Pasta

Pasta, the most famous staple of Italian cuisine, was first recorded in Sicily back in the 12th century; a few centuries after Arab invaders brought a dried, noodle like dish to the island.

A worker hangs pasta to dry in a factory in Italy, 1932 (IMAGE: ALFRED EISENSTAEDT/ULLSTEIN BILD VIA GETTY IMAGES)

Mainly made from unleavened dough of wheat mixed with water or eggs, and formed into sheets or other shapes, pasta was for many centuries a food reserved for the rich and privileged. It was not until the 18th century that industrialized production made it a cheap staple food for large numbers of Italians. Soft and malleable pasta dough is shaped into hundreds of different forms, from the simple strands and sheets of spaghetti and lasagna, which are further taken by bowties, seashells, wagon wheels and bicycles and sold in the markets and streets. With massive Italian immigration to America at the beginning of the 20th century, pasta’s popularity grew and it became known as Italy’s national dish.

A worker for Atlantic Macaroni Company hangs spaghetti to dry at a factory in Long Island City, New York, 1943 ( IMAGE: GETTY IMAGES)

But even as late as 1957, many people outside of Italy had no clue how it was made. On April Fool’s Day of that year, the BBC aired a story on Italians enjoying a bumper harvest of spaghetti due to a decline in the “spaghetti weevil.” The program showed Italian and Swiss families cheerfully picking long strands of spaghetti from “spaghetti trees,” and led many viewers to call in, curious about how they could plant their own.

Spaghetti hangs in a drain chamber in an Italian pasta factory. (IMAGE: KEYSTONE-FRANCE/GAMMA-KEYSTONE VIA GETTY IMAGES)

PASTA POETRY: GOETHE’S ITALIAN JOURNEY

The city of Naples and the surrounding region, including Sicily, saw a surge in the production of pasta in the 17th and 18th centuries. On a visit to the Kingdom of Naples in 1787, the German poet Goethe witnessed the pasta boom firsthand.

“It can be bought everywhere and in all the shops for very little money. As a rule it is simply cooked in water and seasoned with grated cheese.” One day he was visiting Agrigento in Sicily with some friends. They stayed in the home of a family who gave them a dish of macaroni, whose shape, texture, and color fascinated the German writer. As they sat at the table, their hosts explained that this type of pasta was made only from the highest quality hard wheat, and then formed by hand into a spiral shape like a snail’s shell. “This macaroni they served us was exquisite ... The pasta seemed unparalleled to me in its whiteness and fineness.”

IMAGE: ALFRED EISENSTAEDT/ULLSTEIN BILD VIA GETTY IMAGES

Zelda Albano cuts spaghetti into lengths as it emerges from a machine at a pasta factory in Holloway, London.

A chef makes tagliatelle at King Bomba's, one of the largest Italian shops in Soho, London, 1939

Men at work in a pasta factory.

A Russian factory worker handles strands of pasta.

Young boys carry strands of pasta to a factory yard for drying.

IMAGE: FOX PHOTOS/GETTY IMAGES

IMAGE: FOX PHOTOS/GETTY IMAGES

Pasta strands hung out to dry at a factory in Naples, Italy. c. 1925

IMAGE: FOX PHOTOS/HULTON ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES

IMAGE: SCHLOCHAUER/ULLSTEIN BILD VIA GETTY IMAGES

An Italian factory worker bends dried spaghetti with a stick, 1932

Strands of spaghetti dry on racks near the beach in Amalfi, Italy.

Pasta is hung out to dry in a market. (IMAGE: BETTMANN/GETTY IMAGES)

FOOD FOR THE COMMON MAN

Three Neapolitan beggars, orlazzaroni,eating a dish of macaroni with their hands in the middle of a street. The detail is from the oil painting “Macaroni Eaters” by Domenico Gargiulo, a 17th-century native of the city where cheap wheat and rising meat prices were turning pasta into an affordable staple.

PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY DEA/ALBUM

Pasta vendors in 1880s Naples sell vermicelli in industrial quantities in this 19th-century hand-colored woodcut. (PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY: AKG)