QuickCheck: Did Marco Polo 'import' pasta from China?

THE late mediaeval Venetian explorer and merchant Marco Polo brought back the technique of noodle-making to Venice (which later became part of Italy) when he returned from his famous travels through East Asia.

Is this true?

Verdict:

FALSE

Marco Polo did not import the concept of making pasta from China. The first mention of pasta in written history was during the Roman era in the 1st century AD.

Roman poet Horace wrote about a common dish eaten in Rome called lagana (singular: laganum) which were essentially thin sheets of dough.

In the 2nd century, Athenaeus of Naucratis provided the recipe for lagana which was made from wheat flour, flavoured with spices and deep-fried in oil.

By the 5th century, the dish had further evolved into a layered dish with dough and meat stuffing, the precursor to lasagna.

In North Africa, a food similar to pasta, known as couscous, has been eaten for centuries.

Unlike pasta, it lacks the malleable nature of pasta as couscous is more akin to droplets of dough.

Food historians estimate that pasta 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.

How the story Marco Polo imported pasta to Italy was actually the result of an advertising campaign for a Canadian spaghetti company in the 1920s and 1930s.

In Rustichello da Pisa book Travels, Marco Polo's 13th century travelogue, Marco Polo describes chinese noodles as similar to lagana.

References:

1. https://archive.org/details/pastastoryofuniv00silv

2. Jeffrey Steingarten, The Man who Ate Everything: And Other Gastronomic Feats, Disputes, and Pleasurable Pursuits, 1998