Pasta: The Story of a Universal Food
ISBN: 9780231519441
Platform/Publisher: JSTOR / Columbia University Press
Digital rights: Users: unlimited; Printing: chapter; Download: chapter
Subjects: Cookery (Pasta); Pasta industry;

The latest entry in Columbia's series, Arts and Traditions of the Table: Perspectives on Culinary History, is stuffed as tight as cannelloni with facts, numbers and quotes. If at times it is a little dry-through no fault of a very competent translation-it still stands as one of the most thorough histories to date of this beloved food. From the stuffed pastas of the Middle Ages (known as tortelli, because they were considered bite-sized cakes) to the artisan-produced pastas that made a comeback in Italy in the 1990s, Serventi and Sabban touch all the necessary bases and then some. A section on pasta in China begins with a lengthy "Ode to Bing" (noodles) by the scholar Shu Xi (264?-304?) and leads up through the Ming Dynasty, which the authors describe as the peak of pasta production in China, to modern-day ramen noodles, invented in Japan in 1958. The treatment of pasta development in Italy is even more complete and includes overviews of early pasta-making equipment and the role of women in its manufacture. The chapter "Pasta Without Borders," about the spread of pasta from Italy to the rest of the world (laying to rest Marco Polo myth), is an excellent study not only of pasta but of the way a single product can mutate and influence various economies over time. Perhaps too encyclopedic to be taken in at a single sitting, this is no doubt the exhaustive new authority on its subject (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Silvano Serventi is a historian of food and of French and Italian culinary practices. He is the author of many books, including The Medieval Kitchen: Recipes from France and Italy (with Odile Redon and Françoise Sabban).

Françoise Sabban is a sinologist and director of studies at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris.

Antony Shugaar is coauthor of Latitude Zero: Tales of the Equator and translator of The Judge and the Historian by Carlo Ginzburg, and Niccolo's Smile and Republicanism by Maurizio Viroli. He lives in Arlington, VA.

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