Asia, Japan, Korea, China, and Taiwan.140 Consumption did not become widespread in mainland China until the eighties, when about a hundred production lines were imported from Japan. About forty production sites were then established in large cities in southern China, and in 1995 there were 2,000 factories specializing in the production of instant pasta throughout all of China. From then on, production has increased annually by 70 percent, and china: pasta’s other homeland 341

nowadays, with an output of 12 billion individual portions, China is the leading producer in Asia. Instant noodles are precooked, preflavored, dehydrated noodles packaged in hermetically sealed plastic bowls or cups, the famous “cup noodles” made by the Japanese company Nissin. With the addition of hot water, within a few moments they regain their initial shape and texture, becoming a dish of piping hot noodles in broth, ready to eat. The way they are manufactured is quite interesting, because it takes cunning advantage of the physical and chemical transformations that certain foodstuffs undergo when fried in deep fat. The noodles are not merely presteamed or preboiled; afterward, they are dried with hot air and then fried at a temperature ranging from 140 to 150 degrees Celsius (285 to 300 degrees Fahrenheit) for seven or eight seconds. The frying produces microperforations in the the pasta that allow it to rehydrate quickly.141 This manufacturing principle, based on a series of differentiated thermal treatments of the pasta, has long been known in China: yifu mian, a type of pasta created in a Yangzhou kitchen in the eighteenth century, involves a similar artisanal technique. But it was in Japan that the industrial process was finally perfected, either by Ando Momofuku, who is customarily credited as the inventor,142 or by Chen Rongtai, a Chinese immigrant to Japan who claims that he invented instant noodles and was the first to launch them on the Japanese market in the late fifties. The small plastic cups, brightly colored according to the different flavors they contain, have become indispensable elements in the daily life of Chinese workers and travelers. They are light and easy to carry, and the contents can be transformed into a hot dish in the blink of an eye. On trains, many prefer instant noodles to the little boxes of rice and meat or vegetables offered in the dining or cafeteria car, which just can’t compete with the ease and affordability of the instant noodles available on the station platform. It is interesting to observe the care and precision with which a Chinese diner opens his or her “cup noodle,” carefully sets down the little plastic fork that comes with it, tears open the two or three little packets containing the flavorings and sprinkles the contents into the bowl, and then fills it to the brim with boiling water, taken from the inevitable thermos at his or her side. Then the painful wait begins. The cover is placed back on the bowl, and the diner bides his or her time for at least ten minutes. When the cover is lifted again, the noodles, aromatic and juicy, are ready to eat with the little fork. Now the china: pasta’s other homeland 343

rite of eating begins. In China people eat as they like and according to their mood. In Japan, the birthplace of instant noodles, according to Jia Huixuan, professor at the University of Beijing and author of a very serious comparative study of dietary practices in Japan and China, the consumption of instant noodles follows a cadence inspired by jazz: two mouthfuls of noodles, one mouthful of vegetables, a long slurp of broth, and then a few seconds’ interval, after which one starts again, following the same order until the bowl is empty.143 If the enthusiasm of the Chinese for instant noodles is a reflection of their commitment to the modernity they have sought for so many years, it also fits into the very long history of wheat pasta products. This history in turn forms an integral part of a culture in which the preparation and consumption of foods serves as a compass guiding works and days. In the world of Chinese culinary practices, there is a special fondness for pasta products, cereal-based foods with connotations of both pleasure and subsistence. Taken as a meal, pasta nourishes the body; eaten as a snack, it delights the palate. Instant noodles summarize in their minimal form this twofold characteristic: as a complete, hot meal, they belong to the ritual order of the regular repast, the convenience of their individual portions gives them the aura of a simple treat. This purely industrial surrogate, dehydrated and soulless, somehow fits perfectly in a tradition whose supreme values are the fragile freshness of a perishable food product created with an expertise and skill based entirely on manual dexterity. But if instant noodles represent the food of the future, the Chinese have not had their last say when it comes to classic pasta products. For the last several years, the Research Center of the Agricultural Division of the city of Tianjin has been experimenting with very promising durum wheat crops. A great many adventuresome entrepreneurs stand ready to begin production of tongxin mian, or “hollow pasta,” as macaroni are called in China, to respond to the strong demand whetted by the advertising in specialty magazines touting the advantages of Italian-style pasta.144

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CHAPTER TEN

The Words of Pasta Over the centuries, the world of pasta has constructed a veritable museum of the imaginary, a repository of memories and dreams as well as reality, reflected in literature, folktales, and legends. From medieval chroniclers to contemporary novelists, from travel writers and adventurers to the forgotten glories of satirical burlesque poetry, countless authors have each contributed a stone to this edifice that forms part of Italy’s cultural identity. Here we offer a few texts that each, in its way, helps to tell the history of pasta.

pasta: the gluttony of the land of cockaigne Pasta was so common in medieval Italy that it lay at the heart of the universe of gluttony of the contemporaries of Boccaccio, who transformed it into a symbol of the abundance typical of the land of Cockaigne. In a country called Bengodi, . . . the vines are tied up with sausages and a goose is to be had for a farthing and a gosling

into the bargain, and . . . there is a mountain all of grated Parmesan cheese, whereon abode folk who did nothing but make maccaroni and ravioli and cook them in capon-broth, after which they threw them down thence and whoso got most thereof had most.1

pasta and temperance Remaining in the theme of gluttony, pasta was used by Franco Sacchetti, a disciple and admirer of Boccaccio, to illustrate the intemperance of his contemporaries. The scene is set in an inn in Florence toward the end of the fourteenth century. Noddo d’Andrea, who is still alive, was a prodigious eater, and little did he care if the food was scalding hot, down it all went as if into a well, as he gulped food down. . . . It happened once that Noddo and others were dining together, and Noddo was seated at table with a likable fellow named Giovanni Cascio, and boiling hot macaroni were being served, and since this Giovanni had often heard of Noddo’s habits, and being well aware that he was at table with him, he thought to himself: “This is a fine situation! Here I am, and I thought I had come to dinner, and instead I have come to watch Noddo gulp down everything, and macaroni to boot; if he doesn’t eat me, I can consider myself lucky.” Noddo began to gobble down the macaroni, gathering it up and gulping it down; he had already swallowed six mouthfuls and Giovanni was still holding his first mouthful on his fork, and he did not dare to put it in his mouth, so vigorously did it steam. And as he considered that all this food would soon vanish down the glory hole if he failed to take some measures, he said to himself: “One thing is certain, he must not eat my share of the food.” And so for each mouthful that Noddo took, he would take another and throw it onto the floor for the dog, and after he had done this a number of times, Noddo cried: “O wretch, what are you doing?” And Giovanni replied: “Rather, what are you doing? I don’t want you to eat my share; I would rather let the dog have it.” Noddo laughed and continued to gobble his food; and Giovanni Cascio

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continued to toss his food to the dog. Finally, Noddo said: “All right then, let’s eat slowly, and you stop tossing food to the dog.” And Giovanni replied: “It would be fair for me to take two mouthfuls for every mouthful that you take, since I have not been able to take a bite all this time.” Noddo objected, and Giovanni said: “If you take more than one bite for every two I take, I will toss my share to the dog.” At last Noddo agreed and promised to eat at a reasonable pace, which he had never done before in his life, nor had he ever found anyone who could outmatch him at table. This story more greatly pleased all those who were eating there that day than all the food they had consumed that morning. And so one who gobbled without surcease was persuaded to eat reasonably by means of a surprising stratagem.2

a whiff of cinnamon In an imaginary voyage through Renaissance Italy, Ortensio Lando, a prolific author of the time, travels from town to town on a quest for the finest delicacies of the peninsula. Suspected by the Inquisition of harboring Lutheran sympathies, this humanist man of letters, a friend of Aretino, was obliged to live in exile for a long period of time, and this experience doubtless led him to a greater appreciation of the culinary richness of his homeland. His hero, an inhabitant of the “kingdom of the wanderers,” a reference to Sir Thomas More’s Island of Utopia, has an innkeeper for a guide, an unrepentant glutton and an exile like him, who is haunted by a deeply moving memory of Sicilian macaroni. Truly, I am exceedingly jealous of you, because within a month, if the winds are favorable, you will reach the rich island of Sicily and you will eat some of the macaroni that have taken the name of the Savior: they are customarily cooked together with fat capons and fresh cheeses, dripping butter and milk all over, and generously sprinkled with the finest sugar and cinnamon that can be found. Alas, my mouth waters at the mere recollection! When I used to eat them, I would lament the fact, like Aristoxemus, that God had not given me the neck of a crane, so that I

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might more greatly enjoy swallowing the macaroni, I regretted that my body was not a great warehouse.3

in search of italian pasta The countless foreign visitors who traveled through Italy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries discovered, with varying degrees of satisfaction, the flavor of pasta, a specialty whose presence on virtually every table in the peninsula struck and sometimes astounded outside observers. Among the most relevant accounts from this period is surely that of the Dominican monk Père Jean-Baptiste Labat, who visited the Italian peninsula at the turn of the eighteenth century, adroitly capturing the rapture that Italians of his time seemed to feel for their daily pasta. The amount of pasta that is consumed is surprising; those who have not yet abandoned the old way of living would sooner give up bread than macaroni or some other kind of pasta. It is the daily soup. Here is how it is prepared: a meat broth without herbs is made, with some salt, and when it is ready, you place the quantity of pasta that seems appropriate on a dish over a low flame, and as it heats up you sprinkle it moderately with broth; the pasta becomes imbued with broth, and it swells, and when you see that it has reached the proper size and before it dissolves but after it has become soft, tender, and thoroughly moistened, it is brought to the table. It is served without the meat broth, and it can be put in a basin of hot water for a few moments to further soften and moisten it, and then it is removed with a skimming ladle and put in a plate, whereupon it is sprinkled with very dry cheese and sometimes with a bit of cinnamon or powdered pepper. The Genoese and the Neapolitans have enjoyed a banquet fit for a king when they have eaten a quarter bushel of this food. But you must be accustomed to it in order to enjoy it, unless it is andarini or vermicelli flavored with a broth and without cheese, because no matter how good it is, cheese gives pasta a certain flavor that I have not yet become comfortable with. This pasta is very nutritious and it is said that despite that fact it is very easy to digest.4

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service italian-style While he certainly showed that he was an attentive observer, Père Labat was clearly not seduced by the charms of pasta, which he had an opportunity to eat immediately upon debarking in San Remo. The experience left him a memory that was all the more disagreeable because the meal, long awaited after hours on the open sea, was none too quick in coming. We had the devil of a time finding lodging. It was necessary to rely on the French consul, who finally found us a room. The sea was so rough that there was no way to get our provisions from the ship; it had been in part the bad weather that had forced the skipper to moor in this port. . . . Those who had not yet become accustomed to the slow ways of the Italians, and the especially slow pace of San Remo, verged on desperation. Our host and his entire family bustled about, to the point of risking a bad case of pleurisy, to ready two chickens that we had purchased. By the time three hours had passed, the chickens had not begun to feel the warmth of the flames. I clearly saw that one had to be patient with these people, who did nothing but answer us with “adesso,” which means, “right away,” every time we tried to hurry them along. I had my hammock strung up, so I lay down in it and fell asleep, after warning my boy to wake me when dinner was finally ready. That happened around midnight. The two chickens were served buried under little bits of pasta known as macaroni, which I was told were excellent and fit morsels for a cardinal, boccone di cardinale. I could not eat them: the chickens had acquired a certain aroma from the pasta that made my gorge rise. The wine was no good at all, and it was quite expensive; the bread was badly baked and heavy; the cheese was hard as a sticking plaster and had roughly the same flavor. Our host finally brought us a dish of raw lemons, which seemed like quite something to those who were not accustomed to seeing this fruit, but nothing at all to me, since I come from a place where the streets are practically paved with lemons. I deeply regretted having lost sleep to sample this meal. I went back to sleep, and I awoke again at daybreak, without indigestion.5

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the macaronic academy Over the course of his long and adventurous life, Giacomo Casanova discovered in Chioggia the existence of “Macaronic Academies,” poets’ clubs that also served a more important purpose as places of conviviality where the members competed in improvised poetic duels, all revolving around the theme of macaroni. Each session would culminate, logically enough, in a hearty meal of macaroni. Spying a café, I went in. A young doctor of the law who had studied with me in Padua embraced me and introduced me to an apothecary whose shop stood next door to the café, where, as he informed me, all the men of letters gathered. Fifteen minutes later, a large Dominican monk named Corsini, blind in one eye and originally from Modena, whom I had met in Venice, arrived, saw me, and greeted me with great courtesy. He informed me that I had arrived just in time to join the picnic that the macaronic academicians were going to have the next day, following a session of the academy, at which each member would recite a poem of his own composition, honoring and glorifying macaroni. I was excited at the idea of gratifying the academy with the recitation of a bit of poetry and of being a guest at the picnic, and I accepted. I recited ten stanzas, and I was unanimously elected a member of the academy. My success at the picnic was still greater, for I disposed of such a quantity of macaroni that I was found worthy of the title of prince of the academy.6

“spiked” macaroni casanova-style When it came to macaroni, Casanova was not just a fine poet and a considerable gourmet: he was also a bit of a chef. When he was imprisoned in Venice, he wished to convey a long spike to another prisoner, in preparation for an escape. He planned to put the spike inside a large Bible that he had ordered for this purpose, but the spike was two inches longer than the book. And so I decided to send the friar my metal bar concealed in the Bible, but I would take measures certain to prevent Lorenzo

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from examining the ends of the large volume. And so I told him that I planned to celebrate St. Michael’s Day with two large plates of macaroni, covered with butter and parmesan cheese: I wanted two plates, because I wanted to send one plate as a gift to the respectable person who was lending me books. In this connection, Lorenzo told me that the same respectable person wished to read the large book that cost three sequins. I told him that I would send him the book with a plate of macaroni, but I also told him that I wanted the largest plate that he had in the house and that I wanted to season the macaroni myself; he promised to follow my instructions to the letter. While I waited, I wrapped the spike in a sheet of paper, and I placed it in the spine of the Bible’s binding. I shared out the two inches of extra length: each end of the spike jutted out of the Bible by an inch. By placing a large plate of macaroni covered with butter on the Bible, I felt sure that Lorenzo’s eyes would be focused on the butter, in fear that some might drip onto the Bible, and that he would therefore never bother to look at the far corners of the volume. I warned Father Balbi of what was afoot and urged him to be very careful when he received the macaroni from Lorenzo’s hands and to make very sure that he did not grasp first the plate and then the Bible but rather grasp them both together, for if he took the plate alone he would uncover the Bible, and Lorenzo would be more likely to see the protruding ends of the spike. On St. Michael’s Day, Lorenzo appeared very early in the morning with a large cauldron of boiling macaroni; first I put some butter on the stove to melt, and I prepared my two dishes, sprinkling them with Parmesan cheese, which he had brought, all grated. I took the slotted spoon, and I began to fill the plates, sprinkling butter and cheese on each one, continuing until the large plate meant for the monk could hold no more. The macaroni was swimming in butter, which rose to the very rim of the plate. The diameter of that plate was almost twice the width of the Bible. I took the plate and set it atop the large book that lay near the door of my cell, and then I picked up the book with the cover turned toward Lorenzo, telling him to hold out his arms and stretch out his hands, and gave him Bible and plate, very carefully and slowly lest the butter drip over the edge of the plate and stain the Bible.7

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neapolitan folklore In the long history of Naples, an incessant alternation of periods of glory and decline, the city reached its pinnacle of artistic and cultural splendor during the Enlightenment. Having finally become a fullfledged capital once again, the city—one of the most populous in Europe—attracted numerous foreign visitors, some of whom made extended stays. Among the most illustrious visitors was the German polymath Goethe, who had a special fondness for this city, where life seemed to be, well, livelier than elsewhere. In his book Italian Journey, Goethe observed the city from the point of view of a genuine ethnologist, recounting street scenes and, evidently, enjoying Naples fully. One of the greatest delights of Naples is the universal gaiety. The many-coloured flowers and fruits in which Nature adorns herself seem to invite the people to decorate themselves and their belongings with as vivid colours as possible. . . . There is no season when one is not surrounded on all sides by victuals. The Neapolitan not only enjoys his food, but insists that it be attractively displayed for sale. In Santa Lucia the fish are placed on a layer of green leaves, and each category—rock lobsters, oysters, clams, and small mussels—has a clean, pretty basket to itself. But nothing is more carefully planned than the display of meat, which, since their appetite is stimulated by the periodic fast day, is particularly coveted by the common people. In the butchers’ stalls, quarters of beef, veal or mutton are never hung up without having the unfatty parts of the flanks and legs heavily gilded. Several days in the year and especially the Christmas holidays are famous for their orgies of gluttony. At such times a general cocagna is celebrated, in which five hundred thousand people vow to outdo each other. The Toledo and other streets and squares are decorated most appetizingly; vegetables, raisins, melons and figs are piled high in their stalls; huge paternosters of gilded sausages, tied with red ribbons, and capons with little red flags stuck in their rumps are suspended in festoons across the streets overhead. I was assured that, not counting those which people had fattened in their own homes, thirty thousand of them had been sold. Crowds of donkeys laden with vegetables, capons and young lambs are driven to market, and never in 352 the words of pasta

my life have I seen so many eggs in one pile as I have seen here in several places. Not only is all this eaten, but every year a policeman, accompanied by a trumpeter, rides through the city and announces in every square and at every crossroad how many thousand oxen, calves, lambs, pigs, etc., the Neapolitans have consumed. The crowds show tremendous joy at the high figures, and each of them recalls with pleasure his share in this consumption. So far as flour-and-milk dishes are concerned, which our cooks prepare so excellently and in so many different ways, though people here lack our well-equipped kitchens and like to make short work of their cooking, they are catered for in two ways. The macaroni, the dough of which is made from a very fine flour, kneaded into various shapes and then boiled, can be bought everywhere and in all the shops for very little money. As a rule, it is simply cooked in water and seasoned with grated cheese. Then, at almost every corner of the main streets, there are pastry-cooks with their frying pans of sizzling oil, busy, especially on fast days, preparing pastry and fish on the spot for anyone who wants it. Their sales are fabulous, for thousands and thousands of people carry their lunch and supper home, wrapped in a little piece of paper.8

conviviality around the

TAVERNA

Macaroni had become such an intrinsic part of life in Naples that they were part of the urban landscape of this overcrowded metropolis in perpetual motion. At once a man of considerable culture and a profound connoisseur of the popular customs and folkways of his native city, Carlo Tito Dalbono invites us into the temple of Neapolitan sociability in the middle of the nineteenth century: the taverna. In the area around the taverna and sometimes arranged in fine array in front of it, you will see a phalanx of small hearths or stoves made of earth and brick, where cauldrons stand, frying pans clatter, lids are removed from cooking pots. Macaroni, as everyone knows, are, for foreign visitors, the identifying feature of the Neapolitan plebeian class. The preparation of the celebrated Neapolitan macaroni is quite often the words of pasta 353

undertaken in open-air kitchens. The finest manufactories are found in Portici, on the Naples city limits, the two Torri [Torre Annunziata and Torre del Greco], famed for their role in history, built to defend our shores and the enchanting Amalfi coast. But as renowned as the wine of Gragnano is the pasta of Gragnano, and, of all the types of pasta, most highly regarded for their cylindrical proportions are the macaroni of the Zita! The ordinary method of producing pasta has been modified nowadays, and pasta is made by hydraulic machinery, and among the followers of each system there is a growing and macaronic rivalry. The sign of good workmanship is not so much the whiteness of the pasta, which is not always visible and with some methods of production appears only after boiling; instead, the overriding sign of good workmanship is the fineness of the pasta, the width of the opening, the flavor that does not smack too specifically of semolina. The quality of the water and the climate give our macaroni an exquisite flavor, and however often in other parts of Italy they may have attempted to attain a similar perfection, factors beyond the control of the producer have thwarted this goal. Proof is provided by the fact that in Rome, where Neapolitan pasta is subject to a heavy tariff, people eat macaroni and pasta with eggs, and Florence, or perhaps we should say, Tuscany, uses—in the same way that we cook our macaroni—their cannelloni, which resemble our own. This is a healthy food, satisfying, inexpensive, and simple, and a Neapolitan gets more enjoyment out of it than from polenta. The customs of the tables of the well-to-do have given this foodstuff a vast array of condiments, but a Neapolitan often eats macaroni with just simple white cheese. And so alongside the capacious steaming calda maccaronense, or macaronical cauldron, you will see a broad white platter, basin, or scafarea, to use the term in dialect, filled with white cheese, a latter-day pyramid of Egypt, adorned from summit to base with black stripes of pepper, and often at the very top of the mountain of cheese you will see a tomato or, failing that, a red flower. Overseeing all and administering the public purveyance of these varied foods is the tavernaio, or tavern keeper, often a man who is no longer young and yet an adroit dispenser, frequently rubicund and chubby, spherical from the navel downward, and as he distributes hot macaroni into each plate, he holds the plate with one hand as he reaches 354 the words of pasta

out to seize some of the pyramid of cheese, and with that beneficial powder he sprinkles the macaroni. Around him are urchins, men who have so much pressing business that they have no time to sit down, women who offer their little ones a bowlful of macaroni, and paupers for whom the gift of charity takes the form of macaroni. At times, then, after the cheese, the macaroni are tinged with a purplish or violet hue, that is, when the tavernaio sprinkles tomato sauce or ragù (a sort of meat stew), like a fine dew on flowers, over the powder of the cheese and the twisting of the serpentine vermicelli or maccaroncelli. The evenhandedness of the tavern keeper is worthy of mention in a proverb: he takes care of all that occurs around him; rarely does his clientele bemoan an injustice suffered or perceived; he is impartial, and his hands dole out the proper value in weight and measure. In short, he has a ruler in his hands, the compass in his eyes, and if ever he allows himself to be corrupted to the point of allowing one or two extra macaroni to drop onto the plate, it is only for the love of a little girl. Flirtatious and gossiping women; the bravo, threatening with his club; the brawler, ready to start a fight—none of these tempt him, none frighten him. He stands ready to do his duty, and though he is no mathematician, no algebraist, not a so-called accountant, he knows the number of macaroni by heart, he knows without exceptions the difficult operation of division. And though the tavern keeper is a fair dispenser, the macaroni eater is not the one to sing the praises of such equity. The true mangiamaccaroni is always a remarkable creature and enjoys no other food but this alone, experiences repulsion for all other nourishment. He cries death to latter-day Vatels, the highfaluting chefs, wages war on gravies, and curses at broths. Just as there are men who would think they were on the brink of the grave if they saw a physician in their presence, the mangiamaccaroni would fear he was about to lose his life if he were to find himself seated before a bowl of broth. He respects macaroni or vermicelli with parmesan cheese, but he honors them greatly when they are coated with Calabrian or white cacio cheese, he rejoices in meat sauce, while the bitter tomato pleases as much if not more, and if there is no meat or tomato sauce, then he will opt for the purest simplicity, mere cacio. The macaroni eater of the common populace improvises a fork with both fingers, liftthe words of pasta 355

ing the macaroni or vermicelli half-a-palm over his mouth, and then with a slight, spiral, gyrating motion, he slips them in with a dexterity that bespeaks long practice and chews without ever dirtying his shirt. If the macaroni eater is a gentleman, he performs with a fork a twisting gesture in his plate, gathering a forkful of vermicelli or small macaroni, which he promptly consumes. A macaroni eater is always ready to eat more, and there are some who eat macaroni for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, but in vain would you seek for a man who would eat macaroni on a recently expired corpse, as Horace Vernet dared to depict in his artistic illustrations of the life of Napoleon. This immense passion for such a simple food may occasion among the Neapolitans light-hearted jesting but never dishonor or horror.9

the dandy at the manufactory As early as the preindustrial period, the renown of Neapolitan pasta had spread well beyond the borders of the Italian peninsula, and the special production methods used by the pasta makers of the region already attracted the interest of the London press in the early nineteenth century. The best macaroni are made entirely of durum wheat, while in the varieties of lower quality, the durum wheat is at times mixed with soft wheat. The transformation of the flour—milled a little rougher than flour used to make bread—into long, thin strands of pasta is performed through the simplest of operations. The flour is mixed with water alone, and the dough that is thus obtained is kneaded at length with a heavy block of wood, which pounds the dough in a trough; this block or piston is connected to a beam that serves as a lever, with its fulcrum located close to the block, while the other extremity of the beam is roughly 8–10 feet from the fulcrum. One or more men or boys sit at the end of the beam and impart the necessary rocking motion to the lever, first falling with all their weight and then lifting it, planting their feet solidly on the ground. In reality, they are doing nothing more than playing at seesaw, with the block at the short end of the lever; and to the eyes of a foreigner, the effect produced by a 356 the words of pasta

great manufactory in which many of these machines and a fair number of strong individuals are at work, as they jump up and down almost naked, is something quite comical. When the dough has been sufficiently kneaded, it is squeezed, by the simple application of pressure, through a number of circular apertures, the dimensions of which determine the name of the pasta that issues forth. The ones with a larger diameter produce macaroni, the ones with a smaller diameter, vermicelli, and the smallest diameter, fidelini.10

behind the scenes in the pasta industry Oddino Morgari was a labor organizer who experienced, side by side with the pasta workers, the painful transition involved in the mechanization of the pasta industry in Torre Annunziata. He left a gripping tableau of the effervescence that filled this town in the last few decades of the nineteenth century. Torre Annunziata lives on the pasta industry. The wheat arrives from Russia by steamship; three hundred longshoremen crowd the quayside—lightermen, cable lashers, oarsmen, porters, measurers, and so on—and convey the wheat to shore; five hundred millers convert the wheat to semolina, in fourteen huge steam mills; eight hundred pasta makers transform the semolina into pasta, in fifty-four pasta factories; two hundred mechanics, firemen, and carpenters supervise and repair the machinery; a similar number of colliers supply fuel from the sea; three hundred men from the carovana di piazza convey the pasta by handcart, loading the conveyances of a hundred draymen, who then haul the pasta to Naples; fifty stevedores in the freight yard load the pasta onto trains; fifty lanzaioli load it onto skiffs and ship it off in small loads; and the longshoremen, mentioned above, who first unloaded the raw material—that is, the grain—now load the ships with the finished product, filling huge ocean steamers that will take it around the world, especially to America. And so there are almost three thousand individuals, and, with their families, more than ten thousand people living directly, in Torre Annunziata, on the pasta industry; and they are split up the words of pasta 357

into more than twenty categories of workers, but they so intertwine their labor one with another that, if one link in the chain comes to a halt, all the others must needs stop as well. And thus there is a general strike, the life of the city comes to a halt, and the Italian press is forced to report on it, as it has done in the last few days.11

the dreams of the hand Before the invention of the kneading machine, kneading dough was an exhausting task. The jargon of Parisian bakers in the eighteenth century offers a perfect illustration of the unpleasant nature of the work: the word geindre means “baker’s boy,” but it also means “to whine or complain,” suggestive of the moaning that went along with kneading. Dough was also, for the ancient Chinese and the medieval Italians, an extraordinary source of inspiration for shapes and language, evidence of a playful aspect to the working of this remarkable material, both supple and firm, capable of assuming and maintaining an infinite array of forms. The Chinese and Italian cooks of those distant times discovered what Gaston Bachelard calls “material imagination,” without which they could never have developed their great culinary traditions of pasta. In his fascinating essay Earth and Reveries of Will, the French philosopher helps us understand the seductive quality of this malleable material and the sensuality of the hand that shapes. Each of us possesses in our imagination a material image of ideal earthen matter, a perfect synthesis of yielding and resistance, a marvelous equilibrium of the forces of acceptance and of refusal. It is in relation to this state of equilibrium, which immediately inspires alacrity in working hands, that the pejorative judgments too hard and too soft are formed. We might also say that somewhere between these two opposing excesses the hand recognizes instinctively the perfect earth. The normal material imagination instantly holds this perfect earth in its dreaming hand. Every dreamer of earth is familiar with this perfect earth, as evident to the hand as the perfect solid is to the geometer’s eye. The poet d’Annunzio had this internalized, perfectly balanced consistency in mind when he wrote: “[The baker], having 358 the words of pasta

tested his mix, poured a bit more water into the kneading trough to extend the dough, his hand so exact in its measurement, so skillful in tipping the jug, that I saw the clear water draw an arc of crystal—perfect and unbroken—between the clay lip and the bloom of flour.”* It is because water is added to the dough in such exact proportion that this tableau can be drawn with such exactitude: the water arcs into the kneading trough in a geometer’s curve. Material beauty and formal beauty coincide. Perfect earth [pâte] is thus the basic material element of materialism, as the perfect solid is the basic formal element of geometry. The philosopher who refuses this fundamental axiom cannot truly succeed in penetrating materialist philosophy. The intimate nature of dreams of perfect earth is so profound, the convictions it gives rise to run so deep, it seems altogether appropriate to speak of a cogito of kneading. Philosophers have taught us to extend the Cartesian cogito to realms beyond that of thought. They speak in particular of the Biranian cogito wherein one discovers the proof of one’s existence in the effort of discovery itself. For Maine de Biran consciousness of activity is as immediate as consciousness of thought. But the most beautiful experiences must be found in successful exertion. The phenomenology of opposition is one of those that furthers our understanding of the engagement of subject and object. Yet, doesn’t human exertion yield its most convincing evidence in this regard, evidence in a certain respect doubled when the subject acts upon itself? And here is the closest connection with the cogito of the kneader: there is a way of clenching one’s fist where one’s own flesh is revealed as the primal matter [pâte], the perfect earth, at once yielding and resisting. For the Stoics the geometry of the open hand and the closed fist offered symbols for meditation. For philosophers who do not hesitate to take proof of their existence even from their own dreams, the dynamic of a fist firmly closed without violence represents both their own existence and that of the world. And so, finding I know not what primal matter in my empty hands, the whole of my manual dream, I murmur: “Everything is earthen * Gabriele d’Annunzio (1863–1938), Le dit du sourd et muet qui fut miraculé en l’an de grâce 1266 (Rome: L’Oleandro, 1936), 134. Published originally in French.

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matter to me, including myself; my own destiny is my material, action and passion my materials; I am truly primordial earth.” If a man can experience such splendid sensations in his dreams, is it any wonder that dynamic, material imagination has available to it a kind of ideal earthen matter, a primordial humus capable of receiving and maintaining any form? This sort of material image—so simple, so intense, so alive—is naturally anticipated by the concept of it. Such is the fate of all fundamental images. The concept of a basic matter that changes form before our eyes is so clear and so widespread that it renders useless any participation in the primitive, dynamic image. Thus do visual images assert their primacy. The eye—that inspector— steps in to prevent us from working. If poetry is to reanimate the powers of creation in the soul or help us relive our natural dreams in all their intensity and all their meaning, we must come to understand that the hand as well as the eye has its reveries and poetry. We must discover the poetry of touch, the poetry in kneading hands.12

360 the words of pasta

NOTES

These notes provide short citations; complete citations can be found in the bibliography. Unless otherwise indicated, all translations are Antony Shugaar’s.

preface 1. Prezzolini, Maccheroni e C., 147.

introduction. in the beginning was wheat 1. Heun and Heun, “Site of Einkorn Wheat Domestication,” 1312–1313. 2. For the present-day terminology of Triticum and the phylogeny, see Chauvet, “Triticum L.”; Simmonds, Evolution of Crop Plants, 117–120. 3. Perlès, “Feeding Strategies in Prehistoric Times”; Währen, Die Entwicklungsstationen vom Korn zum Brot. 4. Moritz, Grain-mills and Flour in Classical Antiquity, 147–148; André, L’alimentation et la cuisine à Rome, 58. 5. André, L’alimentation, 57. 6. Apicius, Cookery and Dining in Imperial Rome; Blanc and Nercessian, La cuisine romaine antique, 80–89. 7. André, L’alimentation, 55.

8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22.

Amouretti, “La mouture des céréales,” 33–48. André, L’alimentation, 52. Columella, cited in Targioni-Tozzetti, Sitologia, 9. Blanc and Nercessian, La cuisine romaine antique, 80–89. See photograph in Salsa Prina Ricotti, L’arte del convito nell’antica Roma, 9. Blanc and Nercessian, La cuisine romaine antique, 80–89. Drège, La route de la soie, 16–21; idem, Marco Polo et la route de la soie, 14–15. Li Fan et al., Gansusheng Minlexian, 56–69. Hsu, Han Agriculture, 85 and 244. Shih, On “Fan Shêng-chih shu,” 17. Bray, “Agriculture,” 443. The references always use the term mai, which is employed for both barley and wheat. Wei Si, “Woguo yuanxing shimo,” 27. Amouretti, “La mouture des céréales,” 33–48. For a more thorough and nuanced study of the semantic development of the word bing, see Sabban, “De la main à la pâte.”

1. the infancy of an art 1. Prezzolini, Maccheroni e C., 228. 2. La Cecla, La pasta et la pizza, 62; Alberini, Maccheroni e spaghetti, 42. 3. Lando, Commentario delle più notabili e mostruose cose d’Italia, 126, 260. 4. Lopez, “Chi ha inventato gli spaghetti?” 381–383. 5. Sada, Spaghetti e compagni; see in this connection the very subtle observations of Rosenberger, “Les pâtes dans le monde musulman,” 91. 6. Rosenberger, “Les pâtes,” 91; Mangeot, “L’orge au Ladakh,” 135. 7. Nickles, Middle Eastern Cooking, 104–106. 8. Corbier, “The Broad Bean and the Moray.” 9. Maurizio, Histoire de l’alimentation végétale, 484–486. 10. Montanari, “Food Models and Cultural Identity.” 11. Amouretti, “Urban and Rural Diets in Greece”; Corbier, “The Broad Bean and the Moray.” 12. Montanari, “Food Models and Cultural Identity”: “By making bread and wine sacred, Christianity would further reinforce the basic values of the Roman dietary model and transmit them to the dawning Middle Ages, charging them with a renewed vigor.” 13. Redon and Laurioux, “Constitution d’une nouvelle catégorie culinaire?” 52.

362 notes

14. Sereni, “Note di storia dell’alimentazione nel Mezzogiorno,” 324–331. 15. Laurioux, “Des lasagnes romaines aux vermicelles arabes,” 212–214. 16. Rodinson, “Les influences de la civilisation musulmane,” 492–493. After Rodinson, the idea was further developed in 1958 by Sereni, “Note di storia,” 325–326, and adopted by many historians before being reexamined persuasively in 1995 by Laurioux in “Des lasagnes,” 212–214. 17. Sereni, “Note di storia,” 325–326; Laurioux, “Des lasagnes,” 212–214 18. Athenaeus, Deipnosophists, 3:113 a–d, 14:647c, cited in Laurioux, “Des lasagnes,” 203. 19. Joefer, in Nouvelle biographie générale, states that he does not know in what period Chrysippus lived, but some authors indicate that he lived around the middle of the first century. See also Paulys Realencyclopädie des classischen Altertumswissenschaft. 20. Laurioux, “Des lasagnes,” 203. 21. Ibid., 205 22. 1 Chron. 23:29, cited in Laurioux, “Des lasagnes,” 205. 23. Laurioux, “Des lasagnes,” 205 and nn. 35 and 37 there. 24. Ibid., 204. 25. Ibid., 208. 26. Le Talmud de Jérusalem, 275–276. In this translation (see n. 32, below), this is clearly the Greco-Latin term, itrium. According to Sereni, however, “as early as the ninth century we find a term, itriya, used to describe a sort of pasta product in Syriac, while in both the Babylon Talmud and the Jerusalem Talmud we find a similar term in Aramaic, with the same meaning” (“Note di storia,” 329). See also Perry, “The Oldest Mediterranean Noodle,” 44. 27. Sereni, “Note di storia,” 330; Laurioux, “Des lasagnes,” 210; see also Duval, La littérature syriaque, 297–299. 28. The inventory presented by Redon and Laurioux in “Constitution d’une nouvelle catégorie culinaire?” includes only three recipes, in three different treatises, one with the pleonastic title of tria di vermicelli and the other two under tria ianuensis or tria genovese (60). 29. Nicoud, “L’adaptation du discours diététique,” 217. 30. 1 Cor. 5:7. See Fabre-Vassas, “L’azyme des Juifs et l’hostie des Chrétiens,” 190. 31. Leviticus 8:26, in Le Pentateuque. 32. Le Talmud de Jérusalem, 275–276. Moïse Schwab, the French translator of the Jerusalem Talmud, was quite willing to translate itrium with the French term nouilles, especially because in modern Hebrew pasta is translated by the word itriyot. 33. Dictionnaire encyclopédique du judaïsme, s.v. “Talmud,” 984–985. 34. Le Talmud de Jérusalem, 276.

notes 363

35. This portion was thought to reflect one of the laws concerning sacrifices entrusted by the Lord to Moses. See Laurioux, “Des lasagnes,” 205. 36. Le Talmud de Jérusalem, 274. 37. Fabre-Vassas, “L’azyme des Juifs,” 189. 38. Liber de coquina, chap. 3, sect. 10; chap. 5, sect. 9. 39. Inventories in Redon and Laurioux, “Constitution d’une nouvelle catégorie culinaire?” 58–59; and idem, “L’apparition et la diffusion des pâtes,” 104. 40. Martino, La cucina italiana del Quattrocento, 187. 41. Rodinson, “Sur l’étymologie de ‘losange,’ ”; 430–431; and Hieatt, An Ordinance of Pottage, 89. 42. Rodinson, “Sur l’étymologie de ‘losange,’ ” 426–429. 43. Ibid., 434. 44. Vollenweider, “Der Einfluss der italienischen auf die französischen Kochkunst,” 440–443. 45. Flandrin, “Les pâtes dans la cuisine provençale,” 67. 46. See, for instance, the fritelle piene di vento, in Martino, La cucina italiana del Quattrocento, 135. The text specifies that the dough should be as thin as lasagne dough, but the dish is no longer called lasagne. 47. We have used the modern spelling of these words here, but in medieval texts the variants in spelling are numerous. See Redon and Laurioux, “Constitution d’une nouvelle catégorie culinaire?” 58–60; and idem, “L’apparition et la diffusion des pâtes,” 104–105. For ravioli, see the hypotheses of Vollenweider, “Der Einfluss,” 418–432. 48. Frati, Libro di cucina del secolo XIV, 34 ff; Guerrini, Frammento di un libro di cucina, 44. 49. Martino, La cucina italiana del Quattrocento, 236, 186, 107. 50. Ibid., 186. 51. Liber de coquina, chap. 3, sect. 11. 52. Redon and Laurioux, “L’apparition et la diffusion des pâtes,” 104 f., 108 n. 49. 53. Martino, La cucina italiana del Quattrocento, 183, 205, 237. 54. Ibid., 183–184. 55. Ibid., 105. 56. Vollenweider, “Der Einfluss,” 432 57. Boccaccio, Decameron, day 8, story 3. See the extract in chap. 10, below. 58. Franco Sacchetti, Il Trecentonovelle, story 124. See chap. 10, below. 59. Cf. Toaff, Mangiare alla giudia, 89–91. 60. Morpurgo, LVII ricette di un libro di cucina del buon secolo della lingua, 24. 61. See Rosenberger, “Les pâtes.” 62. Beithar, Receuil des simples, 478, 483, and 492. 63. Sekelli, L’art culinaire à travers l’Algérie, 298; Bahloul, Le culte de la Table Dressée, 160–161.

364 notes

64. Covarrubias, Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, cited in Rosenberger, “Les pâtes,” 97 n. 47. 65. Galoppini, “Le commerce des pâtes alimentaires,” 111–127. 66. Ibid., 123 67. Grewe, Libre de Sent Soví, 182–183; Rosenberger, “Les pâtes,” 97; Laurioux, “Des lasagnes,” 212–213. 68. Corominas, Diccionario crítico étimológico de la lengua castellana, 515–517. 69. See chap. 2, below. 70. Kosover, Food and Beverages, 60 ff. 71. Dictionnaire encyclopédique du judaïsme, 423–424; Bahloul, Le culte de la Table Dressée, 164–165. 72. Darmesteter and Blondheim, Les gloses françaises dans les commentaires talmudiques, 142. 73. The phonetic transcriptions were developed from an oral translation of the Yiddish in the passage in Kosover’s work done by Schmuel Bunim, whom we gratefully acknowledge. In Les gloses françaises, by Darmesteter and Blondheim, we found only the term trijes. This study, which focuses on twelve hundred words, obviously does not treat all the commentaries. We must therefore rely on Kosover. 74. Perry, “Notes on Persian Pasta,” 48. 75. Kosover, Food and Beverages, 68–69. 76. Interview with Roger Sabban, January 2000. 77. For instance, in a manuscript of the Viandier, copied between 1420 and 1440 in northern France; see Redon and Laurioux, “L’apparition et la diffusion des pâtes,” 103. 78. See Toaff, Mangiare alla giudia, 89–91. 79. Rosenberger, “Les pâtes,” 85–86. 80. Galoppini, “Le commerce.” 81. Rosenberger, “Les pâtes,” 83. 82. Ibid., 82. 83. Martino, La cucina italiana del Quattrocento, 108 and 184. 84. Morpurgo, LVII ricette, 24; Zambrini, Il libro della cucina del secolo XIV, 87; Guerrini, Frammento di un libro di cucina del sec. XIV, 28. 85. Morpurgo, LVII ricette, 24. 86. Dictionnaire encyclopédique du judaïsme, 1226. 87. The only exception to this is found in the recipes of the Catalan treatise Libre de Sent Soví, which draws on a tradition oriented chiefly toward the central Mediterranean. 88. These are generally identified as macaroni. A typical recipe for maccrows involves cutting up Italian-style lasagne, boiling it in water, and then flavoring with cheese and butter. See Hieatt and Butler, Curye on Inglysch, 119.

notes 365

89. See the inventory in Redon and Laurioux, “Constitution d’une nouvelle catégorie?” 58–60. 90. Garzoni, Piazza universale di tutte le professioni del mondo, 297–98. 91. Martino, La cucina italiana del Quattrocento, 108, 183. 92. Nicoud, “Aux origines d’une médecine préventive,” 7. 93. This term appears in Ugo Benzi’s translation, published in 1481, of Libellus de conservatione sanitatis, by Benedetto de’ Reguardati da Norcia, which was composed around 1435–1438. See Redon and Laurioux, “L’apparition et la diffusion des pâtes,” 101 and 107 n. 2. 94. Savonarola, Trattato utilissimo di molte regole, 4.

2. the time of the pioneers 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

13.

14.

Idrisi, Il libro di Ruggero, 38. André, L’alimentation et la cuisine à Rome, 52–53. Columella, De Re Rustica, 2:9. Aymard and Bresc, “Nourritures et consommation en Sicile entre XIVe et XVIIIe siècle,” 593. Archivio di Stato di Palermo, C.P. (Corte pretoriana) 25, X indiz.; Sada, Spaghetti e compagni, 37. See Perriello Zampelli, “Mulini e costruzioni idrauliche nella costiera amalfitana.” Archivio di Stato di Pisa, Ospedale di Santa Chiara, 2545, cited in Herlihy, Pisa in the Early Renaissance, 71 n. 15; also cited in Lopez, “Chi ha inventato gli spaghetti?” 382–383. Miniero Riccio, Archivio statale delle provincie Napoletane 7, no. 1, 28; Sada, Spaghetti e compagni, 36. Archivio di Stato di Genova, cited in Agnesi, Alcune notizie sugli spaghetti, 33. Archivio di Stato di Genova, “Atti del notaio Ugolino Scarpa,” register 2, fol. 51. Liber de coquina, chap. 2, sect. 66. Zambrini, Libro della cucina del secolo XIV: “De la tria genovese per li infermi” (87); Martino, “Macharoni alla zenovese, o veramente tagliarini,” in La cucina italiana del Quattrocento, 183. Libro Rosso: Privilegi dell’Università di Molfetta, vol. 2: “Littera regia de Vermicellis et similibus per loca extrahendis, etc. Rex Siciliae, etc. Mastro Portulano per la Università et homini della Città nostra de Molfetta: Datum in Castello novo Civitatis nostrae Neapolis, XVII Iunii XCCCCLXXII”; Sada, Spaghetti e compagni, 38–40. “Statuti e Consuetudini dell’Università di Bisceglie,” in Gadaleta,

366 notes

15. 16.

17.

18. 19.

20. 21. 22.

23.

24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36.

Rassegna pugliese, 9 (1902), 248 (chap. 6 of “Datio dello forno”); Sada, Spaghetti e compagni, 38. Galoppini, “Le commerce des pâtes alimentaires,” 111–127. Pegolotti, Pratica della mercatura, 297; Gual Camarena, El primer manual hispanico de mercaderia (siglo XV), 82, cited in Galoppini, “Le commerce,” 118 Covarrubias, Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, 592b: “Son como cuerdecidas delgadas . . . aunque se rebuelven unos con otros como azen las cuerdas,” cited in Rosenberger, “Les pâtes dans le monde musulman,” 97. Galoppini, “Le commerce,” 116. The quintar of Cagliari, equivalent to the quintar of Barcelona, was equivalent to 104 pounds. Annales d’Avignon et du Comptat (1926), 40–63, cited in Flandrin, “Les pâtes dans la cuisine provençale,” 70; City Archives of Grasse BB1, fol. 24v., cited in Stouff, Ravitaillement et alimentation en Provence, 51. Le thresor de santé, book 1, 23. Flandrin, “Les pâtes,” 70. Sanchez Martinez, “Commercio nazari y pirateria catalano-aragonesa,” doc. 7, 85, cited in Rosenberger, “Les pâtes dans le monde musulman,” 97–98. Registrum Curiae Archiep. Januensis, in “Atti liguri,” 2, 2; Liber jurium republicae januensis, in Historia patriae Monumenta, vol. 7, IX, 1854–1857; Sada, Spaghetti e compagni, 23. Sereni, “Note di storia dell’alimentazione nel Mezzogiorno,” 336; Sada, Spaghetti e compagni, 23–24. Ferrante and Olla Repetto, “L’alimentazione a Cagliari nel ’400,” 1480. Galoppini, “Le commerce,” 117. Liber de coquina: “Tria ianuensis” (chap. 2, sect. 66); Zambrini, Libro della cucina del secolo XIV: “De la tria genovese per li infermi” (87). See “The Gastronomy of Fresh Pasta,” in chap. 8, below. El primer manual hispanico de mercaderia, 82, cited in Galoppini, “Le commerce,” 118. Archivio di Stato di Cagliari, AAR, vol. B 8, n. 8 duppl., cited in Ferrante and Olla Repetto, “L’alimentazione a Cagliari nel ’400,” 1480. Galoppini, “Le commerce,” 124. Prammatica 4 “de officio Magistri Portulani de Maestro Portolano Requirens,” cited in Sereni, “Note di storia,” 336. Bitossi, “L’alimentazione delle forze armate della Repubblica di Genova,” 805 Archivio di Stato di Genova, cited in Agnesi, Alcune notizie, 33. Rosenberger, “Les pâtes,” 83. Galoppini, “Le commerce,” 126.

notes 367

37. Capasso, “Breve cronaca di G. De Spenis,” Archivio Storico per le province Napoletane 2 (1877): 511–531; Sada, Spaghetti e compagni, 43. 38. Davidsohn, Storia di Firenze, 83, cited in Redon and Laurioux, “Constitution d’une nouvelle catégorie culinaire?” 53. 39. Toaff, Mangiare alla Giudia, 89. 40. Velluti, La cronica domestica di Donato Velluti. 41. Redon and Laurioux, “L’apparition et la diffusion des pâtes sèches en Italie,” 102. 42. Statuta victualium civitatis et ducatus Mediolani, 1421, chap. 183. 43. Request submitted to the Magnifica Communità di Cremona, cited in Agnesi, Alcune notizie, 75. 44. Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Santa Maria Nuova 4390, fol. 3v. cited in Pinto, Il libro del biadaiolo, 33. 45. Liber de coquina, chap. 3, sect. 3. Aside from the interest of this sole use of semolina, this provides documentation of the production of pasta in Apulia: “De Simula: ad simulam apulam faciendam cum lacte ubi vermiculi sunt siue anxia alexandrina, accipe lac et fac eum bullire. Et bullito lact, elige vermiculos; et simulam predictam poteris ponere antequam bulliat lac. et de lardo sive assungia recenti sufricta ibidem addatur cum pipere et safrano.” See Martino, La cucina italiana del Quattrocento, 182, heading 69: “Per fare como se coce la cemola.” For later periods, see, among other sources, Scappi, Opera, book 2, chap. 153. 46. Biblioteca di Campagna, 2:61. 47. Rodinson, “Recherches sur les documents arabes relatifs à la cuisine,” 96–164; Rosenberger, “Les pâtes,” 78–98. 48. Opsomer, L’art de vivre en santé, 11. 49. Ibn Butlan, Kitab Taqwîm as-sihha (Almanac of health), about which we have not established with any certainty either the place or the date of translation, nor the name of the translator. The name Farag ben Salem has been advanced, and the second half of the thirteenth century has been proposed as the period when the translation appeared; see Opsomer, L’art de vivre en santé, 19. 50. Ibid., 23. 51. Cogliati Arano, Tacuinum sanitatis, 86, 138. 52. Martino, La cucina italiana del Quattrocento, 107, 183, and 237. 53. Ibid., 183. 54. Codice Diplomatico Barese, vol. 1 (1215); Archivio della Zeccha, 1314; Chartularium cupersanense, ed. D. Morea, 145; and Archivio della Zeccha, 1269; Sada, Spaghetti e compagni, 58. 55. Biblioteca Ambrosiana di Milano, MS Z. 226 (sup.); Sada, Spaghetti e compagni, 57; Bevere, “Ordigni ed utensili per l’esercizio di arti e industrie,” 703–704. 56. Manetti, Delle specie di frumento e di pane, 53.

368 notes

57. Soderini, Trattato de agricoltura, 109. 58. In Passover Haggadah from 1560 and 1606, according to Toaff, Mangiare alla giudia. 59. Crescenzi, De agricoltura volgare, 130. 60. Malouin, Description et détails des arts du meunier, 103.

3. from the hand to the extrusion press 1. Despars, Primus Canonis Avic. principis cum explan. (1498), commentary on the canon of Avicenna, book 1, fol. 3, d. 2, chap. 7, cited in Laurioux, “Des lasagnes romaines aux vermicelles arabes,” 214. 2. Archivio Storico Communale di Napoli, Assisae 5 (1572), fos. 145–146. 3. Prato, Il clypeo del gentilhuomo, 154. 4. Chabrol, Statistique des provinces de Savone, 2:348–349. 5. Rovetta, Industria del pastificio, 3d ed., 28–30. 6. Biblioteca di Campagna, 2:61. 7. Archivio Storico Communale di Napoli, Assisae 9 (1576), fol. 199 t. 8. Giustiniani, Nuova collezione delle prammatiche del regno di Napoli, vol. 2 (1604), bann 6, fol. 121. 9. Estienne and Liebault, L’agriculture et la maison rustique, 1:5. 10. Le thresor de santé, book 1, 22. 11. Giacchero, Storia economica del Settecento genovese, 278. 12. Biblioteca di Campagna, 2:61. 13. Malouin, Description et détail des arts du meunier, 98. 14. Scappi, Opera, book 2, chap. 153, 65. 15. Targioni Tozzetti, Sitologia, art. 1, 8 and 25. 16. Lalande, Voyage d’un français en Italie, 6:393 17. Coniglio, “Annona e calmieri a Napoli,” 142. 18. Ibid., 106; Alifano, Il grano, il pane e la politica annonaria a Napoli nel Settecento, 21, 36–37. Enrica Alifano mentions seven eletti, six for the five noble piazze, one of which had two representatives, whose vote, however, counted only as one. 19. Coniglio, “Annona e calmieri a Napoli,” 117, 124, 129; Di Cicco, “Le istituzioni annonarie del Regno di Napoli,” 532; Alifano, Il grano, il pane, 37. 20. Giustiniani, Nuova collezione, vol. 2 (1713), bann 15, fol. 16, cited in condensed form in Fusco, Pagine di storia viste dalla parte degli sconfitti, 215, document 22. 21. Summary of the ordinances of 1544, 1591, 1592, and 1647, in Fusco, Pagine di storia, 208, doc. 15; see also Di Cicco, “Le istituzioni annonarie,” 533. 22. Archivio Storico Communale di Napoli, Assisae 5 (1572), fols. 145–146.

notes 369

23. See the discussion at the end of the following section, “The Emancipation of the Pasta Makers.” 24. Giacchero, Storia economica del Settecento genovese, 278. 25. Majetti, Corporazioni di arti e mestieri. 26. Ordinance dated January 25, 1509, in Giustiniani, Nuova collezione, 2:166, 240 ff. 27. Sereni, “Note di storia dell’alimentazione nel Mezzogiorno,” 338. 28. Giustiniani, Nuova collezione, vol. 2 (1598), bann 5, fol. 188 t. 29. Cited in Agnesi, Alcune notizie, 66. 30. Ibid., 75. 31. Giacchero, Storia economica, 278. 32. Agnesi, Alcune notizie, 70. 33. Sada, Spaghetti e compagni, 52. 34. Garzoni, La piazza universale di tutte le professioni, 544; Crisci, La lucerna de’ corteggiani, 302. 35. Portesi, L’industria della pasta alimentare, 26. 36. Biblioteca Casanatense, Rome, cited in Agnesi, Alcune notizie, 70a. 37. Liber de coquina, chap. 3, sect. 10. Not only did the practice of fermenting dough live on in Italy, but it spread to France, where, according to Malouin, Parisian manufacturers of his time preferred to use a slightly fermented yeast dough. See Malouin, Description et détails, 102. 38. Maggiore-Perni, La popolazione di Sicilia e di Palermo dal X al XVIII secolo, 564, 568. 39. Coniglio, “Annona e calmieri,” tables 14 and 15, 182–183, and figs. 8 and 9, 192–193. 40. Aiello, Breve discorso sopra l’imminente peste nel regno di Napoli l’anno 1575–76–77, cited in Petraccone, “Bottegai e piccoli commercianti a Napoli nella prima metà del XVII secolo.” 41. Di Cicco, Le istituzioni annonarie 535, note 29. 42. Giustiniani, Nuova collezione, vol 2 (1587), bann 4, fol. 55; vol. 2 (1609), bann 7, fol. 6 t. 43. Scappi, Opera, book 1, chap. 2, 3v. 44. Archivio di Stato di Bari, Cap. Matrimoniale 1592–1606; Sada, Spaghetti e compagni, 59–60. 45. Branca, Le macchine, fig. 1. 46. Capra, La nuova architettura militare, 124, 126. 47. Luigi Sada witnessed, fairly recently, the use of family pasta brakes in Sicily and in southern Apulia (Spaghetti e compagni, 56). 48. Malouin, Description et détails, 103. 49. Rosenberger, “Les pâtes dans le monde musulman,” 97. 50. Messisbugo, Libro nuovo, 6v: “schrizzotto per li vermicelli, ingegno per li maccheroni.” 51. Labat, Voyage, 2:42.

370 notes

Malouin, Description et détails, plate 2 and 302. Portesi, L’industria della pasta, 29. Galoppini, “Le commerce des pâtes alimentaires,” 112. Agnesi, Alcune notizie, 77; Portesi, L’industria della pasta, 29. Basile, Il racconto dei racconti, chap. 9, par. 4. Petraccone, “Bottegai e piccoli commercianti.” Archivio di Stato di Napoli, Protocolli notarili, Notaio F. Montanaro, 1023/3; see Petraccone, “Bottegai e piccoli commercianti.” 59. Coniglio, “Annona e calmieri,” 182–184. 60. Archivio Storico Municipale di Napoli, Assisae 9 (1576), fol. 199 t. 61. Jouvin de Rochefort, Le voyageur d’Europe, 1:369. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58.

4. the golden age of the pasta manufactory 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19.

Labat, Voyage, 2:45. Gargiulo and Quintavalle, “L’industria della pastificazione,” 154. Liguori, Gragnano, 228–229. Portesi, L’industria della pasta alimentare, 25. “Bando dell’anno 1635” (decree of the year 1635), extract cited in Fusco, Pagine di storia vista dalla parte degli sconfitti, 237. Lalande, Voyage d’un Français en Italie, 6:393. Saint-Non, Voyage pittoresque, 1:234. Galanti, Della descrizione geografica e politica delle Sicilie, 269; Giustiniani, Dizionario geografico ragionato del Regno di Napoli, 3:209. Liguori, Gragnano, 231. Archivio di Stato di Napoli, Ministero dell’Agricoltura Industria e Commercio (hereafter MAIC), file 844. Agnesi, Alcune notizie sugli spaghetti, 98–99. Biblioteca Municipale di Imperia, Relazione sul commercio di Portomaurizio (turn of the nineteenth century), cited in Agnesi, Alcune notizie, 112. Corrado, Notiziario delle produzioni particolari del Regno di Napoli, 114–148, esp. 139. Archivio di Stato di Bari, Catasto Onciario (1753), vol. 12; Sada, Spaghetti e compagni, 67. Mele, Guida commerciale della città di Bari, 125–127; Sada, Spaghetti e compagni, 68. Archivio Generale del Municipio di Torino: Calmiere del 1788, cited in Agnesi, Alcune notizie, 105. See Il cuoco piemontese, 66 and 321. Delsante, “Pastifici a Parma,” 50. See Malouin, Description et détails, 95–101. Ibid., 101.

notes 371

20. Rovetta, Industria del pastificio, 1st ed., 9. 21. Ceschina, Primo contributo allo studio dell’essicazione delle paste alimentari, 18. 22. Lalande, Voyage d’un Français, volume VI, 393. 23. Malouin, Description et détails, 107. 24. Ibid., 107. For the modern names of the types of pasta, see Pastario, 29. 25. Malouin, Description et détails, 110. 26. Labat, Voyage, 2:40–41. 27. Corrado, Notiziario delle produzioni, 114–148. 28. Santoliquido, Relazione de’ saggi delle manifatture esposte alla mostra del 1841 e proposta de’ premi; Sada, Spaghetti e compagni, 65–66. 29. Giustiniani, Nuova collezione delle prammatiche del Regno di Napoli, vol. 2 (1665), bann 13, fol. 200. 30. Chabrol, Statistique des provinces de Savone, d’Oneille, d’Acqui, 2:348–49. 31. Lalande, Voyage d’un Français, volume VI, 393. 32. Malouin, Description et détails, 108. 33. Rovetta, Industria del pastificio, 3d ed., 396–397. 34. For a more detailed description of the natural system of drying, known as the “classico napoletano,” see Ceschina, Primo contributo, 8–19. 35. Rovetta, Industria del pastificio, 3d ed., 396. 36. Betocchi, Forze produttive della provincia di Napoli, 2:163. 37. Since we know that 2,200 pounds of wheat would yield roughly 1,750 pounds of flour, each factory would produce almost 2,000 pounds of pasta daily, for a total of about 800,000 pounds a year, based on 350 working days, the nominal figure in Betocchi, Forze produttive, 2:163. This is far from the 275 pounds of pasta a press could produce daily, estimated according to the figures provided by Malouin, Description et détails. 38. L’Italie économique en 1867, s.v. “Pâtes.” 39. “Strade ferrate dal Varo al Piemonte,” Il Pensiero, cited in Agnesi, Alcune notizie, 146. 40. Agnesi, Alcune notizie, 146 and 157. 41. Canale, Storia dell’Esposizione fatta in Genova nel settembre 1846, cited in Agnesi, Alcune notizie, 146. 42. Heuzé, Exposition universelle internationale de 1878 à Paris, 132; Sada, Spaghetti e compagni, 57. 43. Galanti, Della descrizione geografica e politica delle Sicilie, 269. If the figures offered by Galanti are accurate, annual production in 1793 was nearly 18,000 tons, while the twenty-six manufactories of Portomaurizio produced about 5,200 tons in 1862. 44. De Jorio, Indicazioni del più rimarcabile in Napoli e contorni, s.v. “Maccheroni.”

372 notes

45. Penny Magazine of Useful Knowledge (1830), cited in Agnesi, Alcune notizie, 130. 46. Archivio di Stato di Napoli, MAIC, file 844; Liguori, Cenni storicocritici della città di Gragnano, 54. 47. Betocchi, Forze produttive, 2:163. 48. Malouin, Description et détails, 107. 49. Lalande, Voyage d’un Français, chap. 19, 6:386. The Roman pound was equivalent to about three-quarters of a pound. 50. Portesi, L’industria della pasta, 27. 51. Crisci, La lucerna de’ corteggiani, 302. 52. Labat, Voyage, 2:40–45; Targioni Tozzetti, Sitologia, 31. 53. Libro Rosso, vol. 2 (Aragonese period), 220–221. 54. Libera, L’arte della cucina, 40. 55. Corrado, Notiziario delle produzioni particolari del Regno di Napoli, 114–148. 56. Chapusot, La cucina sana, economica ed elegante, file 1, 117; file “Estate” (summer), 6. 57. Malouin, Description et détails, 107; Grimod de la Reynière, L’almanach des gourmands, 5th year (1807), 103. 58. Traité de Cuisine à l’Espagnole, in Le nouveau et parfait Maistre d’hostel royal, 262–263. 59. Grimod de la Reynière, L’almanach des gourmands, 4th year (1806), 263. 60. Ibid., 282. 61. Carême, Le pâtissier royal, 1:122n. 62. Godby, Italian Scenery. 63. Società Napoletana di Storia Patria, MS no. XXIX A, 13, fols. 366r–367v; Alifano, Il grano, il pane e la politica annonaria a Napoli nel Settecento, 37. The Neapolitan tomolo was equivalent to 78.3 pounds. 64. Lalande, Voyage d’un Français, 6:124; the author quotes a survey from 1742. 65. See, among others, Gorani, Mémoires secrets et critiques des cours, cited in Bouvier and Laffargue, La vie napolitaine au XVIIIe siècle, 61.

5. the industrial age Alvino, Viaggio da Napoli a Castellammare, 267. Sada, Spaghetti e compagni, 68. Petroni, Della storia di Bari (1860–1895), 262. “Atti del comitato dell’Inchiesta industriale,” cited in Aliberti, “L’industria molitoria meridionale nel sec. XIX,” 23. 5. Petroni, Della storia di Bari, 263. 1. 2. 3. 4.

notes 373

6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

15. 16.

17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36.

Annali di Statistica: Notizie, 75. Rovetta, Industria del pastificio, 1st ed., 202. Aliberti, “L’industria molitoria,” 7. “All’illustre Agostino Bertani—Deputato al Parlamento—i Gragnanesi,” 1878, cited in Aliberti, “L’industria molitoria,” 36–37. Betocchi, Forze produttive della provincia di Napoli, 2:165. Morgari, “Relazione sulla rivolta degli operai dell’industria della pastificazione.” Annali di Statistica: Industria della macinazione dei cereali, 36–51. “Atti del comitato,” cited in Aliberti, “L’industria molitoria,” 21–22. Galanti, Per D. Nola di Paolo Fenizio contro il comune di Gragnano presso la consulta di stato (1845), cited in Gargiulo and Quintavalle, “L’industria della pastificazione a Torre Annunziata e Gragnano,” 159. Morgari, “Relazione sulla rivolta.” Archivio di Stato di Napoli, MAIC, file 592/43. There is also a letter from a certain Genaro Vandenhend, dated 1858, requesting exclusive rights for ten years “for a machine that kneads dough” according to a new method patented in Belgium (285/42); in another file (284/44), there is a request from Vincenzo Manzetti dated 1857 for permission to “introduce into the Kingdom a machine called a portable press, of his own invention.” Archivio di Stato di Napoli, MAIC, file 277/45. Spadaccini, Novello e grande stabilimento di paste coll’Uomo di Bronzo, 21 and 27. Ibid., 21. Ibid., 28. De Jorio, Indicazioni del più rimarcabile in Napoli e contorni, s.v. “Maccheroni.” De Rosa, “Un secolo d’industria a Napoli (1860–1979),” 1:223–224. Rovetta, Industria del Pastificio, 1st ed., 41. Rovetta, Industria del Pastificio, 3d ed., 202. Portesi, L’industria della pasta alimentare, 199. Rovetta, Industria del Pastificio, 3d ed., 208. Ibid., 392. See “Natural Drying,” in chap. 4, above. Rovetta, Industria del Pastificio, 1st ed., 116. Ibid., 423. Picard, Exposition universelle de 1900 à Paris, 362. Ceschina, Primo contributo allo studio dell’essicazione, 75 ff. Ibid., 26. ff and 66. Rovetta, Industria del pastificio, 3d ed., 414. Orsini Natale, Francesca e Nunziata, 338. Rovetta, Industria del pastificio, 3d ed., 818.

374 notes

37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58.

59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65.

Picard, Exposition universelle de 1900, 217. Annuario napoletano, 255. Rovetta, Industria del pastificio, 1st ed., 202. Picard Exposition universelle de 1900, 217. Sada, Spaghetti e compagni, 121–131. Ibid., 129. Portesi, L’industria della pasta, 36–37. Rovetta, Industria del pastificio, 3d ed., 817–818. Dati, Origini storiche di Torre Annunziata. Rovetta, Industria del pastificio, 1st ed., 119. Fusco, Pagine di storia viste dalla parte degli sconfitti. Godby, Italian Scenery, cited in Prezzolini, Maccheroni e C., 47. Montanari, La faim et l’abondance, 19. “L’industrie italienne des pâtes alimentaires,” Journal de la meunerie, no. 613 (February 1935). See below, “The New Horizons of Pasta” and “Pasta from the New World,” in chap. 6, and “The Italian Reconquest,” in chap. 7. Rovetta, Industria del pastificio, 3d ed., 123. Ibid., 29. Rovetta, Industria del pastificio, 1st ed., 170–175. Ibid., 104. Rovetta, Industria del pastificio, 2d ed., 45. F. M. Feiker, foreword to Carr, International Trade in Macaroni Products. Rovetta, Industria del pastificio, 2d ed., 199 and 201. In 1910 lobsters were sold in Paris at a price ranging from 5 francs 50 centimes to 6 francs per kilogram, while 100 francs would purchase about a hundred pigeons; see Le pot-au-feu. Rovetta, Industria del pastificio, 2d ed., 199 and 201. Ibid., 192. Ibid., 213. Ibid., 3d ed., 315. Ibid., 1st ed., 102; 2d ed., 214; 3d ed., 332–333. Antico Catalogo Barilla, in Agnesi, E’ tempo di pasta, 36. Capatti, Le goût du nouveau, 75.

6. pasta without borders 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Prezzolini, Maccheroni e C., 15. Ibid., 13; Carleton, Macaroni Wheats. Rovetta, Industria del pastificio, 3d. ed., 824–825. Portesi, L’industria della pasta alimentare, 41. Carr, International Trade in Macaroni Products, 7.

notes 375

6. Rovetta, Industria del pastificio, 3d ed., 824–825. 7. Heuzé, Exposition universelle internationale de 1878 à Paris, 29; on the judging, see 134. 8. Portesi, L’industria della pasta, 42. 9. Heuzé, Exposition universelle, 134. 10. Chamberlain, The Food and Cooking of Russia, 71 and 227–229. The book of Uzbek cuisine that we consulted is available only in Russian. 11. Rovetta, Industria del pastificio, 3d ed., 824–825. 12. Picard, Exposition universelle internationale de 1889 à Paris, 38. 13. Carleton, Macaroni Wheats, 12. 14. Malouin, Description et détails de l’art du meunier, 95; Diderot and D’Alembert, Encyclopédie, s.v. “Noudles” and “Nudeln.” 15. Régnault-Desroziers, Exposition universelle internationale de 1900, 190. 16. Portesi, L’industria della pasta, 42. 17. Picard, Exposition universelle internationale, 32; for the Belgian medal, see 25. 18. Ibid., 23. 19. Régnault-Desroziers, Exposition universelle, 196 20. Rovetta, Industria del pastificio, 3d ed., 824–825; and Carr, International Trade in Macaroni Products, 18. Rovetta offers the figure of 330 factories, while Carr speaks of 30 factories in the year 1925. The enormous difference is unquestionably due to the fact that, while Rovetta was referring to all pasta producers, including artisans, Carr only cited figures for industrial plants. This discrepancy recurs for all other countries, including the United States. 21. Portesi, L’industria della pasta, 46. 22. UNIPI, Tavole statistiche, 2:78. 23. Le thresor de santé, book 1, 22. 24. Savary des Bruslons, Dictionnaire raisonné de commerce, vol. 2, F–Z. 25. Malouin, Description et détails, 107. 26. Ibid., 95. 27. Grimod de la Reynière, L’almanach des gourmands, 4th year (1806), 263. 28. Almanach du commestible de 1778, 37. 29. Grimod de la Reynière, L’almanach des gourmands, 5th year (1807), 333. 30. Léopold, Dictionnaire universel-portatif de commerce, s.v. “Macaronis” and “Vermicelles.” 31. The bulk of the information we possess about the pasta industry in Auvergne was kindly provided by Philip Hyman, and we express our heartfelt recognition to him. 32. Héricart de Thury, Rapport sur les produits de l’industrie française, 417. 33. Guillaumin, Dictionnaire du commerce et des marchandises, s.v. “Pâtes alimentaires.”

376 notes

34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65.

Husson, Les consommations de Paris, rev. ed., 383. Heuzé, Exposition universelle, 129. Husson, Les consommations de Paris, 1st ed., 315 Heuzé, Exposition universelle, 129. Husson, Les consommations de Paris, 1st ed., 315 Betocchi, Forze produttive della provincia di Napoli, 2:163. Picard, Exposition universelle internationale, 16–17. Anne Louise, Le Parisien, July 30, 1984. Heuzé, Exposition universelle, 129; Picard, Exposition universelle internationale, 17. Régnault-Desroziers, Exposition universelle, 173. Grillot and Mouzay, Les pâtes, 33. See, e.g., the catalog for 1932. Grillot and Mouzay, Les pâtes, 35. Ibid., 32. Heuzé, Exposition universelle, 134. Cited in Malaval and Oberlé, L’histoire des pâtes en Alsace, 13. Ibid., 26. Ibid., 38. Picard, Exposition universelle internationale, 16 Prezzolini, Maccheroni e C., 36–37. Archivio di Stato di Napoli, MAIC, file 284/44. See n. 16, chap. 5, above, concerning Vincenzo Manzetti’s portable press. Davis, “The U.S. Pasta Industry Turns 150,” in Pasta Journal, 1998. Carleton, Macaroni Wheats, 19. Davis, “The U.S. Pasta Industry Turns 150.” Carr, International Trade, 7. Rovetta, Industria del pastificio, 3d ed., 824–825. Carr, International Trade, 1, 8. Carleton, Macaroni Wheats, 21. Portesi, L’industria della pasta, 44. UNIPI, Tavole statistiche, table 32, 2:77. Carr, International Trade, 8. Portesi, L’industria della pasta, 44.

7. the time of plenty 1. Agnesi, E’ tempo di pasta, 86. 2. Rovetta, Industria del pastificio, 3d ed., 824–825; Portesi, L’industria della pasta alimentare, 42. The figures for the other countries are also taken from these two sources. 3. Portesi, L’industria della pasta, 42.

notes 377

4. UNIPI, Tavole statistiche, table 26, 2:69. 5. Grillot and Mouzay, Les pâtes, 30. 6. Portesi, L’industria della pasta, 42; Rovetta, Industria del pastificio, 3d ed., 824–825. 7. Grillot and Mouzay, Les pâtes, 30. 8. Ibid.; “La filière céréalière française.” 9. Portesi, L’industria della pasta, 35 and 36. The exact level of production in 1936 was 656,349 tons of pasta, according to this author; the findings in Portesi (1,333 factories operating and 268 nonoperative) correspond to the estimate in Rovetta, Industria del pastificio, 3d ed., which reported 1,820 pasta producers, including 1,600 industrial-scale factories, in Italy in 1929. 10. The figures in this paragraph thus far come from a comparison of three sources: Portesi, L’industria della pasta, 34; Annuario generale, part 1, 292; and UNIPI, Tavole statistiche, table 27, 2:70. 11. Portesi, L’industria della pasta, 36; UNIPI, Tavole statistiche, table 35, 2:80. 12. Abenante et al., “Disegno di legge d’iniziativa dei senatori,” October 17, 1968. We would like to thank Senator Angelo Abenante for having furnished us with a copy of this text. 13. Zagli, L’industria della pastificazione in Italia, 139–141. 14. Portesi, L’industria della pasta, 36. 15. Ibid., 35. 16. Ibid., 36. 17. Buitoni, Storia di un imprenditore; Buitoni, Pasta e cioccolato. 18. Agnesi, E’ tempo di pasta; Basile, Euro Tavola, 45. 19. Ganapini and Gonizzi, Barilla, 163. 20. Ibid., 234. 21. Zagli, L’industria della pastificazione, 173. 22. Rovetta, Industria del pastificio, 1st ed., 177–181. 23. Heuzé, Exposition universelle, 129 ff. 24. Ibid., 180–181. 25. F. M. Feiker, foreword to Carr, International Trade in Macaroni Products. 26. Wood, Foods of the Foreign Born in Relation to Health, cited in Prezzolini, Maccheroni e C., 86. 27. Prezzolini, Maccheroni e C.., 119. 28. Renaud, Le régime santé, 66–70. 29. Carr, International Trade in Macaroni Products, 1–2. 30. Law no. 874, dated June 22, 1933, Disciplina della vendita delle paste alimentari; law no. 5849, dated December 22, 1888; see Portesi, L’industria della pasta, 349–350 and 343. 31. Annuario generale, part 2, 60–61. 32. Grillot and Mouzay, Les pâtes, 51. The law of 1934 passed revised in

378 notes

33. 34.

35.

36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41.

1955 and again in 1957, by the Decree of May 27; see Journal Officiel, dated May 30, 1957. Portesi, L’industria della pasta, 351–352. Disciplina per la lavorazione ed il commercio dei cereali, degli sfarinati, del pane e delle paste alimentari, law no. 580, dated July 4, 1967, Gazzetta Uficiale, no. 189 (July 29, 1967). Among the many periodicals that featured articles on artisanal pasta producers are Panorama, December 8, 1985; La Stampa, November 20, 1992; Case e Country, October 1993; Tuttoturismo, March 1997; L’Espresso, December 3, 1998; and Gambero Rosso, March 1998 and May 1999. Basile, Euro Tavola, 146–147. Rovetta, Industria del pastificio, 3d ed., 315–316 and 320. We are grateful to Signor Justo Bonetto, Secretary of the Associazione Nazionale Produttori Pasta Fresca (APPF), for this information. Ibid. Basile, Euro Tavola, 278. Ibid., 277.

8. the taste for pasta 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16.

In Pastario, 9. Artusi, La scienza in cucina, recipes 85, 87, and 100. La Cecla, La pasta e la pizza, 9. Portesi, L’industria della pasta alimentare, 36. Redon and Laurioux, “Constitution d’une nouvelle catégorie culinaire?” 51–60; and idem, “L’apparition et la diffusion des pâtes sèches,” 101–108. Our summary does not include preparations known as crispelli, quinquinelli, schinchinelli, licaproprii, and guanti, as well as certain tortelli and ravioli listed in these inventories, because they have no pasta wrapper, or are made with a different kind of dough, or are fried. Martino, La cucina italiana del Quattrocento, 142. Ibid., 188 and 237. Scappi, Opera, book 2, chap. 172, 69v. Il cuoco piemontese perfezionato a Parigi, 66. Guerrini, Frammento di un libro di cucina, 28. Scappi, Opera, book 2, chap. 176. Nebbia, Il cuoco maceratese, 193–198. Rossetti, Dello scalco, 510. Crisci, La lucerna de’corteggiani, 302. Morpurgo, LVII ricette di un libro di cucina, 24. Liber de coquina, chap. 2, sect. 66; Zambrini, Il libro della cucina del secolo XIV, 87.

notes 379

17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56.

Martino, La cucina italiana, 107, 183, and 237. Capatti and Montanari, La cucina italiana, 119. Liber de coquina, chap. 3, sect. 10. Boström, Anonimo meridionale, book B, 42; Zambrini, Il libro della cucina, 77; Frati, Libro di cucina del secolo XIV, 20. Zambrini, Il libro della cucina, 77. Chapusot, La cucina sana, economica ed elegante, file 1, 117. Liber de coquina, chap. 3, sect. 11. Nicoud, “L’adaptation du discours diététique,” 217. Romoli, La singolar dottrina, book 4, 114 and 118. Gosetti, La grande cucina regionale italiana, 182 and 183. Romoli, La singolar dottrina, book 5, menu 56. Ibid., book 4, 50–51 and 96. Pappardelle are mentioned in Rossetti, Dello scalco, 510. Lascito Aliati. Süthold, Manoscritto lucano, p. 35 n. 53. Scappi, Opera, book 2, chap. 175. Latini, Lo scalco alla moderna, 1:301. Chapusot, La cucina sana, file 1, 119. Lancellotti, Lo scalco pratico, 2. Del Turco, Epulario e segreti vari, 28 and 27. Morpurgo, LVII ricette, 24. Guerrini, Frammento, 38. Redon and Laurioux, “Constitution,” 58–60; idem, “L’apparition,” 104–105. Morpurgo, LVII ricette, 27. Martino, La cucina italiana, 186, headings 85 and 86. Guerrini, Frammento, 38. Salimbene, Cronica, 2:797. Martino, La cucina italiana, 236. Scappi, Opera, book 2, chap. 181. Romoli, La singolar dottrina, book 5, menu 75. Artusi, La scienza, recipes 98 and 99. Scappi, Opera, book 2, chap. 178. Gosetti, La grande cucina, 238. Latini, Lo scalco, 1:300. Spaggiari, l’anolino di Parma. Artusi, La scienza, recipe 54. Presciutto, Gastronomia parmense, 87. Lascito Aliati, 22v. Del Turco, Epulario, 23. Lancelot de Casteau, Ouverture de cuisine, 78–80. Prato, Il clypeo del gentilhuomo, 154.

380 notes

57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93.

Crisci, La lucerna, 302. See “The Discovery of Gluten and Gluten Pasta,” in chap. 9, below. Latini, Lo scalco, 1:300. Labat, Voyage, 5:41. Crisci, La lucerna, 303. Latini, Lo scalco, 1:355. Corrado, Il cuoco galante, 164 ff. Ibid., 168. Vialardi, Trattato di cucina pasticceria moderna, 314–316. Chapusot, La cucina sana, file 1, 120, 13; file 4, 143, 147. Carême, Le pâtissier royal parisien, chap. 9, 1:122–129. Dumas, Le grand dictionnaire de cuisine, s.v. “Macaroni.” Grimod de la Reynière, L’almanach des gourmands, 2d year (1804), “Epitre dédicatoire,” i. Ibid., 26. La vera cucina lombarda, 156; Ratta and Ratta, La vera cuciniera genovese, 254. Jouvin de Rochefort, Le voyageur d’Europe, 1:369. Labat, Voyage, 2:40–45. Casanova, Histoire de ma vie, 2:661. Ibid., 1:137. Don Felice Libera, L’arte della cucina, 55 and 153. Lalande, Voyage d’un Français en Italie, 6:393–394. Spatuzzi and Somma, Saggi igienici e medici sull’alimentazione, 59. Goethe, Italian Journey, 320. Gorani, Mémoires secrets et critiques des cours, cited in Bouvier and Laffargue, La vie napolitaine au XVIIIe siècle, 61. De Jorio, Indicazioni del più rimarcabile in Napoli e contorni, s.v. “Maccheroni.” Gorani, Mémoires secrets et critiques des cours, cited in Bouvier and Laffargue, La vie napolitaine au XVIIIe siècle, 61. Martino, La cucina italiana, 184. London, Library of the Wellcome Institute, MS 211, chapter 30. Martino, La cucina italiana, 105, 183, and 237. Ibid., 107, 183, 237. Ibid., 107, 186, and 236. Ibid., 187 and 236. Laurioux, “Des lasagnes romaines aux vermicelles arabes,” 204. Cited in Grieco, “Le paste alimentari,” 18. Arnaldus de Villanova, Arnaldi de Villanova Opera medica omnia, cited in Galoppini, “Le commerce des pâtes alimentaires,” 125. Martino, La cucina italiana, 183. Scappi, Opera, book 2, chap. 174.

notes 381

94. 95. 96. 97. 98. 99. 100. 101. 102. 103. 104. 105. 106. 107. 108. 109. 110. 111. 112. 113. 114. 115. 116. 117. 118. 119. 120. 121. 122. 123. 124. 125. 126. 127. 128. 129. 130. 131. 132. 133. 134.

Romoli, La singolar dottrina, book 5, menu 75. Del Turco, Epulario e segreti vari, 28. Latini, Lo scalco, 1:301. Il cuoco piemontese, 66. Chapusot, La cucina sana, file 1, 119. Jouvin de Rochefort, Le voyageur d’Europe, 1:369. Il cuoco piemontese, 66; Chapusot, La cucina sana, file 1, 118. Latini, Lo scalco, 1:300. Cavalcanti, La cucina teorico-pratica, 96 and 456. Artusi, La scienza, recipe 85. Salimbene, Cronica, 2:808. Liber de coquina, chap. 3, sect. 10. Boccaccio, Decameron, day 8, story 3. Liber de coquina, chap. 3, sects. 10 and 11. Frati, Libro di cucina, 35. Ibid., 40. Morpurgo, LVII ricette, 16. Labat, Voyage, 2:44. Casanova, Histoire de ma vie, 1:918. Grimod de la Reynière, Almanach des gourmands, 5th year (1807), 103. Gorani, Mémoires secrets et critiques des cours, cited in Bouvier and Laffargue, La vie napolitaine au XVIIIe siècle, 61. Silvagni, Scene della vita napoletana, cited in Papa, Civiltà in cucina, 14. Messisbugo, Libro nuovo, 39r. Ibid., 52v; Martino, La cucina italiana, 105, 183, and 273. Messisbugo, Libro nuovo, 51. Scappi, Opera, book 2, chap. 174. Romoli, La singolar dottrina, book 5, menus 75 and 56. Scappi, Opera, book 3, chap. 255. Del Turco, Epulario, 28. Il diario della Massaia, 1:29. Prato, Il clypeo del gentilhuomo, 146–154. Luraschi, Nuovo cuoco milanese, 133. Martino, La cucina italiana, 184. Ratta and Ratta, La vera cuciniera genovese, 33 and 80. Francesconi, La cucina napoletana, 95. Grewe, “The Arrival of the Tomato in Spain and Italy,” 73. Latini, Lo scalco, 2:162; see also 1:444. Corrado, Il cuoco galante, 139–140. Grimod de la Reynière, Almanach des Gourmands, 5th year (1807), 103. Cavalcanti, La cucina teorico-pratica, 438–439. Ratta and Ratta, La vera cuciniera, 29.

382 notes

135. 136. 137. 138. 139. 140. 141. 142. 143. 144. 145. 146. 147. 148. 149. 150. 151. 152. 153. 154.

Il cuoco milanese, 52. La vera cucina lombarda, 84. Artusi, La scienza, recipes 125 and 85. Francesconi, La cucina napoletana, 95. Salimbene, Cronica, 2:808. See chap. 10, below. Consiglio, Storia dei maccheroni, 22. Cited in ibid., 40. Gorani, Mémoires secrets et critiques des cours, cited in Bouvier and Laffargue, La vie napolitaine au XVIIIe siècle, 61. Silvagni, Scene della vita napoletana, cited in Papa, Civiltà in cucina, 14. Artusi, La scienza, recipe 85. Romoli, La singolar dottrina, book 5, menu 56. Cited in Montanari, Nuovo convivio, 15–16. Messisbugo, Libro nuovo, 51 and 52. Romoli, La singolar dottrina, book 5, menu 46, and list of dishes for menus at the end of book 5. Scappi, Opera, book 2, chap. 221. Cervio, Il trinciante, 89, 90, and 133. Libera, L’arte della cucina, 64. Romoli, La singolar dottrina, book 4, 51, 55, and 111. Silvagni, Scene della vita napoletana, cited in Papa, Civiltà in cucina, 13.

9. china: pasta’s other homeland 1. I am indebted to David R. Knechtges, whose illuminating article on food in early Chinese literature, “A Literary Feast: Food in Early Chinese Literature,” first inspired me to do research on the history of Chinese pasta. 2. See introduction to this volume. 3. Sabban, “De la main à la pâte,” 107. 4. Bottéro, “Les trente premières années du déchiffrement des inscriptions oraculaires,” 73–99. 5. Graham, “Motzu.” 6. Chap. 11, sect. 46, “Genzhu,” of Mozi jiangu, 2:399; Mei, The Ethical and Political Works of Motse, 220–221. 7. Jijiu pian, chap. 2, 132–133. We interpret the word grains in the ancient Chinese sense, that is to say, as referring to cereals but also to legumes. 8. Sabban, “De la main à la pâte,” 107. 9. This had been the case in antiquity for millet cakes, which were considered a meal fit for a king. See Sabban, “Quand la forme transcende l’objet,” 798.

notes 383

10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

18. 19. 20.

21.

22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27.

28. 29. 30. 31. 32.

Fangyan jianshu, 809–810. Sabban, “De la main à la pâte,” 117–118. Sabban, “Quand la forme transcende l’objet,” 798. Cheng, Histoire de la pensée chinoise, 139–147. Miller, Shih ming, 424. Ingots from the Han era were shaped like flatbreads. Shiming, 204 ff. This is the case with the two dynastic histories of the early and late Han dynasties compiled in the first and fifth centuries, respectively, much like the first Chinese encyclopedias created before the tenth century, which were actually anthologies of texts and quotations, meant to assist in literary composition. See the chapter on jiu shi (wine and food) in Beitang shuchao; “Shiwu” (Foodstuffs), chap. 72 in Yiwen leiju; chap. 26, sects. 11–17, on bing in Chuxueji; and chap. 860, sect. 18, on yinshi bu (foodstuffs), in Taiping yulan, 4:3818–3820. Cited in Taiping yulan, 4:3818a.; and chap. 8, “Xuandiji,” in Hanshu, 1:237. Cited in Li Hu, Han Tang yinshi wenhua shi, 212. Called to the throne at the age of eight, Zhidi was an innocent victim of the murderous plots and intrigues that periodically bloodied the court when underage monarchs became the pawns of power-hungry factions. See chap. 6, “Zhidiji,” in Hou Hanshu, 2:282. Huidi, second emperor of the Western Jin dynasty, died in 306 after eating bing that probably contained poison. See chap. 4, “Huidiji,” in Jinshu, 1:108. Chuxueji, 643. Shiliu guo, Hou Zhao lu, cited in Taiping yulan, 4:3819a. See the story as told in Yingxiongji, by Wang Can (177–217), cited in Taiping yulan, 4:3818a. Weilüe, cited in Taiping yulan, 4:3818b. Taiping yulan, 4:3818b. This was the high minister of the Jin dynasty, Chi Jian (269–339). The late episode of Emperor Wu of the Liang dynasty, for example, organized a “meal of bing” for his high minister. See Taiping yulan, 4:3818b. In this connection, see the analysis of Levi, “Les Trois Royaumes,” 173–207. The text mentions mai (wheat/barley), not xiaomai (wheat). Chap. 64 of San Guo zhi, 5:1430. The fact that the anecdote appears in his biography is proof of this. The term used, zhou, refers to the axle of a wheel; this allows us to conjecture that steamed buns (zhengbing) had a hole and were presented not individually but strung on a sort of pole. See Taiping yulan, 4:3818b.

384 notes

33. Shihuozhi, chap. 24a in Hanshu, 4:1117–1149. 34. Chap. 99, “Wang Mang zhuan,” in Hanshu, 12:4123. See also Zhang Menglun, Han Wei yinshi kao, 33. 35. Li Hu, Han Tang yinshi wenhua shi, 212–213. 36. In his article “The Fu of T’ao Ch’ien,” Hightower tells the story of the scholar in question, who, wishing to put three young men who had come to visit him to the test, demanded—before he would offer them a seat— that each of them compose fu on the spot, taking inspiration from the things before their eyes. The first wrote a fu about a dog, the second wrote a fu about a mat, and the third wrote a fu about a bow (66). See also chap. 102, sect. 3b, “Fu,” in Beitang shuchao, 425. According to a writer of the time, this poetic form was distinguished by the fact that it took “its themes from natural objects, whose aspects and properties are elaborated to the point where no one can add anything more” (cited in Hightower, “The Fu of T’ao Ch’ien,” 65. 37. Nowadays, mantou are steamed buns. We have only a vague idea of what they were at the time. 38. Kawakatsu, “Sie Ling-yun et le Che-chouo sin-yu,” 172–173. 39. Taiping yulan, 4:3820b; Beitang shuchao, 648. We have no precise dates for Hong Junju, who lived during the Jin dynasty (265–420) and authored a “Proclamation on Nutrition” that appears to contain only a few verses about bing with tea. 40. Fu Xuan (217–278), “Qimo” (Seven projects); Beitang shuchao, chap. 144, sect. 15b, 648. See also the translation of a passage from this text in Knechtges, A Literary Feast, 63. For more on Fu Xuan, see Zhongguo wenxuejia cidian, 162; Needham, “Mechanical Engineering,” part 2, sect. 27, of Science and Civilisation in China, 4:39. 41. See Shishuo xinyu jiaojian, 141. Yu Chan wrote a fu (Yangdu fu) that was highly regarded in his time. For a biography of Yu Chan, see Zhongguo wenxuejia cidian, 218. 42. Yu Chan, “E bing fu xu,” 2:1680. See also Knechtges, A Literary Feast, 64. 43. Wu Jun, “Bingshuo,” 3306b. See the biography of Wu Jun in Zhongguo wenxuejia cidian, 342. 44. We have summarized this part of the poem, of which certain verses appear in different versions according to the collection in which they appear and are exceedingly difficult to interpret, as the recent editors of this text point out in Wang Renxiang, Taiping yulan, 527–529. 45. Lüshi chunqiu jiaoshi, 739–766; Wang Liqi et al., Lüshi chunqiu benwei pian, 6–11; Kamenorovic, Printemps et automnes de Lü Buwei, 216–221. 46. Gansu, Shanxi, Shaanxi, and Shandong. 47. Wu Jun, “Shiyi,” 3306. 48. Simin yueling, 5th month, 34. See also Pirazzoli-t’Serstevens, La Chine des Han, 175–180.

notes 385

49. Qu Duizhi, Handai fengsu zhidu shi, 310. 50. This story appears in numerous texts. See Shishuo xinyu jiaojian, 333; Chuxueji, 643; Jing Chu suishi ji, 104; Taiping yulan, 4:3819b; Lu Xun, Lu Xun quanji, 133. 51. Cheng, Histoire de la pensée chinoise, 237–254. 52. Chuxueji, 643; Wang Renxiang, Taiping yulan, 517, cited in Qimin yaoshu, chap. 82, 636. 53. This point is emphasized in Bodde, Festivals in Classical China, 65, concerning foods offered as a seasonal sacrifice for the New Year’s celebrations during the Han dynasty. 54. Taiping yulan, 4:3822a; Wang Renxiang, Taiping yulan, 542. 55. “In the past, Huan Xuan (369–404) was a great admirer of paintings and books and always showed them to his guests. One of them, who was no lover of art and reading, had just finished eating a hanju and took the calligraphy and paintings in his hands and stained them badly. Xuan was filled with deep regret for a certain period of time. From that day forward, whenever he got out any calligraphy, he required that his guests wash their hands” (Lidai minghua ji, chap. 2, 46, cited in Drège, Les bibliothèques en Chine au temps des manuscrits, 163). The recipe appears in Qimin yaoshu, chap. 82, 634. 56. As is pointed out, for instance, in the “Treatise on Sacrifices,” included in the Hanshu and the Shiji, cited in Bujard, “Le ‘Traité des sacrifices’ du Hanshu,” 3. 57. Lavoix, La contribution des laïcs au végétarisme. 58. Ebrey, Confucianism and Family Rituals in Imperial China, 37–40. 59. See the collation of several of them in Yuhan shanfang ji yishu. 60. Jiyi, Jifa, Sihi liezhuan zhu, and Jiji, cited in Taiping yulan, 4:3820a; Qiu Pangtong, Zhongguo miandian shi, 29. 61. Jidian, 3a. 62. (Za)jifa, 1b. 63. Jiji, in Taiping yulan, 4:3820a. 64. For fruits, (Za)jifa lists chestnuts, oranges, and apricots(2a), while Jidian lists sugarcane, cherries, loquats, and Chinese persimmons (2b, 3a). Sun, zhe, xian, and fu were the most common cured meats, along with cold cuts (la) of game, such as pheasant and hare ([Za]jifa, 2a). 65. Jing Chu suishi ji, 104–105. 66. Wen lisu, 3a; Jing Chu suishi ji, 104 (see also 27, for a reference to Wen lisu). 67. Bodde, Festivals in Classical China, 325 and 322. 68. The material in this section is taken from Sabban, “Quand la forme transcende l’objet.” 69. Pirazzoli-t’Serstevens, Mawangdui, 83–96; see also Franzini, “Les écrits médicaux de Mawangdui,” 108–109.

386 notes

70. See Sabban, “Quand la forme transcende l’objet,” 809–810; and Harper, Early Chinese Medical Literature, 224. 71. “Ci: steam dry [millet] powder to humidify it and [thus be able] to mix and knead (bing)” (Shiming, 204 ff.). 72. Sabban, “De la main à la pâte,” 119 ff. 73. Qimin yaoshu, chap. 64, 478–500. 74. Sabban, “Quand la forme transcende l’objet,” 814. 75. Gold never played an important role in coinage under the Han dynasty or in the history of coins in China in general, because of its rarity. 76. Bachelard, Earth and Reveries of Will. 77. See Ledderose and Schlombs, Jenseits der Grossen Mauer. 78. These were made not only from terra-cotta but also from wood, bronze, and stone. See Rawson, Mysteries of Ancient Asia, 22. 79. In the introduction to Ten Thousand Things, a recently published book on reproduction by module in Chinese arts, Ledderose makes a quick comparison between the kneading of dough and the kneading of clay. 80. See Sabban, “Suivre les temps du ciel.” 81. Sabban, “L’ordre alimentaire du Qimin yaoshu déchiffré dans son sommaire.” 82. Qimin yaoshu, chap. 82, 632–640. 83. See Tanaka, “Kodai chûgoku gazô no kappô to inshoku,” 250–251; Wang Renxiang, Min yi shi wei tian, 172. 84. Wang Renxiang, Min yi shi wei tian, 172. 85. The bunching onion, or Welsh onion—Allium fistulosum L.—has long, flat, narrow leaves, which do, in fact, resemble taglierini, a type of spaghetti with a flat cross-section. 86. This is the equivalent according to the editor of Qimin yaoshu. 87. See the photographs of a reconstruction of the process in Ishige, Bunka menrui gaku koto hajime, 26. 88. See “Routes of Wheat,” in chap. 3, above. 89. The etymology of butuo attracted the interest of scholars in later periods. See the examples cited in Zhang Menglun, Han Wei yinshi kao, 34 n. 1. 90. In this connection, see the conflicting theories in Li Bin, “Shuo botuo,” 14; and Wang Longxue, “Ye shuo botuo,” 15–16. 91. See Couscous, Boulgour et Cie. 92. For the Han dynasty, cf. Qu Duizhi, Handai fengsu zhidu shi, 310. 93. Qimin yaoshu, chap. 52, 372. 94. Chen Weiming, Tang Song yinshi wenhua chutan, 3–4. 95. See Gernet, Les aspects économiques du bouddhisme en Chine, 138–146. 96. Tanaka, “Kodai chûgoku gazô no kappô to inshoku,” 249. 97. Cited in Qiu Pangtong, Zhongguo miandian shi, 39.

notes 387

98. See the section “bingbu” in Shanfujing shoulu. See also Tao Zhengang et al., Zhongguo pengren wenxian tiyao, 24. 99. Ennin, Nittô-guhô-junrei-kôki, 838–846, book 113, April 6, 839, 194; August 15, 839, 20; April 21, 840, 227. See also Ennin, Diary, 295, 296. 100. See Trombert, “La fête du 8e jour du 2e mois à Dunhuang.” 101. Trombert, Le crédit à Dunhuang, 1. 102. Tan Qiguang, “Tulufan chutu de Tangdai nang.” 103. Hong Guangzhu, Zhongguo shipin keji shigao, 40, mentions its appearance in the Beihulu. 104. Wei Quyuan, Shang Shaoweishi, cited in the section “Danlong jin rusu,” in Qingyilu, 7. 105. Yun Feng, “Miantiao guqu,” 9. 106. The material in this and the following sections is taken from the following articles: Sabban-Serventi, “Ravioli cristallins et tagliatelle rouges”; Sabban, “Court Cuisine in Fourteenth-Century Imperial China”; Sabban, “La diète parfaite d’un lettré retiré.” For all bibliographic information, please refer to these three articles. 107. Zhu Ruixi, Songdai shehui yanjiu, 3. 108. Shiwu jiyuan, 333. 109. This could also be translated as “pasta slipping into water.” 110. See Sabban, “La diète parfaite d’un lettré retiré.” 111. Shilin guangji, 269–270. For more information on this text, see Hu Daojing, “Yuan zhixun kanben ‘Shilin guangji’ jieti.” 112. Ibid., 270. 113. Lu You, Jiannan shigao jiaozhu, 2357–2358. 114. This is chungen hundun, or “hundun stuffed with Chinese cedar root [Toona sinensis].” 115. A Ying, “Mantan hundun.” 116. Girardot, Myth and Meaning in Early Taoïsm, 29–38. 117. Wulin jiushi, 45–46. 118. Qian Zhongshu, Guanzhuibian, 1169–1170. 119. In the West, one simply uses the same flour that is used to make the dough. 120. Mengqi bitan, chap. 3, 33. 121. Kui Ming, “Tan ‘mianjin,’ ” 22. 122. See, for example, recipes in Miao Guobin, Zhongguo mianjin cai. 123. Dioscorea opposita Thunb. This pasta is similar to the testaroli of the Lunigiana region, along the border between Tuscany and Liguria. 124. This encyclopedia is less ancient than is commonly thought, dating not to the Yuan dynasty but from the beginning of the Ming dynasty. According to the author of a recent article, it was compiled by Xiong Zongli (1409–1482); see Fang Yanshou, “Mingdai keshujia Xiong Zongli shukao.”

388 notes

125. See Wang and Anderson, “Ni Tsan and His Cloud Forest Hall Collection”; and Sabban, “Some Remarks about the Translation of Yunlintang yinshi zhidu ji.” 126. This is suggested by the new spelling of the names, in which one of the graphic elements is replaced by a semantic key indicating their place in the family of foodstuffs. 127. See Sabban, “Court Cuisine in Fourteenth-Century Imperial China”; and Buell and Anderson, A Soup for the Qan. 128. Perry, appendix 2, 625–626. 129. In Chinese, “fragrant herb,” identified in this way by botanical dictionaries. Could this be a type of mint? 130. Arberry, “A Bagdad Cookery Book.” 131. “Qiaomai,” in chapter “Baigu pu jizhier,” Nongshu, 98 and 516. 132. See photograph in Ishige, Bunka menrui gaku koto hajime, 55. 133. Song Xu, Songshi yangshengbu, 37–38. 134. Qiu Pangtong, Zhongguo miandian shi, 116. 135. Ibid., 115. See Qu Hua, Zhongguo liangshi jiagong de lishi, 748–751. 136. Shi Yaozeng, “Minsu yanjiu.” 137. Song Xu, Songshi yangsheng bu, 39, and Qiu Pangtong, Zhongguo miandian shi, 96–97. 138. Wang Changxin et al., Shanxi mianshi. 139. Zheng Jianye, “Zhongguo miantiao,” 298. 140. This discussion of instant noodles is based on material taken from Jia Huixuan, Zhong Ri yinshi wenhua bijiao yanjiu, 11–121. 141. Zheng Jianye, “Zhongguo miantiao,” 300–301. 142. Ishige, Bunka menrui gaku koto hajime, 283; and idem, Bunka menrui gaku mendan, 183 ff. 143. Jia Huixuan, Zhong Ri yinshi wenhua bijiao yanjiu, 116–117. 144. Chen Ju et al., “Jiasu yingli xiaomai,” 13 ff.

10. the words of pasta 1. Boccaccio, The Decameron, trans. John Payne (New York: Liveright, 1925), day 8, story 3. 2. Franco Sacchetti, Il Trecentonovelle [late fourteenth century], story 124. 3. Lando, Commentario delle più notabili e mostruose cose d’Italia e altri luoghi, 9. 4. Labat, Voyage, 2:43–44. 5. Ibid., 2:39–40. 6. Casanova, Histoire de ma vie, 1:137. 7. Ibid., 1:917–918.

notes 389

8. Goethe, Italian Journey, 318–322. 9. Dalbono, “La taverna,” 671. 10. Penny Magazine of Useful Knowledge (1830), cited in Agnesi, Alcune notizie, 130. 11. Oddino Morgari, L’Avanti, April 27, 1904. 12. Gaston Bachelard, Earth and Reveries of Will, translation by Kenneth Haltman, Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture, The Bachelard Translation Series, forthcoming 2002.

390 notes

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INDEX

Abenante, Angelo, 204 adulteration of food, 217–18 Africa, 200; northern, 35–36, 49, 67, 181, 194, 201, 214, 308; wheat from, 67, 181, 194, 201, 214 Agnesi, Vincenzo, 197, 207 Agnesi company, 158, 184, 202, 206–7 Agnoletti, Vincenzo, 266 agriculture, 2; Chinese, 4, 5, 285, 307, 329, 331, 344; Italian, 205; U.S., 211 Albania, 173 Albertiny company, 183 Alce Nero cooperative, 221 alcoholic beverages, Chinese, 294, 301, 302, 304. See also wine Aldobrandino, Pietro Cardinal, 237 Alfonso Garofalo company, 159 Algeria, 172, 181, 201, 202 De alimentorum facultatibus (Galen), 15

Alloatti, Giuseppe, 152 Almanach des gourmands (Reynière), 122, 179, 248, 266 Almanach du commestible (1778), 179 Alphonse IV (Aragon), 49 Alpina company, 183 Alpina-Richard company, 203 Alsace: egg pasta of, 98, 121–22, 170, 184–88; and France and Germany, 174, 184, 186, 188; pasta industry in, 173, 184–88, 202–3; production in, 110, 119, 170, 181; regional identity of, 187–88, 203 Amalfi coast, 43, 44, 83, 93, 354 Amato company, 160 American Beauty Macaroni Company, 193 Andalusia, 49. See also ArabAndalusian region Angola, 200 Anjou, 44, 45

Annals Written on Bamboo (Shu Xi), 271 the Annona (Naples), 68–69, 75 Anonimo meridionale, 235 L’Antico Pastificio Morelli, 219 aobang (Chinese: brake), 331 Apicius, 3, 4, 16 Apulia, 42, 46, 160, 171; guilds in, 73; immigrants from, 211; industrialization in, 129; milling industry in, 132; in pasta trade, 120–21; production in, 96, 97, 116, 220, 221; types of pasta from, 165, 236, 244; wheat from, 67, 68, 69, 178, 213, 225 Arab-Andalusian region, 28–29, 30, 32, 34, 35, 231, 307 Arabic: Chinese terms for pasta from, 328; culinary texts in, 33, 35; terms for pasta in, 14–15, 17–19, 24–33, 35, 47, 53, 58, 231, 328 Arabs, 53, 57, 171, 230, 231; bedouin, 11; and Chinese, 275; and Jews, 32; medical tradition of, 18; and origins of pasta, 9, 11, 35, 42; and vermicelli, 28–29, 30, 31, 32 Aragon, 46, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52 Aretino, Pietro, 10, 347 L’art du vermicelier (Malouin), 67 l’arte bianca. See “white industry” Arte dei Cuochi e Lasagnari (Guild of Cooks and Lasagna Makers), 53–54 artisanal production, 94, 98–102, 109, 114, 118, 129, 158; in Alsace, 185, 186, 187; in China, 275–76, 333; in France, 177; of fresh pasta, 224; and industrialization, 132, 133–36; modern, 204, 216–22; semi-, 198–99; stages of, 218; in U.S., 189 Artusi, Pellegrino, 228, 240–41, 242,

264, 268, 270; on cooking times, 257; and tomato sauce, 266–67 Asia, ix, x, 28–29, 307. See also particular countries Astenga company, 158 Asti, 250, 262, 263 Athenaeus of Naucratis, 16 Atlantic Macaroni Company, 192 Australia, 170, 209 Austria, 200, 225 Auvergne, 179–80, 181, 185 Avella, Pastificio Giuseppe, 129 Avicenna (Ibn Sina), 18, 29 Avignon, 47, 177 Avossa, Salvatore di, 89 Aymard, Maurice, 43 Azienda Agricola Latini, 220 Bachelard, Gaston, 303, 358–60 bakers, 76, 97, 98, 358; in Alsatian pasta industry, 185, 187; and drying process, 109–10; in French pasta industry, 178; and pasta makers, 70–71, 73, 88 Baldus (Folengo), 268 Bamboo Annals (Shu Xi), 271 Ban Gu, 285 baozi (Chinese term for dumplings), 327, 330 Bar Ali, Jesu, 17, 19, 29 Bar Nappaha, Rabbi Yohanan, 21 Barcelona, 30, 49, 50 Bari, 46, 60, 96–97, 105, 160; guilds in, 73; industrialization in, 129, 130 Barilla, Giovanni, 207 Barilla, Guido, 208 Barilla, Luca, 208 Barilla, Paolo, 208 Barilla, Pietro, 207, 208, 210 Barilla, Riccardo, 207 Barilla company, 98, 158, 206, 207, 222

414 index

barley, 5, 6, 274, 277, 329 Barnabas of Reggio, 18, 47, 54, 236 basil, 263–64 Basile, Giambattista, 87 Bastone, Ponzio, 45, 49 Bayard company, 143 Beccari, Jacopo Bartolomeo, 66–67, 167, 306 Belgium, 174, 200, 225, 226 Bertrand company, 181–82, 191 Betocchi, Alessandro, 115, 118–19, 181 Bible, 16, 20, 21 bing (Chinese: kneaded wheat dough products), 7; aesthetics of, 287–89, 321; and Chinese civilization, 279–86; and class, 275, 277–78, 281–83, 285–86, 292; consumption of, 287, 288, 292–94, 311–15; cooking methods for, 273, 278–79, 287–88, 305–8; as culinary category, 274, 276–79, 280; defined, 274–75, 279, 300; formats of, 272, 278–79, 296, 297–308; and harmony, 278, 288, 291, 294; history of, 275–76; ingredients for, 290, 298; as literary theme, 286–94, 319; and morality, 280–83; in myth, 289–92; vs. other pasta products, 317–18; recipes for, 273, 275, 297, 299, 303, 304–11, 313, 321; replacement of term, 314; and seasons, 292–94, 322; slipperiness of, 305–6; symbolism of, 282–83, 302; as term, 276–79, 298–302; vendors of, 280, 281, 284–86 “Bingshuo” (Dissertation on the bing; Wu Jun), 289, 292 Biran, Maine de, 359 Boccaccio, Giovanni, 27, 259, 345–46

Bodde, Derk, 297 Bolivia, 176 Bologna, 54, 56, 61, 98, 165, 170 Boström, Ingemar, 235 Bottaro Canal, 94 botuo (butuo; type of bing), 305, 307, 313–14, 326, 330; vs. mian, 317–18, 320 Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme (Molière), 14 Bové, José, 217 Braibanti, Ennio, 158–59 Braibanti, Giuseppe, 159 Braibanti, Mario, 159 Braibanti company, 83, 145, 150, 158–59, 197 brake (for kneading dough), 60–62, 64, 77–83, 89, 104, 116; accounts of, 117, 356–57; in artisanal production, 99; in China, 331, 332; colossal, 145, 147; for crushing hemp, 61; depictions of, 79, 80, 82; domestic use of, 78; for fresh pasta, 223; and industrialization, 127, 128; innovations in, 136–37; manual, 62, 80, 82, 137, 143; in manufactories, 91, 92; mechanical, 78, 79, 86, 143; and press, 86; and productivity, 118 Branca, Giovanni, 78, 81, 142 Brazil, 176 bread, xi, xii; flour for, 69, 124; vs. gruel, 7, 12–13, 22, 23; in JudeoChristian tradition, 14, 19–22, 61; leavened vs. unleavened, 19, 22; as main staple, 77; mechanized kneading of, 60–61, 78; in Middle Ages, 60–61; vs. pasta, 17, 211; and pasta makers, 88; prehistoric, 2, 9; regulation of, 75, 76, 90; and riots, 90; unleavened, 13, 14, 16, 18, 20, 61; and wheat, 1, 3, 4, 67. See also flatbread

index 415

Bresc, Henri, 43 Brescia, 143–45, 219 Brindisi, 96, 105, 121, 160 bronze man (kneading automaton), 139, 141–42 Brooklyn (New York), 182, 191 broth, pasta in, 37, 110–11, 230–31, 244, 255–56, 330, 335; Chinese, 272, 278, 286, 287, 293, 296, 315, 319, 322, 334 Bruhn, John G., 211 Bruni, Luigino, 243 Bruslons, Savary des, 177 Brusson, Jean, 180 Brusson Jeune company, 180 BSN-Danone, 202, 207 Bucharest, 173 Buchinger, Bernardin, 185 buckwheat, 331, 340 Buddhism, 295, 314, 325 Bühler company, 143, 200 Buitoni, Bruno, 206 Buitoni, Giovanni, 206 Buitoni company, 97, 158, 206, 207, 210 C. and T. T. Pattison company, 129, 143, 144, 145, 148 Cagliari, 51, 53, 73, 244, 257; and pasta trade, 30, 49, 50, 120; terms from, 10, 39, 46, 47, 52; wheat from, 178 Calvini, Nilo, 45 Campania, 162, 204 Canada, 175; wheat from, 194, 205, 220 Canale del Conte, 94 Canon (Avicenna), 18 Cao Cao, 282 Cao Pi (King Wen; China), 293 Capatti, Alberto, 168 Capitolari de l’Arte dei Fidelari, 66 Capitula del ben vivere, 76

Caponi, Roberto, 219 Capra, Alessandro, 78, 80, 81 Carême, Antonin, 122, 247 Carpa, Alessandro, 142 Casanova, Giacomo, 250, 259, 350–53 Casteau, Lancelot de, 242 Castilian language, 30 Catalonia, 30, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50 Cauvet, Raymond, 182 Cavaglieri, Benedetto, 219–20 Cavalcanti, Ippolito, 257, 266 Celsus, 16 central Asia, x, 307 cereals: in China, 277, 294, 304, 308; non-wheat, 339–41; starches from, 276, 303, 308–11, 329; wine made from, 300. See also particular types Cervio, Vincenzo, 269 Ceschina and Busi company, 143, 144, 145 Chabrol (Napoleonic official), 106, 116 Chapusot, Francesco, 121, 236, 237, 246, 247, 256, 270 cheese, xiii, 248, 252, 258–60, 353, 354–55 cheese makers, 72 Chen Rongtai, 343 Chen Yuanjing, 319, 323 Cheng Ji, 289–92 Chile, 175, 176, 194 China, ix, x, 271–344; agriculture in, 4, 5, 285, 307, 329, 331, 344; alcoholic beverages in, 294, 301, 302, 304; and ancient Rome, 4; Cantonese cuisine in, 320; cooking methods in, 330–34; culture of, 280, 291, 292, 344; culture of pasta in, 227, 332; dry pasta in, 276, 306, 307, 318, 327, 334; foreign influence on, 275, 307, 328,

416 index

333; fresh pasta in, 276, 307, 315, 318, 331–36; gluten in, 275, 276, 303, 306, 324–25; hand processing in, xi, 336–39, 344; industrialization in, 275–76, 333; instant noodles in, 341, 343, 344; vs. Italy, 230; literature of, 286–94, 298, 313, 314, 315, 319, 320, 322–24, 332; medicine in, 297, 298–99, 318–19; non-wheat pasta in, 303, 308–11, 324, 329, 333, 340, 341; northern vs. southern, 275, 278–80, 291–92, 297, 310, 311, 315–25, 328, 331–33, 335, 338–40; origins of pasta in, 9–10, 11, 211; pasta formats in, 272, 278–79, 296, 297–308, 318–20, 326, 339; poetry of dough in, 358; production techniques in, 229, 275–76, 286, 302–3, 305–8, 323–24, 330–33, 336–39; regionalism in, 275, 325, 334, 339; starch vermicelli in, 244; stuffed pasta in, 290, 308, 315, 318, 327, 329, 330, 333, 335–36; technology in, 322–24; wheat in, xi, 4–7, 271, 274, 276, 311, 333, 334, 344. See also bing; mian Chioggia, 250, 350 Chiron, Antoine, 183 Chiron Moulins de Savoie company, 183, 202, 203 chitarra (“guitar”; shaping tool), 84 Christianity, 14, 19–22, 23. See also Judeo-Christian tradition Chrysippus of Tyana, 16 Chu, Kingdom of, 301 cialdonai (wafer makers), 54 cibi di pasta (paste dishes), 38 cinnamon, xiii, 259, 260, 261, 262, 347 class, ix, xi, xiii, 64, 76, 77, 90; and Chinese pasta, 275, 277–78,

281–83, 285–86, 287, 292, 334; and cooking times, 256; and dry pasta, 51–53, 232–33, 243–44; and fresh pasta, 230; and gruels vs. breads, 13; and Neapolitan macaroni, 251–53; and rice, 334; and ritual offerings, 295; and stuffed pasta, 230; and sugar, 260; and tomatoes, 229, 265 Clavis sanationis (Simon of Genoa), 18 Clermont-Ferrand (Auvergne), 179–80 climate, 3, 6, 157, 162 Cockaigne, land of, 27, 259, 345–46 Codice Diplomatico Barese, 60 cold pasta, 313, 319, 334, 341 commercialization, 43, 243–44, 249–50, 255, 257 Confucianism, 276, 277, 278, 295 Consiglio, Alberto, 267 consumers, 214, 216, 217, 222 consumption: of Chinese pasta, 287, 288, 292–94, 311–15, 317, 325, 326; everyday, 249–51; expansion of, 98, 119, 162–70, 204, 205; in France, 177, 179, 201; in Genoa, 123; and industrialization, 162–68, 169; international, 169–70; by Italian immigrants, 210, 211; in Italy, 76, 77, 170, 204, 205, 215, 227, 229; in Latin America, 176; mass, 184; and Mediterranean diet, 206, 212; in Naples, 123–24, 352–53; and production, 92, 205–6; seasonal, 292–94, 322, 327, 334; in U.S., 169, 195 cooking methods: al dente, xiii, 114, 124, 178, 228–29, 256–57; baking, 254, 255, 256; Chinese, 273, 278–79, 287–88, 305, 318, 326, 327, 330–34, 336–39; and

index 417

cooking methods (continued) classification of pasta, 38; dry vs. moist, 7, 13, 16, 21, 26, 38; early accounts of, 348; everyday, 262; of instant noodles, 343–44; and Jewish law, 21; for lagana, 16, 17; for non-wheat pasta, 340–41; and production, 336; Renaissance, 255; simple, 252–53; of stuffed pasta, 26; and timing, xiii, 253–57. See also broth, pasta in cornstarch, 341 corporations, 192, 202, 204; multinational, 162, 198 Corrado, Vincenzo, 245, 246, 265 couscous, 308 Covarrubias, Sebastian, 47, 84 Cremona, 55, 241 Crisci, Giovan Battista, 73, 120, 244, 245 Cronica (Salimbene of Parma), 240 croseti, 26, 259 Cuba, 176 Cucina teorico-pratica (Cavalcanti), 257 Cui Shi, 292 Cui Xigui, 342 culture, xiii; Chinese, 227, 280, 291, 292, 332, 344; and cuisine of sacrifice, 295; Greco-Roman, 14–19, 163; Italian, 215, 345–60; Jewish, 35; Neapolitan, 123–24, 229; of pasta, 35, 64, 92, 123–24, 227–29, 332; U.S. food, 210 Il cuoco galante (Corrado), 245, 265 Cuoco milanese, 266 Cuoco piemontese, 256, 270 Cyprus, 67, 200 D. Carella company, 159 Dalbono, Carlo Tito, 353–56 d’Annunzio, Gabriele, 358–59 Dati, Antonio, 161

Dati, Donn’Anna, 161 Dati, Francesco, 162 Datini company (Valencia), 52 De Benedetti, Carlo, 206 De Cecco, Filippo, 152, 158 De Cecco company, 207, 222 De Cristoforo, Antonietta, 225, 226 Deipnosophists (Athenaeus of Naucratis), 15 Deka company, 187 Del Turco, Giovanni, 237, 238, 242, 255, 256, 262 Delverde company, 222 Dessanges, André, 152 Il diario della massaia (Housewife’s diary), 262, 264 diastatic pasta, 167 Dictionnaire raisonné de commerce (Bruslons), 177 die plates, 101, 148, 198, 218, 219, 222; double, 137, 139, 140 dietetic pasta, 163, 214. See also medicine: pasta as Dolfi, Pastificio, 158 Dong Xun, 296 Dong Zhongshu, 5 dough, xi; for bing, 276, 289, 293, 298, 302–5; boiled, 20, 21, 23, 25, 38; cereal, 300; for Chinese stuffed pasta, 327; Chinese terms for, 277; and clay, xi, 302–3; early production of, 43–44; effects of water temperature on, 99, 101; fermented, 74, 178, 235, 293, 310; for fresh pasta, 223; as inspiration, 358–60; kneaded, 2, 21, 22, 23, 38; leavened, 178, 293, 300; leavened vs. unleavened, 7, 22, 279; machines for turning, 148; melt-in-your-mouth, 253–56; non-wheat, 303, 308–11, 324, 329, 333, 340, 341; omission of, 239–41; rolled, 148, 149, 186,

418 index

323, 330, 332; soaking of, 275, 305–6, 318, 324, 330, 331, 339; starch, 329; stretched, 337–39. See also brake; kneading process; mixing process dry pasta, xii, 11; al dente, 228; and Arabs, 230; as architecture for the mouth, 228, 243–57; in China, 276, 306, 307, 318, 327, 334; and class, 51–53, 232–33, 243–44; commercial, 243–44; consumption of, 163; cooking time for, 253, 255, 256, 257; cuisine of, 229; and durum wheat, 8, 64, 229; early forms of, 17; in France, 47–48, 177, 178; vs. fresh, 14–15, 32–34, 35, 113, 223, 229; Genoese, 123, 223; in Italy, 37, 215, 225, 229, 243, 244; makers of, 45, 47, 91; market for, 50–53; mass production of, 163; in Middle Ages, 50–53, 234–35; vs. moist, 330; Neapolitan, xiii, 124–25, 223, 228, 233, 244; price controls on, 43; production of, 41–44, 51, 65, 87, 97, 157, 222; recipes for, 33, 50, 233, 234, 243; Romanian, 173; terms for, 50–53, 232; trade in, 27, 32–34, 35, 39, 48, 50–53, 54 drying process, 99, 102, 108–15; in Alsatian pasta industry, 185; artificial, 109, 128, 130, 150–57, 186; in artisanal production, 218, 219, 220, 221, 222; classic Neapolitan natural, 109, 111, 152, 154, 156, 159; costs of, 151, 154, 156; driers in, 151–52, 153, 154, 180; hightemperature, 182; humidity in, 113–14, 150, 156–57; and hygiene, 114–15, 152, 156; and industrialization, 128, 150–57; low-temperature, 221, 222;

mechanization of, 118, 150–57; in medieval recipes, 233; in northern Europe, 151, 154, 156, 157; in ovens, 109–10; phases of, 111–13, 154, 156–57; recent improvements in, 182; thermomechanical, 152, 156, 157; Tommasini, 154, 155; in U.S. pasta industry, 191 Du Fu, 313, 319, 326 Dumas, Alexandre, père, 247 dumplings. See stuffed pasta Dunhuang, 314, 319 durum wheat (Triticum turgidum, L. durum ): access to, 56; from Algeria, 181; in Alsatian pasta industry, 186, 187; Arnautka variety of, 194; in artisanal production, 198, 216, 218, 219, 220, 222; in China, 276, 333, 344; and decline of pasta industry, 157; and dry pasta, 8, 64, 229; vs. flour, 3, 229; in French pasta industry, 178, 180, 181; and fresh pasta, 55–56; gluten in, 67; mills for, 69; from north Africa, 67, 181, 194, 201, 214; organic, 221; in production process, 356; and quality of pasta, 129; regulations on, 213, 214; research on, 222; rising prices of, 205; Romanian, 173; from Russia, 68, 164, 172, 173, 175, 181, 182, 191, 194, 202, 357; semolina from, x, xiii, 3, 4, 11, 15, 34, 37, 41, 55–56, 64–70, 83, 98, 120, 237; sources of, 46; in Spain, 172; Taganrog variety of, 68, 172, 180, 194, 202; terms for, 169; trade in, 46, 65, 164, 175, 181, 213; from Turkey, 200; in U.S., 191–94, 211; vintage of, 220 dyes, 165, 166, 178; saffron in, 235–36, 249, 259

index 419

E. Breda company, 145 Earth and Reveries of Will (Bachelard), 358–60 Ecuador, 175 edge runner, 116, 117, 128, 137, 143, 144 egg pasta, x, 56, 159, 165, 219; Alsatian, 98, 122, 170, 184–88; in China, 333; in France, 183; fresh, 223–24; and industrialization, 163, 166; regulations on, 213; in U.S., 188, 193 eggs, 354; in medieval recipes, 233, 234, 235, 237, 238 Egypt, 200 einkorn wheat (Triticum monococcum), 2 El Salvador, 176 electricity. See power: electric Emilia (Reggio), 54, 56, 157, 204, 223 emmer wheat (Triticum turgidum, L. dicoccum), 2, 3, 4 encyclopedias, Chinese, 280, 319, 326–27, 328, 329, 330 Encyclopédie (Diderot and D’Alembert), 173 England, 23, 24, 36, 63, 65, 72, 226 English language, 25, 173 the Enlightenment, 352 Ennin (monk), 314, 315 equipment, 103, 104; domestic, 189–91; early, 56–62; in French pasta industry, 177–78; innovations in, 136–50; macaroni iron, 77, 84, 85; mechanization of, 115, 135–36; post-war modernization of, 199–200; and productivity, 116–18; in Spadaccini’s model factory, 141. See also brake; press, extrusion Eritrea, 200 Estienne, Charles, 66

Ethiopia, 200 Etymologiae (Isidore of Seville), 17 Eucharist, 19, 22 Europe, 9, 231, 242–43; packaging in, 210; pasta industry in, 171, 199–200; regulation of pasta in, 212, 214–16; and U.S. pasta industry, 208. See also particular countries Europe, northern: drying process in, 151, 154, 156, 157; egg pasta in, 185; industrialization in, 127–28, 157; mills in, 132, 141 European Community, 226; regulation of pasta in, 214–16 extrusion process, 145, 150. See also press, extrusion F. Moncaco company, 159 F. Tamma company, 160 Fabbrocino, Gaetano, 161 Fabianelli, Pastificio, 97 factories, 130, 192; model, 139, 141–42. See also manufactories Fair of Milan (1937), 150, 197 Fan Shengzhi, 6 fangbian mian (Chinese: “convenience noodles”; instant pasta), 341 Fangyan (Dialects), 278 far (emmer wheat), 4 farina (flour), 3 Fei Hui, 283–84 fenbing (Chinese: millet starch bing), 308–9 Fenizio, Nicola, 129, 133, 136 Ferrand company (Ferrand and Renaud), 182 ferro da maccheroni (macaroni iron), 77, 84, 85 fidaws (Arabic term for pasta), 29, 30, 32, 33, 35, 47, 231

420 index

fidelari (dry pasta makers), 45, 47, 91 fideus (dry pasta), 47, 50, 51, 52, 53 Finland, 173, 200 Five Classics, 276 flatbread, 3, 11, 13, 20, 21; Chinese, 275, 279–83, 286, 295, 301, 302, 304, 314 flavor, 237, 249, 298, 354 Florence, 53–54, 55, 56, 158, 236, 354 flour, x, 33, 98; in Alsatian pasta, 187; blended, 89, 164; bread, 69, 124; in China, 274, 275, 276, 311, 317, 333; Chinese terms for, 277; in French pasta industry, 178; in fresh pasta, 41, 43, 55–56, 223, 224, 229; gluten in, 67, 324; and industrialization, 163–64; and kneaded dough, 22; in medieval recipes, 233; millet, 340, 341; non-wheat, 303, 308–11, 324, 329, 333, 339–41; and origins of pasta, 13; and pasta wrapping, 26; production of, 7, 69, 83, 356; and quality differences, 75; regulations on, 76, 213, 216; vs. semolina, 34, 64–70, 229; sifting of, 135; soft, xi, 55–56, 64–70, 83, 356; and soft pasta, 254; suppliers of, 94; trade in, 49. See also milling industry; semolina; wheat Foggia, 96, 160, 208, 211 Folengo, Teofilo, 268 Food and Drug Act (U.S.; 1906), 212 formentine (tagliatelle-like pasta), 27, 235–38 France: and Alsace, 174, 184, 186, 188; artisanal production in, 177; bakers in, 178; consumption in, 177, 179, 201; culinary system of, 121, 123, 241, 243, 255; dry

pasta in, 47–48, 177, 178; drying process in, 109, 110, 111, 151, 157; egg pasta in, 183, 185; fresh pasta in, 178, 225, 226; Italian immigrants in, 184; Italian pasta in, 121–23, 249; Italian terms for pasta in, 63; and Italy, 119, 132, 137, 177, 179, 181, 202, 203; menus in, 269–70; organic products in, 221; and origins of pasta, 30–31; packaging in, 209; pasta in, 35, 166, 180, 181, 182; pasta industry in, 98, 132, 170–72, 176–84, 198, 201–3; and pasta trade, 132, 184; and regulation of pasta, 213, 214–16; saffron in, 236; sauces in, 248, 264, 266; and Sicily, 48; timbale in, 245, 246, 247; wheat in, 178, 180, 181, 194 Francesca e Nunziata (Natale), 93, 106, 157, 162 Francesco I (king), 139 Francesconi, Jeanne Carola, 265 Fratelli Divella company, 160 French language, 24–25, 169, 173, 177, 185 fresh pasta, xi, xii, 7, 8; in Alsace, 185; in China, 276, 307, 315, 318, 331–36; and class, 230; cooking time for, 254, 255, 256; vs. dry, 14–15, 32–34, 35, 113, 223, 229; and durum wheat, 55–56; flour in, 41, 43, 55–56, 223, 224, 229; in France, 178, 225, 226; in Genoa, 123; in Germany, 173, 225; in Italy, 223, 225; market for, 53–56, 199; in Middle Ages, 223, 231, 235; preservation of, 222, 223, 224–25; price controls on, 43; production of, 41–43, 45, 222–26; recipes for, 233–38; in Russia, 172–73; status of, 51; stuffed, 238; terms for, 14, 15, 16

index 421

fritters, 25, 295 Friuli, 151, 153, 157 Fu Xuan, 289 Futurist movement, xiv G. Fabbrocino company, 159 Galen, 15, 17 Gallo, Salvatore, 161 Galoppini, Laura, 30, 50 Gao Cheng, 317 Gaozu, Emperor, 280 Garofalo, Pastificio Lucio, 159 Garzoni, Tommaso, 38, 73 geindre (French: “baker’s boy”; whiner), 358 gender, division of labor by, 92–93, 105–8 Générale Alsacienne de Pâtes Alimentaires (Gopal company), 187 genetically altered foods, 217 Genoa, xiii, 15, 30; dominance of, 119–25; drying process in, 110; dyes used in, 165; guilds in, 66, 70, 72; and Italian pasta, 169; manufactories in, 92, 116; pasta makers in, 54; pasta of, 90, 97, 123, 165, 223, 231, 249; production in, 44–45, 60, 96; recipes from, 45, 50, 233, 234; sauces in, 262, 264; semolina in, 65; and Spain, 171; and trade, 49, 50, 70, 123, 177 Gerard of Cremona, 18 German language, 173 Germany, x; and Alsace, 174, 184, 186, 188; egg pasta in, 185; fresh pasta in, 173, 225; immigrants from, 211; nutritional revolution in, 167; packaging in, 208, 209; at Paris expositions, 174; pasta industry in, 171, 173–74, 198, 200; production in, 170; regula-

tions on pasta in, 213–14; types of pasta from, 35, 193 “Die Geschichte unserer Pflanzennahrung von den Urzeiten bis zur Gegenwart” (History of vegetal foodstuffs from prehistory to the present day; Maurizio), 12 giostra (“merry-go-round”; mechanical drier), 151–52, 153, 154 Giovanni Ongaro company, 219 Giove, Filippo, 129, 130 Girolimoni, Gino, 221 Giron, Don Pedro, 71 Giustiniani, Lorenzo, 95 globalization, 188, 217, 220. See also trade: international gluten, xi, 1, 66–67; as additive, 167; in China, 275, 276, 303, 306, 324–25; in France, 180; and long cooking times, 254; as meat substitute, 325, 326; and soaking of dough, 306 gluten pasta, 188, 209; microscopic, 167; regulations on, 213 gluttony, 27, 259, 267, 345–47, 352 gnocchi, 27, 232, 236 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 251–52, 352–53 Gopal company (Générale Alsacienne de Pâtes Alimentaires), 187 Gorani, Giuseppe, 252, 260, 268 government: Italian, 164, 171, 204–5, 206, 213; of Naples, 68–69, 75; U.S., 211. See also regulation Gragnano, 44, 51, 69, 354; drying process in, 108, 113, 114; industrialization in, 129, 130, 133, 136; manufactories in, 92; mechanization in, 118; milling industry in,

422 index

131, 132; new factories in, 139; pasta industry in, 157, 159, 161, 162; production in, 93–94, 95, 221 Grasse, 47, 177 Grassi, Giovannino de’, 57 Greco-Roman culture, 14–19, 163 Greece, ancient, x, xii, 3, 9, 18; and origins of pasta, 11–12, 13. See also Rome, ancient Greece, modern, 174, 200; and regulation of pasta, 214–16 Greek language, 14–15, 17, 18, 19, 23, 230 Grenada, kingdom of, 48 Grenoble, 179, 183 gruel, xii, 2, 6, 16, 37, 309; vs. bread, 7, 12–13, 22, 23; in China, 274, 307; millet, 296; pasta in, 34, 36, 231–32, 254 Guerrisi, Girolamo, 193 Guglielmini company, 145 guilds, 70–77, 89; of bakers, 44, 64, 88; and expansion of production, 94, 96; and extrusion press, 86; in Genoa, 45, 47, 66, 70, 72; of lasagnari, 53–54; in Naples, 70, 71; and regulation of pasta, 77; in Rome, 55, 70, 73–74, 120; and Spain, 171; and wheat, 66, 70 Guppy, Thomas R., 142 Guppy company, 142–43 Haiti, 176 hallah, 20–21, 31, 32 Han dynasty (China), 274, 275, 279–82, 285, 286, 297, 301; tombs of, 298–99, 303 hand processing, Chinese, xi, 336–39, 344. See also artisanal production Hangzhou (China), 315, 319, 321, 323

Hanshu (History of the Later Han), 285 hardtack, 44, 52, 109 He Yan, 293, 296, 310 He Zeng, 282 Heimburger company, 187, 203 hele (Chinese: pasta extruded into boiling water), 340–41 helou (Chinese: manual press), 331 Holland, 200 Hong Junju, 287–88, 289 Horace, 15, 24 Hu Shinian, 338 Hu Sihui, 328 huaiye lengtao (Chinese: cold green pasta), 313, 319 Huan Tan, 295 hubing (Chinese: barbarian bing), 278, 279, 281, 282, 283, 314 hundun dumplings (Chinese), 318, 320–22, 323, 327, 330, 334, 335; fossilized, 314–15, 316 Hungary, 171, 174 hygiene: and drying process, 114–15, 152, 156; and packaging, 209; in Spadaccini’s model factory, 139, 141 Ibn Butlan, 57 Ibn Sina (Avicenna), 18, 29 Ideal Macaroni Company, 192 Idrisi, 27, 30, 32, 33, 42, 49 immigrants, Italian, 170, 210, 227; diets of, 211–12; in France, 184; in Latin America, 175, 176; in U.S., 182, 188–89, 191, 192, 193, 195 impastatrici (mixing machines), 128 Industria del pastificio (Rovetta), 65 industrial expositions: Paris, 97–98, 116, 150, 152, 159–61, 171–75, 180–82, 187; Turin, 148

index 423

industrialization, 98, 127–68; in Alsace, 185–87; and artisanal production, 132, 133–36; in China, 275–76, 333; and consumption, 162–68, 169; of drying process, 128, 150–57; and engineering, 142, 143, 145; and expansion of pasta industry, 158–62; in Gragnano, 129, 130, 133, 136; and instant noodles, 341, 343–44; in Italy, 128, 130, 145, 198, 214, 257; in Naples, 129, 130, 133, 136, 145; in northern Europe, 127–28, 157; and nutrition, 167–68; opposition to, 133–36, 217; pace of, 128–33; and power, 130; in U.S., 193; and workers, 127, 128, 133–36 ingegno per li maccheroni (macaroni engine), 84 instant noodles, xii, 333, 341, 343–44 Ippolito, Pasquale, 192 Iran, x Iraq, 200 Isidore of Seville, 17, 19, 20, 23 Israel, 200 Italian Journey (Goethe), 352–53 Italian language: brandnames from, 196; terms for pasta from, 45, 46–48, 63, 169, 230, 232 Italy, x; adulteration of food in, 217; artisanal production in, 216, 217, 218–22; and China, 7; consumption in, 76, 77, 124, 163, 170, 204, 205–6, 208, 215, 227, 229; cooking methods in, 256–57; cuisine of, 35, 36–37, 227–70; culture of, 215, 345–60; decline of pasta industry in, 157–62; dominance of, 119, 228; dry pasta in, 37, 215, 225, 229, 243, 244; drying process in, 108–15; early produc-

tion in, 41–44; egg pasta in, 185; and EU regulation of pasta, 214–16; and France, 119, 121–23, 132, 177, 179, 181, 202, 203; fresh pasta in, 223, 225; government of, 164, 171, 204–5, 206, 213; immigrants from, 170, 175–76, 182, 184, 188–89, 191, 192, 193, 195, 210, 211–12, 227; industrialization in, 128, 130, 145, 198, 214, 257; and lagana, 17; literature of pasta in, 27, 259, 345–60; macaroni in cuisine of, 249–51; manufactories in, 91, 92, 96, 115–19; mechanization in, 78, 81, 84, 156; national identity of, 227, 228; non-wheat flours in, 340; northern, 240, 241, 244; north-south division of, 164–65, 225, 229; organic products in, 221; origins of pasta in, 10, 11; packaging in, 208–9; pasta tradition in, 199; and poultry, 268; production capacity of, 161, 203; production in, 34, 57, 64, 98; regulation of pasta in, 212–16; revival of pasta industry in, 203–8; saffron in, 236; shapes in, 28; southern, 132–33, 160, 229, 243, 265; stuffed pasta in, 225, 240, 241; timbale in, 247; and tomato sauce, 265; and trade, 160, 170–71, 179, 206; travelers in, 348–50; unification of, 97, 118, 257; vermicelli in, 31, 32, 34; wheat in, xii, 175, 181, 194 itrium (“noodles”), 20–21, 23 itriyya (Arabic term for pasta), 14, 15, 17–19, 27–30, 32, 33, 35, 53, 58 Japan, ix, 340; instant noodles in, 341, 343, 344

424 index

Jefferson, Thomas, 189–91 Jerome, Saint, 16, 20, 32 Jews, xii, 16, 23, 28, 171; and bread, 14, 20–21, 61; and pasta, 29, 30–32, 35, 47, 54 Jia Huixuan, 344 Jia Sixie, 304, 307, 308, 309, 310, 329 jiaozi (Chinese term for dumplings), 323, 327, 330; handmade, 336–37 Jiayuguan tomb (Gansu, China), 305 Jijiu pian, 277, 299 jinbing (Chinese: golden cakes), 275, 301–2 Jing Chu suishi ji (Record of the annual seasons in central China), 296 John II (Aragon), 50, 51 Jordan, 11 Jorio, Andrea de, 117, 142, 252 Judaism, 16, 20. See also Jews Judeo-Christian tradition: bread in, 14, 19–22, 61; and lagana, 16, 17, 23; pasta in, 12–13, 14, 19 Jujia biyong shilei quanji (Household encyclopedia), 326–27, 328, 329, 330 Kaifeng (China), 315, 317, 321 kaolao (Chinese: oat-flour pasta), 340, 342 Kenya, 200 kneading process, 83, 99–101; accounts of, 356–57; and bronze man, 139, 141–42; Chinese, 303, 305, 330, 331; cogito of, 359; depictions of, 59, 79, 80, 82, 100, 107, 305, 311, 312; mechanization of, 60–61, 78, 116–18, 132, 137, 143–47, 185; and multiple die-drawing, 148; poetry of,

358–60; in universal machine, 150. See also brake Knorr company, 168, 174 Korea, ix, 328, 341 Kosover, Mordecai, 30–31 Kub company, 167 Kubelka, Peter, 228, 252 Kuentz, Frédéric, 187 La Rocca, Nunziata, 162 La Rustichella company, 225–26 Labat, Jean-Baptiste, 86, 102, 120, 245, 259; on flavor of pasta, 249, 269, 348, 349; on French pasta industry, 176–77; on Italian manufactories, 91, 96; on women workers, 105, 106 lagana (laganum), 15–17, 19, 20, 23, 24, 25, 230 Lalande, Jérôme de, 68, 95, 101, 108, 120, 122, 251 lamian (shenmian; Chinese: stretched pasta), 337–39 Lancellotti, Vittorio, 237 Lando, Ortensio, 10, 347 laowan (Chinese dumplings), 5, 273, 287, 296, 308, 323 lasagnari (manufacturers of lasagne), 41, 45, 52–55, 223, 235 lasagne, 33, 37, 259, 304; and lagana, 17; made with press, 101–2; origins of term, 14, 15, 16; and pasta shapes, 23–25, 26, 28; recipes for, 235–38 lasagne a vento (“wind lasagne”; made with fermented dough), 74, 178 Latin, 15, 17, 19, 20, 23, 24, 230 Latin America, 175–76, 189 Latini, Antonio, 237, 242, 244, 245, 265, 268; on cooking times, 255, 257 Latini, Carlo and Carla, 220

index 425

Laurioux, Bruno, 14, 15 lavori di pasta (creations in paste), 38 Law on the Purity of Dried Industrial Pasta (Italy; 1967), 214 lawzinag (lozenge-shaped cake), 24, 25 lazzarone (layabout), 92, 124, 251, 252 Lebanon, 11, 200 Léger and Fils company, 183 legumes, 77, 102, 277; starches from, 4, 276, 329, 340 Liber de coquina, 24, 74–75, 233, 235, 258–59 Libera, Don Felice, 121, 250, 269 Libya, 200 Liebig company, 168 Liechtenstein, 171 Liège manuscript, 57, 58 Liguria, xiii, 30, 53, 56, 264; artisanal production in, 99; bakers in, 178; dominance of, 120; drying process in, 110, 111, 114; kneading process in, 137; manufactories in, 92, 115, 116; mechanization in, 87, 144, 185; milling industry in, 132; pasta from, 45, 122, 164, 165, 250; pasta industry in, 96, 158, 171, 177; and pasta trade, 49; semolina vs. flour in, 65; and wheat trade, 67, 70; women as pasta makers in, 106, 108 Liji (Rites), 271, 278 Lin Hong, 318–19, 321, 322, 323, 324 literature: Chinese pasta in, 286–94, 298, 313, 314, 315, 319, 320, 322–24, 332; Italian pasta in, 27, 259, 345–60 Lombardy, 61, 145, 204, 241, 242, 263

longxumian (Chinese: “dragon mustaches”), 337, 339 Lopez, Roberto, 10–11 Losa and Campo company, 145 loscyns (losens, losyngys; sheets of dough), 24, 25, 36 Lü Buwei, 291 Lu You, 320 Lucciardi, Stefano, 97 Lucio Garofalo company, 221 luosuo (type of bing), 305, 306, 307 Luraschi, Giovanni Felice, 263 Lüsh chunqiu jiaoshi (The spring and autumn annals of Lü Buwei), 291 Lustucru company, 183, 187 Luxembourg, 173 Lyons, 177, 179, 180, 181, 182–83; immigrants from, 182, 191 macaroni: Casanova-style, 350–51; in China, 344; and class, 52, 251–53; in Italian cuisine, 249–51; Neapolitan, 123–24, 165, 251–53; production techniques for, 58, 60; recipes for, 233–34, 243; trade in, 39; use of term, 27, 28, 30, 169, 232 Macaroni Journal, 10, 192, 210–11 macaroni pie (timbale), 244, 245–49, 256, 266 Macaronic Academies, 250, 350 maccaronari (pasta vendors), 124, 252, 256–57 Maggi company, 168 Maghreb, 48, 49 mai (Chinese: wheat or barley), 5, 6, 274 Majorca, 30, 48 Malouin, Paul-Jacques, 67, 81, 86, 119; on artisanal production, 98–102, 115, 127; on drying process, 108, 109–10; on equip-

426 index

ment, 118; on French pasta, 122, 177–78; on German pasta, 173; on pasta shapes, 102, 105 Malta, 173, 200–201 mangiamaccaroni (pasta eater), 355–56 mantou (Chinese: steamed buns), 272, 287, 296, 327, 330 Mantua, 78, 80, 241 Manuale del cuoco e del pasticciere (Agnoletti), 266 manufactories, 91–125; accounts of, 117, 354, 356–57; in Alsace, 186–87; artisanal production in, 98–102; division of labor in, 92–93; drying process in, 99, 102, 108–15; failure of small, 198; in Genoa, 122–23; innovations in, 136–42; Italian, 91, 92, 96, 115–25; in Naples, 91–92, 123–25; and opposition to mechanization, 135–36; productivity of, 115–17. See also mechanization Marchetti, Antonio, 221 Marinelli, Emilio, 97 Marinetti, Filippo Tommaso, xiv marketing, 208, 224; of artisanal production, 217, 219, 221; and image of pasta, 210–12; new methods of, 198; and regional identity, 187–88, 203 markets: for dry pasta, 50–53; expansion of, 119; for fresh pasta, 53–56, 199; international, 206–8; local, 121. See also consumption Marseilles, 49, 118, 135–36, 181; pasta industry in, 171, 177, 179, 180, 202 Marshall Plan, 196 Martelli, Pastificio, 219 Martin the Humane (Aragon), 52

Martino, Master, 33, 231, 261, 264; on cooking times, 253–54; on pasta as category, 38–39, 40, 232; recipes of, 37, 233, 234, 237, 253, 304; on shaping pasta, 58, 60, 236; on stuffed pasta, 26, 239, 240; terms used by, 27–28 Maurizio, Adam, 12–13 Mawangdui tomb (Hunan, China), 298–99 meat: in China, 294–95, 323; gluten as substitute for, 325, 326; in Naples, 352; in stretched pasta, 339. See also poultry mechanization, 63–64, 77–83; and artisanal production, 218; costs of, 118–19; of drying process, 118, 150–57; and engineering, 142; and expansion of pasta industry, 158; in French pasta industry, 177–78; and industrialization, 127; innovations in, 142–50, 208; in Italy, 78, 81, 84, 156; of kneading process, 57, 60–62, 78, 116–18, 132, 137, 143–47, 185; in Liguria, 87, 144, 185; of mixing process, 128, 145, 148, 150; in Naples, 125, 150, 156, 157, 185; opposition to, 135–36; and power, 116–17, 129, 143, 144; and productivity, 116–18; of rolling process, 148, 149, 330; and workers, 117–18, 133–36 medicine: in China, 297, 298–99, 318–19; and early terms for pasta, 17–18; pasta as, 34, 39, 158, 163, 167, 209, 233, 239, 254, 318–19; popularization of, 57–58; texts on, 16, 28, 66, 298–99 Mediterranean diet, 206, 211–12 Meluzza, 10 Mengqi bitan (Observations noted at Mengqi; Shen Guo), 324

index 427

Mennilli, Pastificio, 220 menus, 267–70; Chinese, 315, 317; primo in, 37, 163, 269–70 Meridionali, Pastifici, 208 Messisbugo, Christoforo, 84, 260, 261, 268, 269 “Methods for Making Bing,” 304 Mezzogiorno (southern Italy), 132–33, 229 mian (Chinese: noodles, pasta; wheat flour), 275, 276, 278, 304, 314, 326; vs. bing, 317–18; vs. botuo, 320; vs. stuffed pasta, 330 mianjin (Chinese: “muscle of flour”; gluten), 324 Middle Ages, xii, 11, 123; bread making in, 60–61; cheese and pasta in, 258–59; cooking times in, 254, 255; dry pasta in, 50–53, 234–35; drying process in, 109, 113; eggs in, 233, 234, 235, 237, 238; fresh pasta in, 223, 231, 235; Jewish culture in, 35; pasta as category in, 14, 38; pasta cuisine in, 227, 230; pasta production in, 41–44, 77, 92, 230; pasta shapes in, 230–31, 234, 236; pies in, 245; preservation in, 51, 234, 237; recipes from, 14, 38, 227, 230, 233–38, 240, 253, 254, 260; stuffed pasta in, 25–26; terms for pasta in, 17, 328; trade in, 48, 120; vermicelli in, 28, 31; women as pasta makers in, 106, 107. See also artisanal production Middle East, x, xii, 11, 29, 31, 35, 200. See also particular countries Milan, 55, 130, 145, 159; pasta makers in, 54, 56, 58, 158 milk, 183, 188, 253, 328; almond, 254; in medieval recipes, 237–38 millefanti (type of grain-shaped pasta), 231

millet, 5, 6, 274, 281, 296, 306; flour from, 340, 341; starches from, 303, 308–10, 324, 329; terms for, 276, 277; and wheat, 311 milling industry: in China, 311, 313, 333; in Hungary, 174; industrialization of, 127–28, 132–33; and modern pasta industry, 208; and pasta makers, 88, 89, 93–94, 191; and steam power, 130, 132; tax on, 131–32, 135, 136 mills, 44, 69, 135; graduated, 174; hydraulic, 132; and manufactories, 92, 160; odes to, 284; roller, 132, 141, 160, 161; rotary, 3, 4, 7; in Sicily, 42–43; in Spadaccini’s model factory, 141 Ming dynasty (China), 275, 328, 333 minuzzaglie (leftover bits of pasta), 251 mixing process, 128, 145, 148, 150, 300 modernization: and artisanal production, 204, 216–22; in China, 344; and computerization, 150; post-war, 199–200; of production, 91–92, 93, 199–200; and small producers, 204–5 Molière, 14 Momofuku, Ando, 343 Monaco, 171 Mongols, 275, 315, 325, 327–28 Montebello label, 221 Montemiletto, 225, 226 Montrone-Travaglio factory (Bari), 130 More, Sir Thomas, 347 Morelli family, 219 Morgari, Oddino, 357 Morocco, 32, 53, 65, 201 Mozi, 277, 299

428 index

Mulino Basile company, 208 Muslims, 171, 328. See also Arabs Naples, 15, 30, 45; bakers in, 178; brake used in, 77–78, 81, 83; class in, 251–53; companies in, 142–43; consumption of pasta in, 123–24, 163, 352–53; cooking methods in, 256–57; culinary model of, 125; culture of pasta in, 123–24, 229; dominance of, 119–25; dry pasta in, xiii, 124–25, 223, 228, 229, 233, 244; drying process in, 108–11, 113, 115, 150, 152, 154, 156, 157, 159; dyes used in, 165; and France, 181; fresh pasta in, 225; government of, 68–69, 75; guilds in, 70, 71; industrialization in, 129, 130, 133, 136, 143, 145; innovations in, 137; and Italian pasta, 169; and Jefferson, 189; macaroni of, 123–24, 165, 251–53; manufactories in, 91–92, 123–25; mechanization in, 86, 125, 150, 156, 157, 185; menus in, 267–68, 270; pasta makers of, 54, 87–90; pasta of, 53, 98, 120, 121, 123, 151, 165; price controls in, 69, 70, 71, 89–90; production in, 44, 51, 89, 93, 99, 101, 108; productivity in, 117; recipes from, 236, 246, 260, 268; regulations in, 68–70, 75–76, 95; and Rome, 119–20; semolina in, 64, 65, 66, 69; Spadaccini’s model factory in, 142; and Spain, 171; and tomato sauce, 265, 266–67; and Torre Annunziata, 94–95; and trade, 49, 68–70, 71, 120, 177, 180; travelers in, 352–53; and wheat, 67, 68; women pasta makers in, 102, 105

Natale, Maria Orsini, 93, 106, 157, 162 National Association of Macaroni and Noodle Manufacturers, 192 National Macaroni Manufacturers Association, 10, 192 National Pasta Association (NPA), 191, 192 Navarre, 172 Nebbia, Antonio, 232 Neolithic period, 5, 9 nerbo (“nerve”; elasticity, chewiness), 178, 228, 257 Nervi, 96, 116 Nestlé group, 206 New World Pasta corporation, 192, 193 Ni Zan, 326, 327, 328, 329, 332 Nicaragua, 176, 194 Nice, 183 Nissin company, 343 nomads, 9, 11 Nongshu (Book of agriculture; Wang Zhen), 331 Northern Wei dynasty (China), 307, 313 nuns, 105, 255 nutrition, 167–68, 210–12, 218 oats, 340 obra de pasta, 10, 39, 46, 47, 52 Odasi, Tivi degli, 27 “Ode to Bing” (Shu Xi), 271–74, 279, 296, 297, 307, 310, 322, 327 Officine Riunite Italiane (O.R.I.), 145 olive oil, 211, 212 olives, 163 Oneglia, 96, 116 Opera (Scappi), 38, 84 oracle-bone inscriptions, 5, 276–77 organic foods, 216, 217, 218, 220–21

index 429

L’Origine company, 219 ortolani (greengrocers), 73 packaging, 198, 199, 216; of highend pasta, 206, 209, 210; transparent, 184, 209, 210; in U.S., 195, 196, 208–10; vacuum-pack, 224–25 Padua, 54, 56, 58 Palermo, 43, 132, 159, 166, 244; guilds in, 70, 72; regulation of pasta production in, 75 Palestine, xii, 29, 31, 35 Panicum millet, 5 Panzani, Jean, 184 Panzani company, 183–84, 202, 210 pappardelle, 235–38, 261–62, 268 Paribas group, 202, 207 Paris: drying process in, 109, 110, 111, 151; Italian manufacturers in, 206; Jefferson in, 189; kneading process in, 358; pasta in, 122, 178; pasta industry in, 91, 177, 179, 180, 201, 202; production capacity of, 181; production in, 98, 119, 178; women as pasta makers in, 108. See also Universal Expositions (Paris) Parma, 97, 158, 242, 262 pasta: companions to, 257–67; as culinary category, xii, 14, 38–40, 232, 274, 276–79, 280; culinary tradition of, 227–70; definition of, xiv; image of, 210–12; as luxury, 177, 206, 207, 217; research on, 344; as term, 38–40, 232. See also dry pasta; fresh pasta pasta al dente, xiii, 114, 124, 178, 228–29, 256–57 pasta d’ingegno (“pasta from an engine”), 86, 232 pasta in brodo (pasta in broth), 37, 330. See also broth

pasta industry: Alsatian, 173, 184–88, 202–3; concentration of, 198, 199, 200, 201–2, 204–5; decline of, 157–62; European, 171, 199–200; expansion of, 119, 121, 158–62; and food adulteration, 217–18; French, 98, 132, 170–72, 176–84, 198, 201–3; German, 171, 173–74, 198, 200; international, 170–76; Italian, 157–62, 203–8; and Mediterranean diet, 206, 212; Portuguese, 171, 174–75, 199; postwar, 174, 196, 199–200, 203; revival of, 203–8; and steam power, 129, 159, 173, 191; U.S., 170, 171, 176, 188–96, 199, 208–12 Pasta Journal, 191, 192 pasta makers: and bakers, 70–71, 73, 88; in China, xi, 337–39, 344; decline of small, 203–5; of dry pasta, 45, 47, 91; independent guilds of, 70–77; Jewish, 31–32; of lasagne, 41, 45, 52–55, 223, 235; and millers, 88, 89, 93–94, 191; in Naples, 54, 87–90; and nunneries, 105; of vermicelli, 53, 55; women as, 58, 102–8 pasta vendors: in China, 280, 281, 284–86, 317, 321, 324–25, 334–36; in Italy, 124, 252, 256–57 Pastai Gragnanesi cooperative, 221 pastasciutta (“dry pasta”; in thick sauce), x, xii, 151, 232, 330; basta la, xiv; in Italy, 36–37, 163, 178 pasteurization, 224, 225 pâtes à la neige (French: “snow pasta”), 166 Pâtissier Royal (Carême), 247 Pattison, Giovanni, 142–43 Paul the Apostle, 19 Pausat (French engineer), 148

430 index

Pavarotti, Luciano, 226 Pedrignano manufacturing complex, 207 Peducci, Gianluigi, 220 Peducci, Pietro, 220 Pegolotti, 47 Persian language, 24, 25, 29, 328 Peru, 176 Perugia, 54, 262 Perugina company, 206 pesto, 263–64, 266 Peter IV (Aragon), 48 Peter the Ceremonious (Aragon), 52 Picard, Alfred, 187 Piedigrotta company, 159 Piedmont, 65, 145, 250, 263 Pisa, 30, 44, 49, 50, 219 Pliny, 3, 42 Poland, x polenta, 163, 229, 354 Polo, Marco, 9–10, 11, 211 Pompadour, Madame de, 246 Porcino, Nicola, 193 Porcino-Rossi Corporation (P&R), 193 Portesi, Giuseppe, 176 Portomaurizio (Imperia), 96, 106, 115, 116, 117 Portugal, 171, 174–75, 199 poultry, 268–69, 349 power: animal, 116, 137, 141, 144, 191; electric, 127, 130, 143, 191; gas, 130; hydraulic, 132, 144; and mechanization, 116–17, 129, 143, 144; for mills, 130, 132; steam, 116, 127, 129, 130, 132, 143, 159, 173, 191 Pratica della mercatura (Pegolotti), 47 Prato, Guglielmino, 243, 250, 262–63 “Preface to an Ode on the Detestable Bing” (Yu Chan), 289

preservation: of dry pasta, 243; of fresh pasta, 222, 223, 224–25; in medieval recipes, 234, 237 press, extrusion, 60, 62, 64, 78, 83–87; Archimedes, 95; in artisanal production, 99; Chinese, 331–32, 340–41; continuous, 83, 128, 145, 148, 150, 159, 221; for domestic use, 189, 190, 191; double-die, 137, 139, 140; and dry pasta, 244; horizontal, 137, 138; hydraulic, 128–29, 132, 136, 145, 185; and industrialization, 128; innovations in, 137, 148; lasagne made with, 101–2; in manufactories, 89, 91, 92, 96; motorized, 134; movable-bell, 145, 148; pasta made with, 90, 232; and pasta shapes, 105; in Spadaccini’s model factory, 141; vertical, 82, 134 Prezzolini, Giuseppe, 10 price controls, 43, 53, 55, 64, 97, 205; on bread, 75, 76; in Naples, 69, 70, 71, 89–90; and quality differences, 74–75. See also regulation prices, 52–53, 120; of wheat, 205, 317 primo (first course), 267, 268, 269–70 production: accounts of, 354, 356–58; American methods of, 197–98; automated, 150, 159, 197–98, 200; centers of, 44–48; in China, 275–76, 285; Chinese techniques of, 286, 298, 302–3, 305–8, 323–24, 330–33, 336; continuous, 197, 207; costs of, 150, 151, 154, 156, 162; decline of, 120–21, 157–62, 203–5; domestic, 84, 106, 123, 189–91, 333; early techniques of, 34–35,

index 431

production (continued) 41–44, 230; expansion of, 93–98, 119, 121, 158–62; fermentation in, 74, 178, 235, 293, 310; of fresh pasta, 223, 224–25; hand, 42, 336–39, 358–60; industrial, 97–98, 217, 224–25, 227, 229; innovations in, 136–42, 323–24; of instant noodles, 341, 343; international development of, 169–96; and Italian consumption, 205–6; mass, 163, 195, 218; modernization of, 91–92, 93, 199–200; new systems of, 145, 150, 151, 159; and number of producers, 204; and pasta shapes, 23; professionalization of, 106; protoindustrial model of, 93; regulation of, 74–76, 212, 216; of starch-based pasta, 308–11; techniques of, 56–62, 99, 108–15, 136–42, 223, 308–11, 323–24; and trade, 44–48; tradition of, 170, 171, 172; women’s roles in, 102–8. See also artisanal production production capacity: Alsatian, 188; French, 181, 183, 201, 202; Italian, 159, 160, 161, 203; U.S., 193 productivity, 115–18, 151 Provençal language, 47–48 Provence, 30, 35; artisanal production in, 99; brake used in, 78, 81, 83; drying process in, 111; industrialization in, 136; pasta from, 47–48, 121, 122; pasta industry in, 91, 119, 171, 177; wheat from, 67 Pulcinella (Punch, Punchinello), 251 puls (Roman mush), 3 Qianlong, Emperor, 333 qiemian (Chinese: cut noodles), 305, 306, 307, 314, 326

Qimin yaoshu (Techniques essential for the subsistence of common people; Jia Sixie), 304, 305, 308, 310, 314, 318, 322, 324, 326, 329, 339 qingtan (Chinese: “pure chats”), 287 qizi (Chinese: go game pieces; type of pasta), 326–27, 339 quality, 188, 207, 218, 247; and durum wheat, 129; and flour vs. semolina, 34, 64–70, 164, 229; of Neapolitan pasta, 120, 121, 123; and regulations, 74–75, 213–16; standardized, 198 Rana, Giovanni, 224, 226 Rana company, 224–25, 226 Rashi, 20, 31 Ratta, G. B. and G., 264 Ravenna, Giovanni da, 267 ravioli, 26, 224, 226; machines for, 223; in Middle Ages, 231; recipes for, 238–39, 243; as term, 169; without envelope, 239–41, 242. See also stuffed pasta ravioli di zucca mantovani (squash ravioli Mantuan-style), 239 rebairoli (small-time merchants), 72 recipes, ix; bing, 273, 275, 297, 299, 303, 304–11, 313, 321; cheese and pasta, 258–59; Chinese, 308, 318–19, 320, 327, 329, 330; and class, 51; cosmetics, 310; dry pasta, 33, 50, 233, 234, 243; eggs in, 233, 234, 235, 237, 238; eighteenth-century, 250; foreign, 325, 327–28; fresh pasta, 233–38; Genoese, 45, 50, 233, 234; gluten, 325; Italian, 17; lagana, 16, 24; lasagne, 235–38; macaroni, 233–34, 243; medieval, 14, 26, 38, 39, 227, 230, 233–38, 240, 253, 254, 260; Neapolitan, 236, 246,

432 index

260, 268; and patterns of consumption, 163; Renaissance, 240, 261, 262, 268; sauce, 257; soft wheat flour in, 55–56; starchbased pasta, 308–11, 329; stuffed pasta, 238–43; terms in, 47, 232; timbale, 248; tomato sauce in, 265, 266; and U.S. consumption, 195; vermicelli, 28, 29, 30, 32, 56, 233–34 Rectification of names, 278, 303 Reggio (Emilia), 54, 56, 157, 204, 223 regionalism: and artisanal production, 220; in China, 275, 325, 334, 339; and Italian culinary culture, 215; and marketing, 187–88, 203; and national identity, 227; and sauces, 262, 263, 264, 266; and stuffed pasta, 240–41, 243 regulation, 212–16; in China, 285; against fraud, 76–77; in Naples, 68–70, 75–76, 95; of semolina, 76, 213, 214, 215–16; sumptuary, 76; of trade, 68–70, 212. See also price controls religion, 19–22, 294–97. See also particular religions Renaissance, 50, 255; menus in, 269–70; recipes of, 240, 261, 262, 268 Research Center of the Agricultural Division (Tianjin, China), 344 revolt of the Marseillaises, 135–36 Reynière, Grimod de la, 122, 178, 248, 260, 266 rice, 4, 35, 36, 163, 229, 335; in China, 323, 333; and class, 334; flour from, 340; starches from, 303, 310–11, 329 Ricette di sua maestà il raviolo (Bruni), 243

Ripa Cursia, count of, 71 Risorgimento, 129 Rivoire and Carret, Lustucru (RCL), 202 Rivoire and Carret company, 182–83 Rochefort, Jouvin de, 249, 250, 256 Rodinson, Maxime, 15, 24, 25 Romagna, 61, 65, 240–41 Romania, 169, 173, 174 Romanian language, 328 Rome, 9, 60, 87, 354; guilds in, 55, 70, 73–74, 120; and Naples, 119–20; pasta makers in, 54; and pasta trade, 49; price controls in, 74; recipes of, 234, 236; yeast dough in, 178 Rome, ancient, xii, 3, 4, 67; and origins of pasta, 11–12, 13. See also Greco-Roman culture; Latin Romoli, Domenico, 236, 240, 255, 261, 268, 269–70 Ronzoni, Emanuele, 192 Ronzoni Macaroni Company, 192–93 Rosenberger, Bernard, 29, 30, 33, 48 Roseto (Pennsylvania), 211–12 Rossetti, Giovanbattista, 232 Rossi, Alfredo, 193 Rossini, Gioacchino, 247 Rovetta, Renato, 65, 143, 148, 152, 154, 156, 158; on international pasta industry, 170, 171, 173, 174, 176; on semolina and flour blends, 164; on types of pasta, 165, 166; on U.S. pasta industry, 192 Royal Commission for the Industrial Development of Naples (Reale commissione per l’incremento industriale di Napoli), 137, 139, 140 Ruggiero, Nunziata, 161

index 433

Russia, x, 172–73; wheat from, 68, 164, 175, 181, 182, 191, 194, 202, 357 Russo, Domenico, 88 Russo, Pastificio, 160 Rustichella d’Abruzzo, 219, 220 S. Lucia company, 159 Sacchetti, Franco, 27, 267, 346 saffron, 34, 240, 261, 262; as dye, 75, 235–36, 249, 259; taste of, 249 sa’iriyya (Arabic term for pasta), 29, 32 Salerno, 57, 159, 160 Salimbene of Parma, 240, 242, 258, 267 San Giorgio Macaroni Company, 193 San Remo, 96, 249, 349 Sandragné, Ferréol, 148 Sansepolcro, 97, 158 Sardinia, 44, 46, 48, 105, 163, 177; guild in, 73; production in, 45, 120, 121, 204, 221; and Spain, 171; and trade, 49, 50, 54; wheat from, 67, 178. See also Cagliari Sarli, Rocco, 193 Sarnacchiaro, Pietro Farro, 161 sartù de’ golosi (macaroni cake), 246 sauces, 257–67, 355; blood in, 263; Chinese, 330, 334; Neapolitan, 124; regional, 262, 263, 264, 266; tomato, 264–67. See also pastasciutta Savarese, Salvatore, 137, 140 Savona, 87, 96, 106, 115, 116, 158; guild in, 70, 72; milling industry in, 132 Savonarola, Michele, 39 Savoy, 30, 202, 203, 246 Scafa, Francesco, 161 Scafa company, 159

Scappi, Bartolomeo, 38, 67, 77, 84, 231, 232; on cooking times, 254, 255; on poultry, 269; recipes of, 236–37; on sauces, 262; on stuffed pasta, 239, 240, 241; on sugar, 261 Scaramella, Pastificio, 159 Scheurer, Frédéric, 186 Scienza in cucina e l’arte di mangiar bene (Artusi), 257, 264 Scriba, Giovanni, 49 seasons: and pasta consumption, 292–94, 322, 327, 334; and ritual offerings, 295–96 semolina: in Alsatian pasta, 187; in artisanal production, 99, 219, 220, 222; categories of, 99, 214; in China, 333; and cooking times, 256; in dry pasta, 41, 43; from durum wheat, x, xiii, 3, 4, 11, 15, 34, 37, 41, 55–56, 64–70, 83, 98, 120, 237; in early forms of pasta, 17; and flavor, 354; vs. flour, 34, 64–70, 229; in French pasta industry, 178, 201, 202; and fresh pasta, 224; gluten from, 167; and industrialization, 128, 163–64; Italian advantage with, 184; in medieval recipes, 237; in Naples, 64, 65, 66, 69; and pasta production, 43, 48, 357; production of, 141, 183; proportion of, 89; and quality, 75, 120, 213; regulation of, 76, 213, 214, 215–16; sifting of, 108, 135; and spread of manufactories, 92; terms for, 3; trade in, 49, 71, 94; vermicelli made from, 33 Seneca, 4 Sereni, Emilio, 14, 15, 49, 77 Setaria millet, 5 Shang dynasty (China), 291 Shanji qinggong (The simple foods

434 index

of the mountain folk; Lin Hong), 319, 321 Shanxi province (China), 338, 339–40 shapes: of Alsatian pasta, 185; of Arabic pasta, 32–33; of Chinese pasta, 272, 278–79, 292–94, 296, 297–308, 318–20, 326, 339; and cooking time, 256; and dough, 358; early, 22–28; eighteenthcentury, 249; and extrusion press, 105; of French pasta, 177; of German pasta, 193; grain, 89, 102, 230, 231; lasagne, 23–25, 26, 28; legume, 102; in Middle Ages, 230–31, 234, 236; non-wheat flour, 340–41; primordial, 22–28, 301–2, 303; and production techniques, 23; and regulations, 213; in Sicily, 37; standardization of, 210; of stuffed pasta, 239, 241; terms for, 230–31, 232; variety of, 102, 105 shaping process, 102, 220, 233, 300, 302–3; Chinese hand, xi, 336–39, 344; and drying, 102; mechanization of, 83–84, 118, 148, 149, 330; in Middle Ages, 58, 60, 236; pleasure of, 229. See also press, extrusion Shen Guo, 324 shenmian (lamian; Chinese: stretched pasta), 337–39 Sheurer company, 187 Shi Hu, 282 Shihuangdi, Emperor (China), 303 Shilin guangji (Encyclopedia of material life), 319 Shiming (Explanations of names), 278, 300 Shu Xi, 280, 286–90, 292, 308, 322, 323; “Ode to Bing” of, 271–74,

279, 296, 297, 307, 310, 327; on seasons, 293–94, 295, 296 shuihua mian (Chinese: noodles slipped into water), 318, 322, 324, 326, 328, 330, 331 shuiyin (Chinese: stretched in water), 289, 296, 305, 307, 309, 318, 324, 339 Shuowen jiezi (Explanation of simple characters, interpretation of compound characters), 278, 300 Sicily: consumption of pasta in, 163; French conquest of, 48; Goethe in, 251; industrialization in, 130; mechanized drying process in, 156; milling industry in, 42–43, 132; Muslim, 15; packaging in, 209; pasta industry in, 159; pasta of, 32, 37, 165, 166, 177, 347; price controls in, 53; production in, 34, 35, 41–44, 45, 60, 120, 121, 160, 203–4, 221; recipes of, 233, 234, 237; semolina vs. flour in, 64; and Spain, 171; specialties of, 245, 249; and trade, 27, 30, 33, 35, 49, 54; wheat from, 65, 67, 219 sifters, mechanical, 135–36 siligo (soft wheat), 3, 42 silk, 4–5, 288–89, 291, 298–99, 309 Silk Road, 172 Silvagni, David, 260, 268 Simin yueling (Monthly instructions for the four classes; Cui Shi), 292–93, 294 Simon of Genoa, 18 Singolar dottrina (Romoli), 269 Skinner, Lloyd M., 193 Skinner, Paul F., 193 Skinner Macaroni Company, 193 Slow Food movement, 198, 217 Soderini, Giovanvettorio, 61 soft pasta, xiii, 253–56

index 435

Somalia, 200 Song dynasty (China), 311, 315, 324, 330, 340; Northern, 315; Southern, 317; and southern cuisine, 322–23; terms for pasta in, 318, 320 Song Xu, 337 Songshi yangsheng bu (Song Xu), 337 sorghum, 340 soup, industrialization of, 167–68. See also broth Southeast Asia, ix Soviet Union, 173. See also Russia soy beans, 277, 329 Spadaccini, Cesare, 137, 139, 141–42, 148, 150 spaghetti, as term, 169 Spain: adulteration of food in, 217; and Chinese pasta, 308; drying process in, 110; fresh pasta in, 225, 226; Italian manufacturers in, 206; mechanization in, 84; and origins of pasta, 29–30; pasta industry in, 171–72, 199; pasta of, 34, 35–36, 122, 185, 231; pasta-making tradition in, 171; and poultry, 268; production in, 170; and tomato sauce, 265; and trade, 48; wheat from, 67, 172, 175. See also Arab-Andalusian region Spanish language, 29, 30, 39 spelt (Triticum aestivum, L. spelta), 2, 219 spices, 259, 260–61, 263–64 standardization, 198, 210 starch, xi, 3, 333; in cosmetics, 310; from millet, 303, 308–10, 324, 329; non-wheat, 303, 308–11, 329, 340; pasta based on, 308–11; potato, 341; rice, 303, 310–11, 329; and soaking of dough, 306

Statuta victualium civitatis (Milan; 1421), 55 steam power. See power: steam Stefani, Bartolomeo, 241, 244 Strampelli di Crispiero, Nazareno, 220 stretched pasta (shenmian; lamian), 337–39 strozzapreti (“priest stranglers”), 236 stuffed pasta, 25–26, 166; in China, 290, 308, 315, 318, 327, 329, 330, 333, 335–36; and class, 230; cooking time for, 253, 255; fresh, 224, 238; and harmony, 335; in Italy, 225, 240–41; in Middle Ages, 231; recipes for, 238–43; regional, 240–41, 243; stretched, 339; sugar in, 260, 261; terms for, 241, 242. See also baozi; hundun dumplings; jiaozi; laowan; ravioli sugar, 39, 237, 260–61, 262 Sun Quan, 283–84, 286 Switzerland, 2, 9, 141, 143, 167, 225; pasta industry in, 145, 199–200 symbolism, 12, 19–22; Chinese, 282–83, 302, 334, 335 Syria, 200 Syriac language, 17, 18, 19, 29 Tacuina Sanitatis (“tables of health”), 57, 59, 106, 107, 109 Taganrog wheat, 68, 172, 180, 202 tagliatelle, 47, 60, 98, 236, 237 taglierini, 45, 234, 235–38 Taiwan, 341 Talmud, 19, 20, 21, 29, 31, 35 Tanaka, Tan, 311, 312 Tang, King (China), 291 Tang dynasty (China), 275, 311, 313, 317, 335; fossilized dumplings from, 314–15, 316

436 index

tangbing (bing in broth), 272, 278, 287, 293, 296, 315, 319, 322 tao (Chinese: to wash in a sieve; type of pasta), 319, 326 Targioni-Tozzetti, G., 67, 120 tavernas, 353–56 taxes, 46, 105; in China, 311, 317; on milling industry, 131–32, 135, 136; on trade, 49, 177 Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española (Covarrubias), 47 Thirion, Jules, 186 Thirion company, 186 Three Kingdoms (China), 280, 283, 286 Thresor de santé, 25, 47 timballo di macaroni (timbale; macaroni pie), 244, 245–49, 266 Tomadini, Pastificio, 97 tomatoes, 229, 257, 355; in pasta, 166, 183, 213; in sauce, 264–67 Tommasini, Pastificio, 130, 158, 159 Tommasini, Vitaliano, 130, 154, 155 tongxin mian (Chinese: hollow pasta), 344 Torre Annunziata, 44, 51, 69; accounts of, 354, 357–58; drying process in, 108, 113, 114; industrialization in, 130, 136; manufactories in, 92, 117; mechanization in, 118; milling industry in, 132; and Naples, 94–95; new factories in, 139; pasta industry in, 93–95, 157, 159, 161, 162, 204; pasta producers from, 208; women pasta makers in, 102; workers’ revolt in, 132, 135–36 tortelli (little cakes), 26, 223, 231, 238–39 Tosafists, 35 Toulouse, 179 trade: Chinese, 284–86, 333; decline of, 164; and decline of pasta

industry, 160–61; in dry pasta, 27, 32–34, 35, 39, 48, 50–53, 54, 113; in flour, 49, 71; free, xiv, 216; French, 132, 179, 184, 202; Genoese, 49, 50, 70, 123, 177; in grain, 95; international, 160, 161, 170–71, 188, 206–8; Italian, 49, 67, 70, 120–21, 160, 170–71, 179; and Italian pasta industry, 206–8; long-distance, 54; Mediterranean, 48–50; in Middle Ages, 48, 120; Neapolitan, 49, 68–70, 71, 120, 177, 180; and production, 41, 42, 43, 44–48, 96; regulation of, 68–70, 212; Sardinian, 30, 49, 50, 120; in semolina, 49, 71, 94; Sicilian, 27, 30, 33, 35, 49, 54; taxes on, 49, 177; U.S., 164, 165, 193, 195, 196; in wheat, 46, 49, 65, 68–70, 95, 164, 175, 181, 182, 191, 194, 202, 213, 357 trademarks, 196 Traité de Cuisine à l’Espagnole, 122 Trentino, 121, 250 tri (tria; dry, stringlike pasta), 14, 15, 17–19, 35, 45, 57, 63; in medicine, 39; recipes for, 50, 233–34; and vermicelli, 28, 31, 32 Il trinciante (Cervio), 269 Triticum. See wheat Tunisia, 201 Turin, 97, 145 Turin Exposition (1911), 148 Turkey, x, 2, 200 Tuscany, 67–68, 97, 204, 223, 236, 254, 354 Tuttavilla, Muzio, count of Sarno, 94 tutumashi (tutumasi; Turkish/Chinese: pasta), 328, 333 Ukraine, 46, 68, 164, 194

index 437

United States (U.S.): consumption of pasta in, 169, 195; and decline of pasta industry, 160, 162; and Europe, 199, 200; factories in, 192; food culture of, 210; fresh pasta in, 225; German-style pasta in, 193; influence of, 208–12; Italian immigrants in, 182, 188–89, 191, 192, 193, 195; packaging in, 195, 196, 208–10; pasta industry in, 170, 171, 176, 188–96, 199, 208–12; production methods in, 197–98; regulation of pasta in, 212; and trade, 164, 165, 182, 193, 195, 196; wheat in, 191–94, 205, 211, 220 Universal Expositions (Paris), 173–75, 180, 187; (1878), 171–72, 181, 209; (1900), 152, 158, 159, 160, 161, 182 Urban VIII, Pope, 73 urbanization, 43, 201 Uruguay, 175 U.S. Department of Agriculture Bulletin, 211 Uzbekistan, 173 Valencia, 30, 52, 172 Valfleuri company, 186–87, 203 vegetable pasta, 166, 183, 213, 238 vegetables, 264, 323 vegetarian cuisine, xi, 276, 325, 326 Venezuela, 176 Venice, 46, 47, 54, 97, 120–21, 237 La vera cucina genovese, 248 Vera cucina lombarda, 248, 266 Vera cuciniera genovese, 263, 266 Verde, Sister Maria Vittoria della, 262 vermicellari (makers of vermicelli), 53, 55 vermicelli, xii, 23, 28–32; cooking methods for, 231–32, 253; vs.

fresh pasta, 32–34, 223; makers of, 53, 55; in Middle Ages, 231; production of, 44, 58; production techniques for, 35, 61; recipes for, 28, 29, 30, 32, 56, 233–34; starch, 4, 244; taxes on, 46; terms for, 18, 31, 35, 47 vermishelsh (vermicelli), 31, 35 Vernet, Horace, 356 Vialardi, Giovanni, 246 Vietnam, ix, 313 Vigilante, Felice, 87–88 Villanova, Arnaldus de, 254 Visconti, Gian Galeazzo, 57 Voiello, Giovanni, 161 Voiello company, 208 Vollenweider, Alice, 25 Voltan company, 224 W. R. Grace, 207 Wales, 211 Wang Huan, 284 Wang Mang, 285 Wang Xizhi, 282–83 Wang Zhen, 331 Weiss, Bertha, 193 Weiss, Gasper, 193 Weiss Noodle Company, 193 Wen, King (China), 293 wheat (Triticum spp.), 1–8; from Africa, 67, 181, 194, 201, 214; from Apulia, 67, 68, 69, 178, 213, 225; and bread, 1, 3, 4, 67; from Canada, 194, 205, 220; in China, xi, 4–7, 271, 274, 276, 311, 317, 333, 334, 344; and Chinese pasta, 290, 297; Chinese terms for, 277; domestication of, 2, 5; in France, 178, 180, 181, 194; in GrecoRoman culture, 163; and guilds, 66, 70; in Italy, xii, 175, 181, 194; naked vs. dressed, 2, 3, 5; odes to, 283–84; and origins of pasta, 11;

438 index

prices of, 205, 317; processing of, 6, 115, 116, 141; production of, 64–70; regulation of, 68–70; from Russia, 68, 164, 175, 181, 182, 191, 194, 202, 357; saragolla variety of, 68, 69, 96; from Sardinia, 67, 178; from Sicily, 65, 67, 219; soft, 3, 4, 5, 6, 42, 55–56, 67; tax on milled, 131–32; trade in, 46, 49, 65, 68–70, 95, 164, 175, 181, 182, 191, 194, 202, 213, 357; types of, 2, 3, 4, 64–70, 219; in U.S., 191–94, 205, 211, 220. See also durum wheat “white industry” (l’arte bianca ), 49, 61, 98, 143, 161, 206; double nature of, 160; and industrialization, 127, 129, 135, 136 wine, 84, 163, 211, 212, 217, 300 Wolf, Stewart, 211 women: in China, 311, 312; and nutrition revolution, 168; and origins of pasta, 10; as pasta makers, 58, 102–8; as workers, 78, 92–93, 167 wontons (Cantonese: hundun dumplings), 320 workers: costs of, 139, 150; and division of labor, 92–93, 105–8; and expansion of pasta industry, 159; and industrialization, 127, 128, 133–36; and mechanization, 117–18, 133–36; organization of, 141; in pasta production, 58; and productivity, 116; revolts of, 90, 132, 135–36; in Spadaccini’s model factory, 141–42; wages of, 106; women as, 58, 78, 92–93, 102–8, 167 World War I, 193, 194–95 World War II, 174, 196, 199–200, 203

Wu, Emperor (China), 295 Wu Jun, 289–92 Wulin jiushi (Ancient matters of Wulin), 322 Wuming lun (Treatise on the nameless; He Yan), 293 Wushier bingfang (Recipes for fifty-two ailments), 299 Wuwei lun (Treatise on nonexistence; He Yan), 293 xiaomian (Chinese: planed pasta), 336, 337 Xuan, Emperor (China), 281, 284 Yan Shigu, 277–78 Yberty, Jean, 152, 180, 182 Yi Yin, 291 Yiddish language, 31 Yu Chan, 289 Yuan dynasty (China), 275, 318, 327, 329, 332, 340; consumption of pasta in, 325, 326; production techniques in, 330, 331 Yugoslavia, 200 Yunlintang yinshi zhidu (Dietary system of the Yunlin studio; Ni Zan), 326 Yushan zhengyao (The true principles of eating and drinking; Hu Sihui), 328, 329, 330 Zambrini, Francesco, 235 Zerega, Antoine, 182, 191 Zerega’s Sons, Inc., 191, 192 Zhao Dejun tomb, 311, 312 Zhi, Emperor, 281–82 Zhongkui lu (The cooking record of Madame Wu), 318, 322 Zhouli (Zhou rites), 271, 278 Zhuge Ge, 283–84

index 439