To part 1 of the history of pasta
At the top of this page is shown how pasta was produced on a small scale in an illustration in a manuscript from the end of the fourteenth century: the dough is kneaded by hand, and the long ribbons of cut pasta dough are arranged on a frame to dry. How the long ribbons were made is not depicted here, but fifteenth-century Italian cook Maestro Martino explains it in his cookbook Libro de arte coquinaria (more on this cookbook in the recipe for chicken with blackberry sauce). The thin sheet of dough is wrapped loosely around a roller, then the roller is pulled out, and the roll of dough is cut into thin strips. During the Middle Ages making pasta was often a woman’s job.
The man on the left is also working very hard. He is turning the handle of the extrusion press that pushes the dough through sturdy bronze discs. These discs are exchangeable and have holes in different shapes, as shown in the picture below (a detail from the same print in the book by Malouin). Buy using these discs it was even possible for the vermicelier to produce hollow macaroni.
There is one question that I still haven’t found a satisfactory answer to. How long was pasta customarily cooked in the past, al dente or a half hour? When did those long cooking times become obsolete? Unlike vegetables, longer cooking times do not detract from the nutritional value of pasta, nor will it dissolva the dietary fibre. I compared the nutritional values of 100 gram uncooked and cooked pasta on Nutritiondata. Indeed, the cooked pasta has lower values, but that is not because it is less nutritional. During the cooking process the pasta absorbs water, and will weigh two to three times as much after cooking than when it was uncooked. So it is not surprising that the nutritional values of cooked pasta are two to three times lower than those of uncooked pasta.
The editions below were used by me. Links refer to available editions.
A very short history of pasta – Part 2
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