Introduction

Pasta is one of the most ancient of foods. Its components, flour and water, are among the simplest imaginable. In various forms it was eaten in many parts of the world and it is not possible to record a single historical origin. Although there is a story that pasta was introduced to the Italians by Marco Polo, who brought it back from China, a form of pasta had, in fact, been a favourite food in Europe since the time of the Greeks. A recipe for strips of fried pasta with pepper and honey appears in one of the earliest cookbooks written, attributed to Apicius, a gastronome of the first century AD.