Pasta

The Story of a Universal Food

By: Silvano Serventi, Francoise Sabban, Antony Shugaar (Translator)

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Hardcover | 6 November 2002 | Edition Number 1

At a Glance

Hardcover
416 Pages

Age
22+

Dimensions(cm)
35.9 x 24.3 x 10

Hardcover

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Ranging from the imperial palaces of ancient China and the bakeries of fourteenth-century Genoa and Naples all the way to the restaurant kitchens of today, Pasta tells a story that will forever change the way you look at your next plate of vermicelli. Pasta has become a ubiquitous food, present in regional diets around the world and available in a host of shapes, sizes, textures, and tastes. Yet, although it has become a mass-produced commodity, it remains uniquely adaptable to innumerable recipes and individual creativity. Pasta: The Story of a Universal Food shows that this enormously popular food has resulted from of a lengthy process of cultural construction and widely diverse knowledge, skills, and techniques.

Many myths are intertwined with the history of pasta, particularly the idea that Marco Polo brought pasta back from China and introduced it to Europe. That story, concocted in the early twentieth century by the trade magazine Macaroni Journal, is just one of many fictions umasked here. The true homelands of pasta have been China and Italy. Each gave rise to different but complementary culinary traditions that have spread throughout the world. From China has come pasta made with soft wheat flour, often served in broth with fresh vegetables, finely sliced meat, or chunks of fish or shellfish. Pastasciutta, the Italian style of pasta, is generally made with durum wheat semolina and presented in thick, tomato-based sauces. The history of these traditions, told here in fascinating detail, is interwoven with the legacies of expanding and contracting empires, the growth of mercantilist guilds and mass industrialization, and the rise of food as an art form.

Whether you are interested in the origins of lasagna, the strange genesis of the Chinese pasta bing or the mystique of the most magnificent pasta of all, the timballo, this is the book for you. So dig in!

Industry Reviews

Serventi and Sabban's remarkable tracing of pasta's history and development makes this a central addition to the history of food. -- Mark Knoblauch Booklist [Pasta] is stuffed as tight as cannelloni with facts, numbers and quotes...an excellent study not only of pasta but of the way a single product can mutate and influence various economies over time...no doubt the exhaustive new authority on its subject. Publishers Weekly A feast for the mind. Guardian Offers more in the way of pasta history than most readers have even begun to imagine. Kirkus Reviews There are countless books on pasta, but none before has really explained how noodles took over the world, from the two great civilizations of China and Italy... [Pasta] is rich with stories. -- Bee Wilson London Times You might think that a 400-plus-page book about pasta wouldn't be much of a page turner, but you'd be wrong...Serventi & Sabban have written an engrossing book. -- Dan Santow Chicago Tribune [A]nyone who cares about pasta (which is to say, anyone who eats) will find a great deal of fascinating material to savor. This book is catnip for history buffs. -- Fred Plotkin Gastronomica Pasta shows how much is to be gained by looking at historical change through the lens provided by... food. -- Priscilla Ferguson Journal of Modern History

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You Can Find This Book In

Non-Fiction Cooking, Food & Drink Cookery By Ingredient Pasta, Noodle & Rice Dishes Society & Culture Cultural Studies Food & Society Engineering & Technology Industrial Chemistry & Manufacturing Technologies Industrial Chemistry Food & Beverage Technology History

Specific Events & Topics in History Reference, Information & Interdisciplinary Subjects Encyclopaedias & Reference Works Recipes & Cookbooks

Series Editor's Preface	p. ix
Preface	p. xi
Note Concerning a Definition of Pasta Products	p. xvii
Acknowledgments	p. xix
Introduction: In the Beginning Was Wheat	p. 1
The King of Cereals of the Mediterranean	p. 1
Wheat in China, a Latter-day Use	p. 4
The Infancy of an Art	p. 9
Going Back to the Myths	p. 10
Pasta, an Unthinkable Food Source	p. 12
First Words, First Hypotheses	p. 14
The Classical Heritage	p. 15
The Sacred Space of Pasta	p. 19
The Primordial Shape	p. 22
Lasagne: The Original Dough Sheet	p. 24
The Family of Vermicelli	p. 28
Dry Pasta, Fresh Pasta	p. 32
Later Developments of Two Traditions	p. 34
Recognition of a Culinary Category	p. 38
The Time of the Pioneers	p. 41
Sicily, the Cradle of Dry Pasta	p. 42
Sardinia and Other Centers of Production	p. 44
An Article of Mass Trade	p. 48
The Market for Dry Pasta	p. 50
The Fresh Pasta Shop	p. 53
Rolling Pins, Blades, and Brakes	p. 56
From the Hand to the Extrusion Press	p. 63
The Routes of Wheat	p. 64
The Emancipation of the Pasta Makers	p. 70
The Triumph of the Brake	p. 77
The Revolution of the Extrusion Press	p. 83
Portrait of the Modern Pasta Manufacturer	p. 87
The Golden Age of the Pasta Manufactory	p. 91
The Birth of Manufacturing	p. 93
Artisanal Manufacturing	p. 98
The Hand That Makes: the Role of Women	p. 102
Natural Drying	p. 108
A Short Guide to Italian Manufacturers	p. 115
Macaroni from Naples and Fine Pasta from Genoa	p. 119
The Industrial Age	p. 127
The Momentum of Modernity	p. 128
The Mechanics of Progress	p. 133
The Bronze Man; or, the Automated Dough Kneader	p. 136
The Triumph of the Machine	p. 142
Drying without Sunlight	p. 150
The Splendor and Misery of a World in Transformation	p. 157
From the Industrial Revolution to the Food Revolution	p. 162
Pasta Without Borders	p. 169
The New Horizons of Pasta	p. 170
From Germany to the Land of the Cossacks	p. 172
Transatlantic Migrations	p. 175
French Traditions	p. 176
Alsace and the Passion for Egg Pasta	p. 184
Pasta from the New World: The Example of the United States	p. 188
The Time of Plenty	p. 197
The World of Pasta	p. 199
The Thwarted Ambitions of French Industrialists	p. 201
The Italian Reconquest	p. 203
American Lessons	p. 208
Victories and Defeats in the Regulation of Raw Materials	p. 212
The Return to Favor of Artisans	p. 216
The Empire of Fresh Pasta	p. 222
The Taste for Pasta	p. 227
A Tradition That Comes from Faraway	p. 230
The Gastronomy of Fresh Pasta	p. 233
Stuffed Pasta: Shapes, Colors, and Flavors	p. 238
Dry Pasta as an Architecture for the Mouth	p. 243
From Pasta That Melts in Your Mouth to Pasta Al Dente	p. 253
Pasta and Its Companions	p. 257
Pasta on the Menu	p. 267
China: Pasta's Other Homeland	p. 271
Of Pasta, Breads, and Flatbreads: The Bing Paradigm	p. 276
The Distinguishing Features of a Civilization	p. 279
Favorite Food of Scholarly Society	p. 286
The Worshipful Bing	p. 294
The Allure of Pasta and the Original Form	p. 297
The First Recipes	p. 304
The Popularity of Bing Throughout China	p. 311
Pasta Products of the North Spread to the South	p. 315
Exotic Flavors, Methods, and Preparations	p. 325
The End of a History, the Richness of a Heritage	p. 333
The Words of Pasta	p. 345
Pasta: The Gluttony of the Land of Cockaigne	p. 345
Pasta and Temperance	p. 346
A Whiff of Cinnamon	p. 347
In Search of Italian Pasta	p. 348
Service Italian-Style	p. 349
The Macaronic Cademy	p. 350
"Spiked" Macaroni Casanova-Style	p. 350
Neapolitan Folklore	p. 352
Conviviality Around the Taverna	p. 353
The Dandy at the Manufactory	p. 356
Behind the Scenes in the Pasta Industry	p. 357
The Dreams of the Hand	p. 358
Notes	p. 361
Bibliography	p. 391
Index	p. 413
Table of Contents provided by Syndetics. All Rights Reserved.

Pasta

The Story of a Universal Food

At a Glance

Hardcover

Industry Reviews

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