Pasta and Noodles

A Bit of History

Appears in
Delights from the Garden of Eden
Delights from the Garden of Eden

By Nawal Nasrallah

Published 2019

  • About
Pasta, fresh and dried, is traditionally associated with Italian cooking. However, it has been plausibly argued that its homeland might be somewhere else. Clifford Wright’s search, the most extensive so far, has led him to the ‘juncture of medieval Sicilian, Italian, and Arab cultures’ as a possible origin for pasta proper, made from hard durum wheat.

Indeed, Arabic medieval sources do make a clear distinction between soft and hard wheat. The former was called hinta baydhaa’ (white wheat) and the latter hinta hamraa’ (red wheat), described as heavy, sweet, and high in gluten (‘alka, literally ‘chewy’), and it is said to be the best for making sameedh flour (best-quality fine white flour), as described by Sulayman al-Isra’ili (d.932) in Kitab al-Aghdhiya (vol.2). Besides, emmer wheat, which is closely related to hard durum wheat, was cultivated in the ancient Near East.