Pasta : the story of a universal food / Silvano Serventi and Françoise Sabban ; translated by Antony Shugaar.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Serventi, Silvano, author.

Sabban, Françoise, author.

Contributor:

Shugaar, Antony, translator.

Series:

Arts and traditions of the table.

Arts and traditions of the table : perspectives on culinary history

Standardized Title:

Pasta. English

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Cooking (Pasta).

Pasta industry.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (464 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

New York : Columbia University Press, [2002]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Ranging from the imperial palaces of ancient China and the bakeries of fourteenth-century Genoa and Naples all the way to the restaurant kitchens of today, Pasta tells a story that will forever change the way you look at your next plate of vermicelli. Pasta has become a ubiquitous food, present in regional diets around the world and available in a host of shapes, sizes, textures, and tastes. Yet, although it has become a mass-produced commodity, it remains uniquely adaptable to innumerable recipes and individual creativity. Pasta: The Story of a Universal Food shows that this enormously popular food has resulted from of a lengthy process of cultural construction and widely diverse knowledge, skills, and techniques.Many myths are intertwined with the history of pasta, particularly the idea that Marco Polo brought pasta back from China and introduced it to Europe. That story, concocted in the early twentieth century by the trade magazine Macaroni Journal, is just one of many fictions umasked here. The true homelands of pasta have been China and Italy. Each gave rise to different but complementary culinary traditions that have spread throughout the world. From China has come pasta made with soft wheat flour, often served in broth with fresh vegetables, finely sliced meat, or chunks of fish or shellfish. Pastasciutta, the Italian style of pasta, is generally made with durum wheat semolina and presented in thick, tomato-based sauces. The history of these traditions, told here in fascinating detail, is interwoven with the legacies of expanding and contracting empires, the growth of mercantilist guilds and mass industrialization, and the rise of food as an art form. Whether you are interested in the origins of lasagna, the strange genesis of the Chinese pasta bing or the mystique of the most magnificent pasta of all, the timballo, this is the book for you. So dig in!

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Series Editor's Preface

Preface

Note Concerning a Definition of Pasta Products

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. The Infancy of an Art

2. The Time of the Pioneers

3. From the Hand to the Extrusion Press

4. The Golden Age of the Pasta Manufactory

5. The Industrial Age

6. Pasta Without Borders

7. The Time of Plenty

8. The Taste for Pasta

9. China: Pasta's Other Homeland

10. The Words of Pasta

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780231519441

0231519443

OCLC:

861793028