50 Fun Facts About Pasta

The word 'pasta' comes from the Italian for what?

It traces further back through Late Latin to the Greek word for barley porridge.

Traditionally, dried pasta was made only from which type of wheat?

Its name is Latin for 'hard', and it makes up only 5 to 8 percent of the world's wheat crop.

Roughly how many specific pasta shapes are known, under more than 1,300 documented names?

Names for the same shape often change from one Italian town to the next.

Many historians think pasta in its modern form reached Italy through which island?

A 1154 text describes dried string pasta being made near Palermo and exported across the Mediterranean.

The story that Marco Polo brought pasta back from China is widely regarded as what?

Food writer Jane Grigson traced the tale to a 1920s or 30s advertisement for a Canadian spaghetti company.

A geographer writing for Roger II in 1154 described dried pasta exported from which town near Palermo?

Al-Idrisi called it itriyya, the Arabic word for the string-like semolina shapes.

Where was a licence for the first pasta factory issued in 1740?

Hungary's first steam-powered pasta factory followed in Pest in 1859.

The first written record of pasta with tomato sauce appears in a cookbook from which year?

Tomatoes had been in Italy since the 16th century but took two hundred years to reach the pasta bowl.

Which country consumed the most pasta per person in 2015, at 23.5 kg each?

Italians eat more pasta than the country's own wheat harvest can supply, so it imports wheat to keep up.

Which country was the world's largest total consumer of pasta in 2017, eating 2.7 million tons?

Per person, though, Americans trail Italians by a wide margin.

The Italian phrase 'al dente' literally means what?

Al dente pasta also has a lower glycemic index than pasta cooked soft.

Farfalle pasta is named after the Italian word for what?

In Emilia-Romagna the same shape is called strichetti, a local word for bow ties.

Orecchiette, meaning 'little ears', is the signature pasta of which Italian region?

The classic dish pairs them with rapini, anchovies, garlic and chilli.

Penne pasta is named for its resemblance to what?

It is one of the few shapes with a birthday: a Genoese pasta maker patented the diagonal cutting machine in 1865.

Which pasta shape's name translates as 'priest strangler'?

One legend says gluttonous priests ate it so fast they choked; another that angry housewives cursed the clergy as they rolled it.

Vermicelli takes its name from the Italian for what?

Confusingly, it is thinner than spaghetti in English-speaking countries but thicker in Italy.

Linguine, meaning 'little tongues', originated in which city?

It was first documented in the 1700s served with green beans, potatoes and pesto.

Spaghetti means 'little strings'; a thicker version is called what?

Spaghettini is the thinner form and capellini thinner still.

Fusilli, the corkscrew pasta, is named after what?

Traditionally the dough was wrapped around a fuso, or spindle; in North America it is often sold as rotini.

Conchiglie pasta gets its name from the Italian word for what?

The Italian conchiglia and the English 'conch' share the same Greek root.

The pasta name rigatoni comes from the Italian word rigato, meaning what?

Unlike penne, rigatoni are cut straight across rather than diagonally.

Cannelloni is Italian for what?

They are egg-pasta cylinders, stuffed and baked under sauce.

Bucatini, the thick spaghetti with a hollow centre, takes its name from buco, meaning what?

In the south of the country the same pasta is called perciatelli, from the local word for 'pierced'.

Academic consensus traces the word 'macaroni' to a Greek word meaning what?

The root makaria referred to the 'blessed dead', possibly via a funeral barley broth.

Gnocchi may take their name from nocchio, the Italian word for what?

Potatoes only entered the recipe in the late 19th century, when milling wheat became too costly for small farmers.

Carbonara is traditionally made with pecorino romano and which cured pork?

The name first appears in print in a 1939 Dutch East Indies newspaper describing a restaurant in Rome's Trastevere.

Cacio e pepe, the Roman pecorino and pepper dish, is popularly said to have been created by whom?

Historians doubt the pepper part: it was too expensive for shepherds when the dish supposedly arose.

The name pesto comes from a Genoese verb meaning what?

The same Latin root gives English the word pestle; basil only entered the recipe in the 1850s.

Which two cities both claim to be the birthplace of tortellini?

A legend set between them says the shape copies the navel of Venus, glimpsed by an innkeeper through a keyhole.

The word lasagna may derive from a Greek word meaning what?

Another theory points to laganon, a flat sheet of dough; the first recorded recipe is from the early 14th century.

In Bologna, ragù alla bolognese is customarily served with which pasta rather than spaghetti?

Pellegrino Artusi printed the first 'bolognese' ragù recipe in 1891; the Italian Academy of Cuisine deposited an official version in 1982.

Amatriciana sauce is named after a town in which Italian region?

It developed from pasta alla gricia, which is the same dish without tomatoes.

Spaghetti alla puttanesca, made with olives, capers and anchovies, was invented in which city?

Its earliest known mention is in a 1961 Italian novel.

Fettuccine Alfredo was created in the early 1900s by a restaurateur in which city?

Alfredo di Lelio reportedly made it to coax his wife into eating after childbirth; in Italy it is rarely called 'Alfredo' outside Rome.

Which Hollywood couple's 1920s visit led Alfredo to serve his fettuccine with a golden fork and spoon?

The gold cutlery was said to be a thank-you gift inscribed 'To Alfredo the King of the noodles'.

Spaghetti and meatballs as we know it was developed by Italian immigrants where?

It is Italian-American: southern Italian peasant dishes evolved once cheap meat became available.

Barilla, the world's largest pasta producer, was founded in 1877 as a bakery in which city?

It runs 30 production sites, half in Italy and half abroad.

Kraft Dinner (Kraft Mac & Cheese) began being marketed in Canada in which year?

Canadians eat 55 percent more boxes per person than Americans.

A Depression-era salesman first sold macaroni and cheese together by attaching cheese to pasta boxes with what?

Grant Leslie of Dundee, working in St. Louis, came up with the idea before Kraft packaged it.

Chef Boyardee was founded in 1928 by an Italian immigrant chef in which US city?

Ettore Boiardi first sold his spaghetti sauce to restaurant customers in milk bottles.

SpaghettiOs, the ring-shaped canned pasta, were introduced in 1965 by which company?

Marketing manager Donald Goerke was nicknamed 'the Daddy-O of SpaghettiOs' for creating a pasta kids could eat with a spoon.

Canned ravioli were pioneered during the First World War by whom?

Heinz and Buitoni later popularised them in Europe and Chef Boyardee in the US.

On April Fools' Day 1957 the BBC's Panorama showed a Swiss family harvesting spaghetti from what?

Viewers rang the BBC asking how to grow their own; CNN later called it the biggest hoax any reputable news outlet ever pulled.

Instant noodles were invented in 1958 by Momofuku Ando under which brand name?

Cup Noodles, the first noodles sold in a cup, followed in 1971.

Ramen's origins are traced to the Chinatown of which Japanese city?

It only became popular nationwide after World War II, when rice shortages pushed up wheat consumption.

Couscous, the North African semolina staple, was added to which UNESCO list in 2020?

Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia and Mauritania made the joint nomination.

Fideuà, a paella-like dish made with noodles, comes from the coast of which Spanish region?

Legend says a ship's cook swapped in noodles to stop the captain eating all the rice.

Which French-trained chef created the modern form of pastitsio, the Greek baked pasta with béchamel?

The word comes from the Italian pasticcio, which also means 'a mess'.

Semolina, the coarse flour used for pasta, is milled from durum and is what colour?

The Codex Alimentarius sets a minimum grain size to qualify as semolina.

Ravioli appear under the name 'rauioles' in which 14th-century English cookbook?

It was compiled by the master cooks of King Richard II.