Where did pasta come from?
Pasta as we know it developed in Italy, with dried pasta made in Sicily by the 1100s. Noodles were also eaten in China thousands of years ago.
A popular story says Marco Polo brought pasta to Italy from China in 1295, but that is a myth. Italian records mention pasta before his return. In 1154, the Arab geographer al-Idrisi described a town near Palermo in Sicily that made dried strands of pasta and shipped them across the Mediterranean.
Dried pasta made from durum wheat and water was ideal for trade and long sea voyages because it kept for a long time. Naples later became famous for pasta-making, using its sunny, breezy climate to dry pasta outdoors.
Noodles around the world
China has its own long noodle tradition. Archaeologists found a bowl of millet noodles about 4,000 years old at Lajia in northwestern China. Today Italy has hundreds of pasta shapes, from spaghetti and penne to farfalle and orecchiette.
Did You Know?
Tomato sauce was added to pasta only after tomatoes arrived from the Americas. The first recorded recipe for pasta with tomato sauce dates from 1790s Italy.