Italian Cuisine Truisms

Despite the discovery, by Chinese archaeologists, of 4000-year-old strands of pasta, I'm inclined to say no to this, for a simple reason: Once you have begun to make flour, and bread, it seems an obvious next step to make a firm dough, roll it out, and dry it to produce something -- pasta -- that will keep very well, much better than either flour or bread. I therefore think that pasta has been discovered independently more than once in the course of history.

What about the story that Marco Polo brought pasta home with him in 1291? He calls what he ate in the orient by its Italian name, pasta, and says it was made from tree flour (i.e. soy flour). Moreover, Arabs were already making spaghetti at Trabia, in Sicily, in 1150, long before Marco set out.

As for Ravioli, the concept is again quite obvious. And again, they're mentioned in documents predating Marco Polo's trip. So they didn't come from China.

More about Serving and Saucing Pasta. | The Pasta Shapes Gallery