Brief History of Pasta

Pasta has a longer history than most people realise, and a more complicated one. The idea that Marco Polo brought it back from China is one of the most persistent food myths going. The reality is that pasta was already well established in Italy centuries before his journey to China in the late 1200s.

Ancient Origins

The earliest precursors to pasta appear in ancient Italy. The Etruscans made a form of lasagne using spelt and water, and the Romans baked unleavened flatbreads from flour and water called làgana, a word that survives in the modern Italian lasagna. These were baked rather than boiled, which puts them some distance from pasta as we know it, but the lineage is clear.

Sicily and the Arab Influence

What we would recognise as pasta today has its roots in Sicily, where Arab traders introduced a dried, extruded pasta known in Arabic as itryah during the medieval period. This was a practical food: dried pasta could be stored and transported, which made it valuable for long sea voyages. A version of this pasta, vermicelli di Tria, is still made and eaten in Palermo today, making it one of the oldest continuously produced pasta shapes in existence.

By the late 8th century, pasta had become widely enough eaten across the Italian peninsula that it was being referred to generically as maccheroni, a term that covered everything from lasagne sheets to extruded shapes to stuffed pasta.

Naples and the Tomato

Naples played a different but equally significant role in pasta history. While the Neapolitans did not invent pasta, they were the first to pair long extruded pasta with tomato sauce, a combination that became so closely associated with the city that Neapolitans earned the nickname mangiamaccheroni (macaroni eaters) by the 19th century. The tomato itself had only arrived in Europe from the Americas in the 16th century and took another hundred years or so to make its way into everyday Italian cooking.

By the 1800s, Naples and Genoa had become the centres of pasta production and export, drawing durum wheat from Puglia and Sicily to supply a growing domestic and international market.

Pasta Today

Italy remains the world's largest producer and consumer of pasta. Around half of its annual production is exported, and global demand has grown steadily as the dish has become a staple in kitchens far beyond the Mediterranean.

There are over 300 recognised pasta shapes in Italy, each with regional roots and traditional pairings. The differences between them are not merely aesthetic: shape affects texture, cooking time, and how well a pasta holds a given sauce. Long thin strands suit smooth, oil-based sauces. Wide ribbons handle robust meat ragù. Short, ridged shapes catch chunky vegetable and tomato sauces. Stuffed shapes like ravioli and tortellini carry a filling that becomes part of the dish itself.

Making fresh pasta at home connects directly to this history. The basic technique, flour, eggs or water, kneading, and rolling, has not changed in centuries. The tools have improved, but the process is the same one that has been repeated in Italian kitchens for generations. If you are new to it, our fresh egg pasta dough recipe is the straightforward place to start, and our range of Marcato pasta machines covers everything from a basic manual roller to a motorised setup.