Q 01/05

The word 'spaghetti' is the plural diminutive of the Italian spago, meaning what?

A) String

B) Stick

C) Worm

D) Thread of gold

Answer · why

A) String

So a single strand is, strictly, a spaghetto: a little string.

Q 02/05

Standard Italian spaghetti is made from water and the semolina of which grain?

A) Spelt

B) Einkorn

C) Barley

D) Durum

Answer · why

D) Durum

Durum's hardness is what lets dried spaghetti hold its bite when cooked al dente.

Q 03/05

Al-Idrisi recorded the first thin dried pasta being made at Trabia, near which Sicilian city?

A) Catania

B) Messina

C) Palermo

D) Syracuse

Answer · why

C) Palermo

That 12th-century note is centuries before Marco Polo, whose 'discovery' of pasta in China is a myth.

Q 04/05

Whose 1559 publication is blamed for the myth that Marco Polo brought pasta back from China?

A) Vasari

B) Ramusio

C) Machiavelli

D) Castiglione

Answer · why

B) Ramusio

Polo had actually compared a Sumatran sago-flour food to the pastas he already knew from Italy.

Q 05/05

Marco Polo compared Italian pasta to a food the people of Sumatra made from which flour?

A) Sago

B) Rice

C) Cassava

D) Taro

Answer · why

A) Sago

He said he brought samples back to Venice; the story was later garbled into pasta itself coming from the East.