Pasta

Pasta is a food made from an unleavened dough of wheat flour and water or eggs, which is shaped into sheets or other forms and then cooked by boiling or baking. Originally, only durum wheat was used, but today gluten-free alternatives like rice flour or legume flours from beans or lentils are also common. A staple of Italian cuisine, pasta in its recognizable form is thought by many historians to have reached Italy through Sicily during the Middle Ages, thanks to Mediterranean trade.

Pastas fall into two main categories: dried (pasta secca) and fresh (pasta fresca). Most dried pasta is made commercially through extrusion, though it can be made at home. Fresh pasta is traditionally handmade, sometimes with simple machines, while store-bought fresh pasta is produced by large-scale machinery. Both types come in many shapes and varieties—310 specific forms are known, with over 1,300 documented names. In Italy, names for the same shape often vary by region; for instance, cavatelli has 28 different names depending on the town. Fresh and dried pastas are used in three classic dish types: pasta asciutta (or pastasciutta), where cooked pasta is plated with a sauce; pasta in brodo, where pasta is part of a soup; and pasta al forno, where pasta is baked in the oven. Pasta dishes are generally simple but vary in preparation, served as small first courses, light lunches like pasta salads, or larger dinners. Sauces also differ in taste, color, and texture.

Common pasta forms include long and short shapes, tubes, flat sheets, miniature shapes for soup, stuffed varieties, and decorative forms. Long pasta is usually made by rolling, cutting, or extruding, and pairs best with thinner sauces to prevent chunks from sticking. Short pastas are extruded and work well with thicker sauces, as their shapes hold sauce better. Stuffed pasta is folded around fillings like meat or vegetables.

The word “pasta” first appeared in English in the 1830s, coming from Italian pasta (“paste”), from Late Latin pasta, and ultimately from Greek pastē (“barley porridge”).

Some Italian writers have claimed Etruscans made pasta as early as 400 BCE, but most food historians find insufficient archaeological evidence for this, instead dating pasta’s establishment in Italy to the Middle Ages. Ancient Mediterranean cultures had dough-based foods similar to pasta. In the 1st century, Horace wrote of lagana—fine sheets of fried dough, an everyday food. In the 2nd century, Athenaeus of Naucratis recorded a recipe for lagana from the 1st-century Chrysippus of Tyana: wheat flour dough with lettuce juice, spiced and deep-fried. An early 5th-century cookbook describes lagana as layered dough with meat stuffing, an ancestor of lasagna, though its cooking method didn’t match modern fresh or dry pasta.

Wheat noodles were prominent in China during the Han dynasty. According to food historians Françoise Sabban and Silvano Serventi, wheat-based pasta traditions developed in China long before Europe. Food historian Gil Marks notes that European dough recipes were typically baked or fried, and strips of dough weren’t boiled before the medieval period. Noodle-making spread from China along the Silk Road to Central Asia, reaching Persia by the 4th or 5th century, where they were called laksha (Farsi for “slippery”). This food later reached Sicily and Spain through Arab influence, known as itriya, and likely spread to mainland Italy after the 10th century. Lexical milestones include the 2nd-century Greek physician Galen mentioning itrion (flour and water compounds), the Jerusalem Talmud recording itrium (boiled dough) in Palestine from the 3rd to 5th centuries, and a 9th-century Arab dictionary defining itriyya as string-like shapes of semolina dried before cooking. In 1154, Muhammad al-Idrisi’s geographical text, compiled for Norman king Roger II of Sicily, describes itriyya manufactured and exported from Norman Sicily near Trabia, where mills powered by streams produced vast quantities.