Talk:Pasta

History confusion

From the History section: The first concrete information on pasta products in Italy dates to the 13th or 14th centuries. In the 1st-century writings of Horace, lagana (sg.: laganum) were fine sheets of fried dough and were an everyday foodstuff. Writing in the 2nd century, Athenaeus of Naucratis provides a recipe for lagana which he attributes to the 1st-century Chrysippus of Tyana: sheets of dough made of wheat flour and the juice of crushed lettuce, then flavored with spices and deep-fried in oil. An early 5th-century cookbook describes a dish called lagana that consisted of layers of dough with meat stuffing, an ancestor of modern-day lasagna. However, the method of cooking these sheets of dough does not correspond to the modern definition of either a fresh or dry pasta product, which only had similar basic ingredients and perhaps the shape.

The first sentence states that the first concrete information on pasta products dates to the 13th or 14th centuries. The text then goes on to tell us of concrete information about pasta dating to earlier centuries, contradicting the first sentence. Finally, the last sentence says "Haha, fooled you, nobody would consider those to be pasta anyway." OK, I exaggerate, but this all needs to be fixed, along with the following paragraph going back in time one more time to discuss precursors to pasta. What of this isn't actually about pasta or its predecessors, and if there is any such thing, can we remove it? And can we push the remainder of it into chronological order? Largoplazo (talk) 03:32, 19 February 2026 (UTC)

Montanari has a good treatment that is unused here but is partially used in spaghetti. The idea is that there is a European tradition of fresh pasta and a Middle Eastern/African tradition of dried pasta. Around (before) the 12th century, dried pasta entered Italy via Sicily and became conceptually associated with the European tradition creating the broader concept of "pasta" even as foods themselves preceded the concepts. Not sure how much Serventi and Sabban have been superseded, there seemed some conflict as to the transport of pasta or pasta-like foods to Sicily. Would be really good if we had more Italian language sources. I have thought for a little while that a History of pasta page is needed; I lack the energy nor inclination to edit in this topic area for a time so it's all yours if you want it. It's important to recognise that the distinction between pasta and proto-pasta is subjective and should be attributed. Rollinginhisgrave (talk | edits) 04:01, 19 February 2026 (UTC)

I see no issue with the information at all, and I am baffled as to why you're confused. It's true that the info might not be organized ideally, but that's about it. I think this can be fixed easily by modifying the opening of the section to read as follows: "The first concrete information on pasta products in Italy dates to the 13th or 14th centuries, however there is evidence dating as far back as 400 BCE of people making pasta or precursor food items that may have evolved into what we now consider to be pasta."

Edit request

Evidence of Etruscans making pasta dates back to 400 BCE.^{[better source needed]} The first concrete information on pasta products in Italy dates to the 13th or 14th centuries.

Add source after prior source before . It has a source already, don't remove the tag.

(User:Wikipedian12512 helped User:Linux Luvver make this request) Linux Luvver (talk) 17:09, 22 May 2026 (UTC)

I'm not at all sure what you want here, as you have not followed the instruction in the request above, viz "please change X to Y"

No change to article made, and the "source" you suggest doesn't look reliable to me. - Walter Still not in the Epstein Files Ego 17:40, 22 May 2026 (UTC)

References

History of pasta in Italy

The article asserts in the lead paragraph, "evidence of Etruscans making pasta as early as 400 BCE in Italy." However, what looks like more reliable sources in the article refute this. The National Geographic article cited in the article asserts:

Many Italian writers have argued that a tomb from the fourth century B.C. bears a relief of pasta-making equipment, suggesting the dish was being enjoyed in pre-Roman Italy. Many food historians, however, dispute this interpretation of the relief. They point out that Roman-era references to anything resembling pasta are scarce, and that the dish probably took hold in Italy as a result of extensive Mediterranean trading in the Middle Ages. From the 13th century, references to pasta dishes—macaroni, ravioli, gnocchi, vermicelli—crop up with increasing frequency across the Italian Peninsula.

Serventi and Sabban's Pasta: the Story of a Universal Food, frequently cited throughout the article to establish the history of pasta in Europe, seems like a very scholarly work. It makes no mention of evidence of Etruscan manufacture of pasta. In fact, as mentioned in the article, Serventi and Sabban assert:

The first concrete information concerning pasta products in Italy dates from the thirteenth or fourteenth century.

Their work notes:

Europeans invented pasta late, even though conditions favored them. The Chinese, in contrast, found themselves in a totally opposite situation. Despite an agricultural environment that was anything but favorable to the manufacture of wheat-based pasta, they were familiar with wheat-based pasta long before the Europeans.

They provide cultural and religious explanations for why pasta took so long to develop in Europe. For a long time, wheat flour products remained either baked or fried bread-like foods, or were water-cooked mush and gruel.

If I read Serventi and Sabban correctly, there's little evidence of pre-Roman pasta making. There are various foods that bear some resemblance to pasta, such as fried flatbreads used to make lasagne. However, descriptions of what we would call pasta don't appear until the 12th century, with concrete information on pasta making in Europe appearing in the 13th or 14th centuries.

I would propose that this article removes the assertion of Etruscan pasta making, or at least point out the dubiousness of the claim, and point out how what Europeans know as pasta doesn't appear to have been made for about a thousand years after that claim. Davidwbaker (talk) 07:04, 27 May 2026 (UTC)

Can we reorder the sentences here?

This is the current state of a paragraph on this page: There is a legend that Marco Polo imported pasta from China. Rustichello da Pisa writes in his Travels that Marco Polo described a food similar to lagana. The way pasta reached Europe is unknown, however there are many theories, Jeffrey Steingarten asserts that Moors introduced pasta in the Emirate of Sicily in the 9th century, mentioning also that traces of pasta have been found in ancient Greece and that Jane Grigson believed the Marco Polo story to have originated in the 1920s or 1930s in an advertisement for a Canadian spaghetti company. Corections: The way pasta reached Europe is unknown, however there are many theories. There is a legend that Marco Polo imported pasta from China. Rustichello da Pisa writes in his Travels that Marco Polo described a food similar to lagana. Jeffrey Steingarten asserts that Moors introduced pasta in the Emirate of Sicily in the 9th century, mentioning also that traces of pasta have been found in ancient Greece and that Jane Grigson believed the Marco Polo story to have originated in the 1920s or 1930s in an advertisement for a Canadian spaghetti company. ~2026-35332-55 (talk) 14:30, 16 June 2026 (UTC)

Is pasta a type of noodle? (redux)

I know this has been discussed before. Some previous discussions: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

There's a discrepancy — Most places on Wikipedia say that noodle is the more general term and pasta is a specific type of noodle, but this article doesn't mention it. Places on Wikipedia that mention it are: Pasta ("Italian noodles are generally referred to as pasta."), Template:Noodle, and the way that Category:Pasta is a member of Category:Noodles, and that Category:Pasta dishes is a member of Category:Noodle dishes.

(I would like to only discuss whether pasta is a type of noodle here; hopefully we can address the history questions in a different section, such as "Which came first?" or "Did one influence the other?")

I know there's some nuance here, such as regional differences in how the two words are used, that some things are considered pasta but not noodles (e.g. gnocchi, stuffed pasta). But I think that most places on Wikipedia acknowledge that one is usually a subset of the other.

--Hirsutism (talk) 21:40, 29 June 2026 (UTC)