A Short History of Spaghetti with Tomato Sauce
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- £7.99
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- £7.99
Publisher Description
THE MYTHS SURROUNDING THE WORLD'S FAVOURITE DISH, DEBUNKED
Did Marco Polo bring pasta back from China, or is that a myth?
How did the Neapolitan "macharoni" turn into the ubiquitous spaghetti?
Is it even an Italian dish?
Hundreds of shapes and thousands of recipes give expression to the culture and products of the country's regions. But spaghetti with tomato sauce remains Italy's identity dish par excellence.
Massimo Montanari goes in search of the dish's true origins, tracing its history along the multiple, intricate routes taken by its raw ingredients to merge and become a distinctive element of culinary tradition.
It took almost two thousand years and input from the Far East, the Arabic world, and the Americas, for the dish to take centre stage. Its development is the result of chance encounters, unplanned exchanges, and unpredictable intersections. As we dig in search of spaghetti's origins, we find its strands wrap right around the world.
"Learned and entertaining."–Il Giornale
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Food historian Montanari (Let the Meatballs Rest) "reflect on the meaning of roots, identities, and origins" in this illuminating examination of one of the world's most famous culinary pairings. Readers should be warned—this is not light reading, but rather a rigorous exploration of prevalent beliefs, whether accurate or not, connected to the ingredients that make up the revered coupling of spaghetti and tomato sauce. Many will be surprised to learn that pasta was invented in the Middle East around 10,000–12,000 years ago as a derivation of unleavened bread cut into flattened strips similar to tagliatelle, and that Marco Polo did not introduce pasta to Italy on a return voyage from China, as is commonly thought by pasta lovers. Montanari offers, in essence, a deconstruction of the meal, starting with the practice of drying and cooking pasta and moving on to the advent of macaroni and the addition of cheese. He also examines the evolution of cooking "al dente" (a departure from the two-hour boil noodles endured in medieval times); the shift from eating pasta with white cheese sauce to red sauce with tomato in the 17th century; and the emergence of the "Mediterranean diet," which popularized the use of olive oil. While this scholarly treatise may be better suited for those with big appetites for knowledge, it's full of delicious details.
