As if America isn’t going through enough already, here’s a news flash: Our nation is to blame for propagating the story that Marco Polo introduced pasta to Italy from China. This “persistent” whopper was, in no uncertain terms, “conjured up by the Americans,” writes Kantha Shelke. In 1929, an American trade magazine, then called Macaroni Journal, ran an ad depicting Marco Polo in the China Sea with an Italian crew including a sailor named Macaroni. The fine fellow comes ashore with tales of women making strings of dough—and Polo names the product for him.
“The story inspired countless advertisements, restaurant placemats, cookbooks and even movies, and the tongue-in-cheek advertisement turned into a seemingly unshakeable legend,” writes Shelke in this engaging entry in Reaktion Books’ Edible Series. By bursting this delicious dumpling, Shelke is also making a larger contention: Pasta and noodles developed in “different but complementary culinary traditions.” No wet-noodle argument here. This debate is apparently hotter than Shrimp Fra Diavolo: “Unlike the works of other writers, there will be no attempt in this book to link the two culinary realms.”
Pasta and noodles. Two houses, both alike in dignity.
The dividing line does not take long to emerge. Ultimately, the difference comes down to durum wheat, the essential ingredient that gives pasta many of its best qualities. When durum wheat, as opposed to bread wheat, or emmer wheat (farro), is ground it becomes semolina flour, allowing pasta to be shaped easily, dried, and shipped without losing texture or spoiling.
The West had durum wheat; China did not. The Chinese spent centuries eating millet gruel. And having grown tired of such pleasantries, they discovered wheat flour could be used to create an infinite variety of succulent shapes, from noodles to steamed buns to dumplings. Wheat-based foods and a noodle-making ability grew in the Han dynasty (206 b.c. to a.d. 220). Additionally, the Chinese tradition of fresh noodles “cooked as soon as they were formed, or even while being formed,” is a defining element of the culture.
Even if Marco Polo had managed to bring noodles to Italy from his 13th-century travels in China, dough and pasta already had long developed in the West. The Greeks had a word for what was probably flat strips of dough: “laganon,” possibly used in the first millennium b.c. The Romans adopted and spread the food, though durum wheat was not yet used. The first-century poet Horace mentions in his sixth book a dish of leeks, chickpeas, and lasagne. A Western reference to boiled noodles appears in the 5th-century Jerusalem Talmud. “The debate, in Aramaic, was whether or not noodles violated Jewish dietary laws,” writes Shelke.
Her research into pasta’s ancient past makes a convincing case that the food was developing concurrently all around the Mediterranean in different forms and uses. Which is also handy as she seems keen to dismiss the Italians’ “point of national pride that they invented pasta.” She doubts the evidence for the Italian case, which includes Etruscan tomb bas-reliefs purported to show noodles made from durum wheat. But she’s at least willing to spot them on the whole Marco Polo thing: Pasta has pan-Mediterranean origins, which means that while it isn’t exactly “Italian,” it’s probably not imported from China, either. (And now we know who to blame for that.)
This book’s charm comes in the section on how pasta flourished in regions of Italy, particularly in 18th-century Naples and Sicily. Pasta was sold in special shops where men kneaded dough with their feet. Bakers wanted to sell pasta, but the vermicellari, or pasta-makers, formed guilds to protect their turf. Commedia dell’arte actors used bowls of macaroni in characters’ acts, and at this time, the food was eaten with the fingers. Of course, waves of Italian immigrants brought their cuisine to America, where Shelke points out that regional habits emerged, such as the peculiarity of East Coast Italian Americans calling tomato sauce “gravy.”
After delving into rich details of pasta—including how Thomas Jefferson wrote out his own recipe and had a machine shipped over from Europe—the author blitzes through the culinary world of noodles. It could be retitled Pasta . . . and Noodles. Given the many nations and extreme variety of noodles, though, this zippy world tour is impressively succinct. It could be helpful to anyone who wants quick references on how to cook Hokkien-style noodles (boil for one to two minutes and finished by being boiled or fried briefly before serving) or the history of instant noodles. And of course, that history also connects directly to American food trends, particularly the current, and overwhelming, interest in ramen.
In 1958, the founder of Nissin Foods, Momofuku Ando, invented instant noodles, those wavy bricks of noodles that have provided sustenance to generations of college students. In 2004, chef David Chang opened Momofuku Noodle Bar in New York, causing a sensation by elevating simple foods like ramen and fried chicken. Momofuku still draws long lines, and its popularity has inspired all manner of Asian street fare restaurants and food trucks.
Pasta, by contrast, is less trendy today. Giant bowls of spaghetti with classic red sauce are menu items best tasted in suburban restaurants, though there are boomlets of chic Italian comebacks. But pesto? Fettuccine Alfredo? Given the speed of American food trends, these dishes now sing the songs of the 1980s. You might as well watch MTV and call someone at a pay phone after dinner.
One trend that Kantha Shelke does not take up, understandably, is the American obsession with avoiding carbohydrates and gluten. While glutens can spark allergic reactions, the push to avoid carbohydrates has spawned “paleo” diets, which restrict an otherwise contemporary person to eating like a paleolithic caveman. The diets are heavy on meat and vegetables—which could have been hunted and gathered—but no pasta, no noodles.
For anyone who has ever painstakingly made a lasagna and found out one’s guests have gone “paleo,” Shelke offers this nugget: “Prehistoric humans roasted ears of wheat and burned the thick covering to get to the kernels, which they then consumed without further preparation.” So there. If prehistoric man was popping straight wheat, then have another bowl of tortellini—and enjoy it. ¨
Pia Catton, editor of Dance.com, is coauthor of The Comfort Diner Cookbook.
