Noodling on Spaghetti
We tend to think of pasta as being essentially Italian, but seeing as today is “World Spaghetti Day” (January 4), it’s time to set the history record straight.
From China to Italy (and beyond…)
As with many other culinary delights, we have chefs from ancient China to thank for pasta. Early versions of spaghetti and vermicelli made from rice and mung bean flours trace back at least three thousand years. The most commonly held belief is that the Italian explorer Marco Polo, along with his father Niccolo and uncle Maffeo, brought recipes for pasta (“dough paste”) from China at the end of the 13th Century.
Rolling and cutting thin, long, cylindrical spaghetti was a very labor-intensive process, and was not produced on a large commercial scale until 1800 in Naples when wooden screw presses were used to produce long strands to dry in the sun. Further innovation in pasta dough mixing came in 1830 with the invention of a mechanically-operated kneading machine. Spaghetti factory indeed!
According to my faithful The Oxford Companion to Food by Alan Davidson, the earliest record of the actual word “spaghetti” dates to a Piacenzian Italian dialect dictionary in 1836 followed by the word’s inclusion in more mainstream Italian dictionary in 1846. Spaghetti is the plural form of spaghetto, a diminutive form of the Italian spago, or “thin string.” Thicker spaghetti is called spaghettoni and thinner spaghetti is capellini.
When Spaghetti Met Tomato Sauce
Davidson points out that the known-around-the-world combination of slippery semolina pasta and hearty tomato sauce (with or without meat) would be a cherished favorite for millennia — it’s incredible easy to imagine a Roman senator with tomato stains down their toga — but recipes for “Spaghetti Bolognese” did not appear in Italian cookery books until approximately 1790, and Ippolito Cavalcanti’s 1839 Cucina Teorico Pratica not only included pasta with tomato sauce but also introduced a the precursor to Spaghetti alla Vongole (with clams) and Spaghetti alla Carbonara (with pancetta, egg, and cheese), although the latter might truly be a post-World War II invention to make use of generous American occupation troop rations of eggs and bacon.
Although spaghetti pasta caught the attention of British culinary stalwart Eliza Acton in 1849 (which she charmingly called “sparghetti”), the spaghetti in tomato sauce joined the British diet in full force after World War II.
Moms’ Spaghettis
My love of pasta is well known and even well-documented. When I was in the fourth grade, an artistic friend of the family showed me how to draw a fundamental version of Jim Davis’ Garfield (the cat is himself obsessed with lasagna) and I spent the better part of my idle classroom time doodling a Garfield fantasizing about eating pasta.
My penchant for spaghetti must’ve actually been a godsend for my mother who heroically balanced a career in nursing with single parenthood, all while trying to make sure that I didn’t overdose on instant ramen (see As We Eat Episode 31: What’s In Your Pantry). I don’t know how she managed it but my earliest memories of spaghetti dinners were my favorite pasta lavishly topped with a homemade tomato sauce that included onion, carrots, mushrooms, and a bunch of other hidden vegetables.
I made such a big deal about the superiority of my mom’s spaghetti sauce that my stepmother MaryEllen, who was merely trying to develop a repertoire of Kim-friendly recipes, despaired of ever figuring out how to make the mythical sauce. Turned out that I really liked her spaghetti too!