June 1, 2009 • 10 mins
As one of history's most well-known globetrotters, Marco Polo is credited with many important contributions to Western civilization. Many believe pasta is one of these contributions -- but is it a myth? Learn more in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello and welcome to the podcast.
I'm editor Candice Keener, joined by fellow editor Katie Lambert.
How you today, Candice? I am doing well and I
(00:20):
have a surprising statistic for you. Did you know that
today's Italians consume between sixty six and seventy seven pounds
of pasta every year? I think I know where I
need to move. Then it sounds like a great idea.
And this is easiness into today's podcast topic, which is
a little bit different from what we usually do. We're
(00:42):
usually based the podcasts very firmly in history, and today's
you know, no real exception except we're going to be
dwelling a little bit more on food history. And the
podcast title is you all have seen is the Marco
Polo pasta myths. So before we bust the myth, I
just wanted to everyone back up to speed on Marco Polo.
(01:03):
If it's been a while since you heard the Marco
Polo podcast. So, Marco Polo was born in Italy around
twelve fifty four, and in twelve seventy one, when he
was seventeen years old, he went with his father and
uncle on a very extensive trip to the Middle East,
parts of Central Asia, and China, and he became a
(01:23):
huge favorite of Kubla Khan's because he proved that he
was a likable guy. He was good with languages, he
was good with people, and Cohn gave him position of
court career and along with that came a golden passport,
which meant he could go anywhere in China he wanted,
and he did. He explored every inch and there was
(01:44):
eventually some tension that arose between the Mongols and the Chinese,
and so Marco Polo thought it was a good time
to get out of there, and he agreed to deliver
a princess to CON's great nephew and Persia as his
ticket out. When he got back to Italy, he was
embroiled in some military conflicts in Venice was fighting Genoa,
and he wound up in prison for a year and
(02:05):
he had this really body well known writer of a
fellow inmate named resta Cello, and I guess to pass time,
Marco Polo must have told rest to Tello about his
adventures in China, and resta Cello agreed to write a
book based on Marco Polo's life, and it was positive
as a sort of biography, I guess, but it was
(02:25):
very exaggerated. And it's known as the Travels of Marco
Polo and alternately called the Description of the World. And
in one of the parts of the book he describes macaroni,
and people immediately assumed that, like paper, money and the
compass and porcelain, thinks that Marco Polo brought back from China,
(02:49):
he must have also brought macaroni to Italy, and then
macaroni and pasta became Italy's hallmark. But that's actually not true,
but that is a myth and mark Go Polo did
not bring pasta from China to Italy. The Chinese do
have the oldest pasta recipe. In two thousand five, archaeologists
discovered an overturned bowl with a spaghetti like tangle in it,
(03:13):
which might remind you of a college dorm room with
rama noodles. And that pasta is about four thousand years old.
That is by far a very old dish. Yes, and
we usually think when we think of Asian cultures, we
think of rice, but actually they made a kind of
millet pasta and millets not like the wheat pasta you're
(03:33):
probably thinking of. When you make spaghetti, we usually only
see millet in bird seed, and though you wouldn't want
to eat bird seed, millet can actually be pulled and
processed to make a very delicious fresh pasta. But if
the Italians didn't get pasta from the Chinese and Marco Polo,
where did they get it from? That is an excellent question,
(03:54):
and scholars have long debated who came up with pasta first,
the Chinese, the Arabs, or the Italians. And Katie, you
have effectively answered that question. The Chinese thought of it first.
But you may be interested to know that, even though
Italian pasta was created independently of Chinese pasta, the Italians
(04:15):
actually got the idea from the Arabs. And while this
may sound a little bit unusual the idea of Arabian pasta,
bear with us for just a moment, because Arab pasta
was dry pasta, unlike Chinese pasta, which was fresh pasta.
And Katie, you're much better with the differences between the
fresh and dry. You're more of a kirk than I awn,
(04:36):
so maybe you can expand upon this one. The dried
pasta basically the whole point of the Arabs bringing it
was that it survives well over long distances, because dry
pasta is what most of us use when we cook.
You just toss it in a pot of boiling water
and you're ready to go, whereas fresh pasta doesn't keep
you cook it within a few days or within a week.
And you're you were telling me earlier that your father
(04:58):
actually makes fresh pasta, and it's an arduous process because
you're you're molding and you're needing, and you're shaping, and
you're using an extrusion device like a die to actually
push the dough through to create long, thin strands of
spaghetti or vermicelli or whatever you prefer. But Arab pasta
was so handy because it could be reconstituted with water,
(05:20):
and so it was an essential stable for traders and
travelers and militiamen anyone who would be traveling from that
part of the world over to Europe and passing through Sicily.
The Sicilians really grasped onto this concept of pasta. In fact,
if you look at very old Sicilian pasta recipes, some
(05:42):
even call for ingredients like cinnamon and raisins, which we
don't think of as traditional Italian ingredients today, but obviously
they refer back to Arab pasta. And an essential difference
to clarify between Chinese pasta and Italian pasta is that
the Chinese may there's with millet, and the Italians made
theirs with derham. Derham wheat is much heavier and denser
(06:07):
and has much higher protein than some other kinds of wheat,
but it's also tough to deal with because it is
so full protein and so dense. But the great thing
is that it contains gluten, so it's more malleable. So
even though it could be shaped and cared for and
have a longer shelf life than Chinese pasta, it was
pretty unwieldy. And if you still needed any convincing about
(06:30):
the total unrelated nous of Chinese pasta and Italian pasta,
there's a will from a gene V soldier dated twelve
seventy nine, when Marco Polo still would have been in China,
in which this soldier bequeaths macaroni to someone, And it's
fascinating to think that macaroni was considered so valuable. I mean,
(06:52):
today I've got a box of whole wheat routine and
my pantry that I'd be embarrassed if I died and
left behind it's so old. But back the world of
thirteenth century Italy, it was incredibly valuable to have pasta
and your pantry, and that's because of the dirm wheat.
It was so hard to deal with. It took a
whole crew of people working really hard all day long
(07:14):
to turn this pasta into something that you could actually eat.
A good analogy. You think of a really valuable bottle
of wine that sits in your wine cellar in ages
with time and becomes more valuable. That's the essence of
dry pasta, and just reconstitute it later. But I digrass
because we're talking about history and not just about noodles.
So let's delve a little bit into the development of pasta,
(07:37):
because what's so interesting to me is that what began
as a rich man's food eventually became the peasants staple
at the time in Italy. Of course, everything was made
by artisans, and that's the type of thing you find
when you go to a gourmet shop. Now you find
artisanal bread or artisanal cheese, and as you know, it's
very expensive, whereas mass produced boxes of pasta at your
(07:59):
local grocery store pretty cheap, and mass manufacturing makes things
cheaper for everybody. The same thing happened in the United
States when the first factory came to being in eighteen
twenty four. Yeah, and what's great about factory produced pasta
is that it is more readily available for the masses,
and that's something that Italy continues to struggle with today.
(08:20):
The demand for pasta far outweighs the production of pasta
is so ironically enough, it'll even has to import some
pasta give figure. But production of pasta in the United
States is a little bit inauthentic because when dough is
pushed through dies and extruded into strands in different shapes,
it's rendered a little bit smoother than artisanal pasta, so
(08:43):
it doesn't have all those fun little grooves and abrasions
that hold the sauce. But while it may not be
as authentic as Italian pasta originally was, it really served
the American people when the when the Great Depression hit,
for instance, in the world wars and supplies were scarce
and times where and people needed a good staple. I
(09:03):
think that swin recipes for tomato based sauces and pasta
first started appearing in women's magazines, and it's just like
it is now during a recession, when you keep seeing
programs and articles like how to Shop on a budget
and feeding your family for fifty dollars a week. Pasta
is a food of the people. It really is. It's
a great go to item. And so the next time
(09:24):
you crack open a box of noodles and unscrew the
lid on a jar of red sauce, be sure to
think the Arabs, because that's where it came from in
the long line of pasta history. And if you want
to learn even more about Marco Polo, remember him and
the history of pasta? You can read the article did
Marco Polo bring Pasta Back from China? On how staff
(09:46):
works dot com. For more on this and thousands of
other topics, visit how stuff works dot com. Let us
know what you think, send an email to podcast get
how stuff works dot com, and be sure to check
out the Stuff you missed history class plot on the
house staff works dot com home page. M
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello and welcome to the podcast.
I'm editor Candice Keener, joined by fellow editor Katie Lambert.
How you today, Candice? I am doing well and I
(00:20):
have a surprising statistic for you. Did you know that
today's Italians consume between sixty six and seventy seven pounds
of pasta every year? I think I know where I
need to move. Then it sounds like a great idea.
And this is easiness into today's podcast topic, which is
a little bit different from what we usually do. We're
(00:42):
usually based the podcasts very firmly in history, and today's
you know, no real exception except we're going to be
dwelling a little bit more on food history. And the
podcast title is you all have seen is the Marco
Polo pasta myths. So before we bust the myth, I
just wanted to everyone back up to speed on Marco Polo.
(01:03):
If it's been a while since you heard the Marco
Polo podcast. So, Marco Polo was born in Italy around
twelve fifty four, and in twelve seventy one, when he
was seventeen years old, he went with his father and
uncle on a very extensive trip to the Middle East,
parts of Central Asia, and China, and he became a
(01:23):
huge favorite of Kubla Khan's because he proved that he
was a likable guy. He was good with languages, he
was good with people, and Cohn gave him position of
court career and along with that came a golden passport,
which meant he could go anywhere in China he wanted,
and he did. He explored every inch and there was
(01:44):
eventually some tension that arose between the Mongols and the Chinese,
and so Marco Polo thought it was a good time
to get out of there, and he agreed to deliver
a princess to CON's great nephew and Persia as his
ticket out. When he got back to Italy, he was
embroiled in some military conflicts in Venice was fighting Genoa,
and he wound up in prison for a year and
(02:05):
he had this really body well known writer of a
fellow inmate named resta Cello, and I guess to pass time,
Marco Polo must have told rest to Tello about his
adventures in China, and resta Cello agreed to write a
book based on Marco Polo's life, and it was positive
as a sort of biography, I guess, but it was
(02:25):
very exaggerated. And it's known as the Travels of Marco
Polo and alternately called the Description of the World. And
in one of the parts of the book he describes macaroni,
and people immediately assumed that, like paper, money and the
compass and porcelain, thinks that Marco Polo brought back from China,
(02:49):
he must have also brought macaroni to Italy, and then
macaroni and pasta became Italy's hallmark. But that's actually not true,
but that is a myth and mark Go Polo did
not bring pasta from China to Italy. The Chinese do
have the oldest pasta recipe. In two thousand five, archaeologists
discovered an overturned bowl with a spaghetti like tangle in it,
(03:13):
which might remind you of a college dorm room with
rama noodles. And that pasta is about four thousand years old.
That is by far a very old dish. Yes, and
we usually think when we think of Asian cultures, we
think of rice, but actually they made a kind of
millet pasta and millets not like the wheat pasta you're
(03:33):
probably thinking of. When you make spaghetti, we usually only
see millet in bird seed, and though you wouldn't want
to eat bird seed, millet can actually be pulled and
processed to make a very delicious fresh pasta. But if
the Italians didn't get pasta from the Chinese and Marco Polo,
where did they get it from? That is an excellent question,
(03:54):
and scholars have long debated who came up with pasta first,
the Chinese, the Arabs, or the Italians. And Katie, you
have effectively answered that question. The Chinese thought of it first.
But you may be interested to know that, even though
Italian pasta was created independently of Chinese pasta, the Italians
(04:15):
actually got the idea from the Arabs. And while this
may sound a little bit unusual the idea of Arabian pasta,
bear with us for just a moment, because Arab pasta
was dry pasta, unlike Chinese pasta, which was fresh pasta.
And Katie, you're much better with the differences between the
fresh and dry. You're more of a kirk than I awn,
(04:36):
so maybe you can expand upon this one. The dried
pasta basically the whole point of the Arabs bringing it
was that it survives well over long distances, because dry
pasta is what most of us use when we cook.
You just toss it in a pot of boiling water
and you're ready to go, whereas fresh pasta doesn't keep
you cook it within a few days or within a week.
And you're you were telling me earlier that your father
(04:58):
actually makes fresh pasta, and it's an arduous process because
you're you're molding and you're needing, and you're shaping, and
you're using an extrusion device like a die to actually
push the dough through to create long, thin strands of
spaghetti or vermicelli or whatever you prefer. But Arab pasta
was so handy because it could be reconstituted with water,
(05:20):
and so it was an essential stable for traders and
travelers and militiamen anyone who would be traveling from that
part of the world over to Europe and passing through Sicily.
The Sicilians really grasped onto this concept of pasta. In fact,
if you look at very old Sicilian pasta recipes, some
(05:42):
even call for ingredients like cinnamon and raisins, which we
don't think of as traditional Italian ingredients today, but obviously
they refer back to Arab pasta. And an essential difference
to clarify between Chinese pasta and Italian pasta is that
the Chinese may there's with millet, and the Italians made
theirs with derham. Derham wheat is much heavier and denser
(06:07):
and has much higher protein than some other kinds of wheat,
but it's also tough to deal with because it is
so full protein and so dense. But the great thing
is that it contains gluten, so it's more malleable. So
even though it could be shaped and cared for and
have a longer shelf life than Chinese pasta, it was
pretty unwieldy. And if you still needed any convincing about
(06:30):
the total unrelated nous of Chinese pasta and Italian pasta,
there's a will from a gene V soldier dated twelve
seventy nine, when Marco Polo still would have been in China,
in which this soldier bequeaths macaroni to someone, And it's
fascinating to think that macaroni was considered so valuable. I mean,
(06:52):
today I've got a box of whole wheat routine and
my pantry that I'd be embarrassed if I died and
left behind it's so old. But back the world of
thirteenth century Italy, it was incredibly valuable to have pasta
and your pantry, and that's because of the dirm wheat.
It was so hard to deal with. It took a
whole crew of people working really hard all day long
(07:14):
to turn this pasta into something that you could actually eat.
A good analogy. You think of a really valuable bottle
of wine that sits in your wine cellar in ages
with time and becomes more valuable. That's the essence of
dry pasta, and just reconstitute it later. But I digrass
because we're talking about history and not just about noodles.
So let's delve a little bit into the development of pasta,
(07:37):
because what's so interesting to me is that what began
as a rich man's food eventually became the peasants staple
at the time in Italy. Of course, everything was made
by artisans, and that's the type of thing you find
when you go to a gourmet shop. Now you find
artisanal bread or artisanal cheese, and as you know, it's
very expensive, whereas mass produced boxes of pasta at your
(07:59):
local grocery store pretty cheap, and mass manufacturing makes things
cheaper for everybody. The same thing happened in the United
States when the first factory came to being in eighteen
twenty four. Yeah, and what's great about factory produced pasta
is that it is more readily available for the masses,
and that's something that Italy continues to struggle with today.
(08:20):
The demand for pasta far outweighs the production of pasta
is so ironically enough, it'll even has to import some
pasta give figure. But production of pasta in the United
States is a little bit inauthentic because when dough is
pushed through dies and extruded into strands in different shapes,
it's rendered a little bit smoother than artisanal pasta, so
(08:43):
it doesn't have all those fun little grooves and abrasions
that hold the sauce. But while it may not be
as authentic as Italian pasta originally was, it really served
the American people when the when the Great Depression hit,
for instance, in the world wars and supplies were scarce
and times where and people needed a good staple. I
(09:03):
think that swin recipes for tomato based sauces and pasta
first started appearing in women's magazines, and it's just like
it is now during a recession, when you keep seeing
programs and articles like how to Shop on a budget
and feeding your family for fifty dollars a week. Pasta
is a food of the people. It really is. It's
a great go to item. And so the next time
(09:24):
you crack open a box of noodles and unscrew the
lid on a jar of red sauce, be sure to
think the Arabs, because that's where it came from in
the long line of pasta history. And if you want
to learn even more about Marco Polo, remember him and
the history of pasta? You can read the article did
Marco Polo bring Pasta Back from China? On how staff
(09:46):
works dot com. For more on this and thousands of
other topics, visit how stuff works dot com. Let us
know what you think, send an email to podcast get
how stuff works dot com, and be sure to check
out the Stuff you missed history class plot on the
house staff works dot com home page. M
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