The origin of pasta: the Marco Polo connection

Pasta, in its various forms, has been a mainstay of the Italian diet since the Middle Ages. However, it is known that the Chinese had been eating noodles, a closely related foodstuff, for thousands of years prior to that. Could it be that the Italians learned about pasta from the Chinese? 

Pasta - the Marco Polo connection

The Venetian explorer Marco Polo returned from more than twenty years of travel in the Far East in 1295, so could this be the connection? Did pasta reach Italy from China thanks to Marco Polo? It sounds like a highly plausible story.

In 1929 an article appeared in the “Macaroni Journal”, which was an official publication of the National Pasta Association of the United States. This article, entitled “A Saga of Catai”, purported to tell the full story.

It appears that an Italian sailor on the ship that brought Marco Polo home from China had met a beautiful Chinese girl who was making noodles. She offered some to him, which he tasted and found to be delicious. He asked if he could take some of the noodles back to his ship so that he could show them to Marco Polo and the rest, as they say, is history.

On the other hand …

Unfortunately, however, the rest is not history but pure bunkum. For one thing, the story includes Marco Polo naming this new dish after the enterprising sailor, whose name was Spaghetti. Given that “spaghetti” is a variant of the Italian for “thin string”, this derivation is highly unlikely. 

There is another excellent reason why the story, attractive though it may be, should not be given much credence. This is that pasta was being eaten in Italy long before Marco Polo turned up with his traveller’s tales. There is a record dating from 1154 to the effect that pasta was being made at that date in Sicily. It is also known that soldiers in the 13^th century carried pasta as part of their food rations. If Marco Polo did, by some happy coincidence, happen to bring some noodles back with him from China to Italy, they had nothing to do with introducing something new in the food line, because pasta was on the menu in Italy long before he started off on his journey in 1271.

Whether the author of the “Macaroni Journal” article was being serious in his claim or not is a debatable point, but the fact remains that it acquired a patina of reliability about it. After all, if the National Pasta Association did not know where their product originated, who did? It seemed to be the sort of story that could easily be true and so, as it spread beyond the limited confines of the pasta trade into the outside world, it was taken by many people to be absolutely true.

So what is the origin of pasta?

If pasta did not originate in Italy, and it was not introduced by Signor Spaghetti and his boss Marco Polo, then where did it come from? There are various mentions of products made from dried sheets of dough from as far back as the 5^th century, with the Arabs apparently being their first users. When Arabs from Libya invaded Sicily in the 7^th century they apparently brought durum wheat with them, this being the most suitable wheat type from which to make pasta. It could be that it was at this time that pasta production began in Sicily, thus making it several hundred years older than the 1154 date noted above.

In any event, one thing that can be taken as being beyond the shadow of a doubt is that Marco Polo had nothing to do with it.

© John Welford