A Short History of Spaghetti with Tomato Sauce by Massimo Montanari
Ranging from the 9th to the 20th century, all around the Mediterranean world and across the sea to Latin America, Mexico and the United States, A Short History of Spaghetti with Tomato Sauce (Europa Compass) is so much more than the chronicle of a familiar, beloved dish.
The book is an inquiry into culture, economics and society — the diverse factors that led to the evolution of this particular type of pasta and this particular sauce. While A Short History is a scholarly work, the prose is light and easy, making the history of spaghetti with tomato sauce eminently digestible.
Massimo Montanari, a culinary historian who specializes in agrarian and medieval history, is captivated by origins and encounters. How did the famous recipio come into existence? Why and when was it first prepared in this way? The author argues that even a village chef, cooking up a storm during the early Renaissance, would have been influenced by events far beyond his purview. Cheese, tomatoes, grain: each arrived in the kitchen bearing its own winding tale of peace and conflict.
DEBUNKING THE MARCO POLO PASTA MYTH
Before launching into the story, Montanari disposes of a persistent fiction, that Marco Polo was responsible for the discovery of pasta. The idea that one of the sailors on the explorer’s boat, a Venetian with the felicitous name of Spaghetti, disembarks and “happens upon a farm woman who is stirring a bowl of semi-liquid batter, which then, in the hot dry climate of Cathay, solidifies,” is truly absurd.
“He gets the woman to give him a bit of that batter … and rushes back to the ship in excitement. He kneads and pulls that pasta into long strips, thus creating spaghetti.” This 1929 fabrication, the work of a publicist for an American pasta industry association, is wittily debunked.
It was between the 9th and 11th centuries, during the Arab occupation of Sicily, that the existence of a pasta industry was first documented. “Itriyya,” long-form dried pasta, became an important export to Islamic and Christian countries as described by al-Idrisi, a geographer who circled the Mediterranean. Competing producers emerged in Genoa, Sardinia, Pisa and other regions where grains flourished in rich, fertile “Hellenic subsoil.”
PASTA’S MANY NEW SHAPES AND PREPARATIONS
Before long, chefs were inspired to create variations on the original wide strips of pasta known as lagane. Out of fresh dough they conjured “tubo” (tube), “cannello” (blow pipe) and “vermicello” (little worm). During the Middle Ages, Montanari hypothesizes that filled pasta — traditional to Turco-Mongolian cuisine — made its way west, where it became tortelli and tortellini. But it was the creation of nonperishable dried pasta, known by the overarching term, “maccheroni,” that may be considered truly revolutionary.
Since dried pasta is inedible, Montanari considers various ways that were used to cook it. Traditionally, humans have roasted moist ingredients in order to dry them and boiled dry ingredients in order to moisten them. For a long time, pasta was baked or fried until cooking it in water, broth or milk became the preferred method. Incidentally, this led to widespread use of boiling in the preparation of all types of food. Originally, pasta recipes called for one or two hours in the pot. As an antidote to the inevitable gluiness, dried spices such as thyme and pennyroyal were added. So was “Grana Padano,” a cow’s milk cheese first produced in northern Italy in the 12th century.
Cheese and pasta are a natural combination, but it is surprising to learn that cheese came to pasta long before sauce, and in vast quantities according to Montanari, who evokes a scene from a 16th-century novella in which Venetian gentlemen attend dinner: macaroni dressed with “more than twenty-five pounds of parmigiana cheese, and six to eight caciocavalli, and endless spices … and so much butter they were swimming in it.” Four centuries would pass before cheese would be relegated to second fiddle, the standard topping for spaghetti served with tomato sauce.
THE TOMATO’S STRANGE EUROPEAN DEBUT
Native to the west coast of South America, tomatoes were brought to Spain during the early 1500s and soon arrived in Italy, where they were examined by naturalists and botanists and named “pomi d’oro.” The tomato was thought to be related to the eggplant, and physicians believed both plants to be strange and unhealthy, so they were not favored as food. But during the 1700s, when Italy was governed by Spain, tomatoes finally made the leap into Italian cookbooks. Before long, tomato sauce prepared “alla Spagnola,” with onion, chili pepper, lard, salt and vinegar, accompanied boiled meat and fish, eggs, greens and — at last — pasta.
With the dawn of the 20th century, spaghetti with tomato sauce became a full-fledged entrée; a vegetarian dish because the sauce essentially contained tomatoes, olive oil, garlic, onion and, perhaps, basil. It was served al dente and made its way to the United States.
Indeed, Montanari gives America credit for helping to create a culinary identity among 20th-century Italian immigrants, especially those who had been peasants in southern Italy. Here, in the “land of abundance,” he argues, they could eat pasta every day. This delightful book will inspire readers to want to do the same.
