A rich excursus by Stefano Milioni on Italy’s most beloved food, pasta, starts today. From its humble origins in ancient Rome to the refinements of contemporary cuisine. Follow us every Wednesday to learn more and more.
Throughout the world there is a widespread belief that pasta originated in China and was brought to Italy by Marco Polo. Yet, one need only read the words written in 1298 in “The Million,” the book that encompasses the report of his travels to the Far East, for confirmation to the contrary, namely that at that time, In Italy, pasta was an everyday food.
Marco Polo, in fact, writes that in China he had seen and had himself eaten “lasagna similar to that which we make with wheat flour“.
But, then, who invented pasta?
Analyzing almost all human phenomena, we are always looking for an inventor, a day, a month and a year when something is born. However, when we talk about food, it is virtually impossible to find an inventor and a precise date. Especially when we are talking about foods that today form the food base of entire peoples.
If there is an inventor, it is hunger, famine, despair, fear for the future. And this is even more true when we talk about pasta.
To summarize, we can say that pasta was invented-and could not have been invented-other than by a population living in a large city, a center of political and military power, in the heart of an area where wheat was the first basic ingredient of food.
In all the countries of theMediterranean area one of the pillars of the diet was grains and three of them, primarily wheat.
The popularity of these grains, in addition to their nutritional properties, was due to the fact that, compared to all other agricultural products, they were much more easily stored.
To be consumed, they were ground and the resulting flour was processed in two different ways: cooked in a liquid that could be water, broth or milk (hence our modern-day polenta), or mixed with water, and then baked on hot stones or in an oven, yielding bread and flatbread.
These two ways we consume grains are common to all Mediterranean peoples and do not change much over several millennia.
One and a half million people to feed
But at some point it happens that right in the center of the Mediterranean, starting in the third century B.C, the power of Rome explodes which year after year expands to the borders of the then known world.
Along with its political and military power, Rome saw its size as a city expand: in 264 B.C. its population was 264,000, in 130 B.C. it was 313,000, in 55 B.C. it was already one million, and a hundred years later, during the empire of Augustus, it became 1,500,000.
Try to imagine how complicated it was 2,000 years ago to run a city of 1,500,000 people, as this is a gigantic problem even in the present day.
The first, dramatic problem to be solved was to ensure sufficient food resources for its inhabitants.
We discuss this extensively in the next installment.
Freely excerpted from “RuvidaMente.com,” courtesy of the author.
