A Brief History of Pasta: The Italian Food that Shaped the World

Description

What is Italy without pasta? Come to think of it, where would the rest of us be without this staple of global cuisine? The wheat-based dough first appeared in the Mediterranean in ancient times. Yet despite these ancient beginnings, pasta wasn't wedded to sauce until the nineteenth century. Once the food of peasants, it has been served everywhere from rural taverns to royal tables - and its surprising past holds a mirror up to the changing fortunes of its makers. Full of mouthwatering recipes and outlandish anecdotes - from (literal) off-the-wall 1880s cooking techniques to spaghetti conveyer belts in 1940 and the international amatriciana scandal in 2021 - Luca Cesari embarks on a tantalising journey through time to detangle this culinary classic.

Luca Cesari is a food historian based in Italy. He writes for various magazines, including Gambero Rosso, and writes the column 'Indovina chi sviene a cena' in Il Sole 24 Ore.

'EXTRACT: Seen from the outside, Italy is one nation united under pasta: families cook it almost every day at home, and very few restaurants fail to offer at least one kind on the menu ... [but] if we look a little closer, we will notice that every place has its own speciality, and that the next town over has a completely different way of cooking ... these customs reveal a deep love of cooking that I hope to convey to my readers' - Luca Cesari