Beginning of Noodles: Before 1000 BC, China.
We enjoy many foods whose Italian names tell us what they look like, how they are prepared, or even their origin: espresso means “pressed”, cannelloni “big tubes”, ravioli “little turnip”, pasta “little strings”, tutti frutti are all Fruits, vermicelli “little worms”, lasagna “bread bowl”, Parmesan “parmesan”, minestrone “spread out”, and pasta “raw or fresh dough”. All of these foods evoke images of Italy, and all but one come from that country, pasta (including vermicelli and spaghetti), which was first made in China at least three thousand years ago, from rice and bean flour…
The story goes that the Polo brothers, Niccol and Maffeo, and Niccol’s son, Marco when they returned from China at the end of the thirteenth century, brought with them recipes for Chinese noodles. It is known for certain that the consumption of pasta in the form of spaghetti and ravioli began in Italy in 1353, the same year that Boccaccio published The Decameron. This book tells a hundred fairy tales, supposedly told by a group of ten people from Florence during a trip. Decamerone means “ten days”. This book not only mentions the two dishes but also suggests adding sauce and cheese on top. “In an area called Bengodi, where they tie the vines to the sausage, there is a mountain made of grated Parmesan cheese on which men work all day long to make spaghetti and ravioli, and eat it with sauce.”
For centuries, Italians painstakingly made and cut all shapes of pasta by hand. Spaghetti was first produced on a large scale in Naples in the 1800s, where long strings were hung to dry in the sun. The dough was kneaded by hand until the 1830s when a mechanical kneading bowl was invented and adopted on a large scale throughout Italy.
Canned pasta and ravioli originated in America, from the creation of Italian-born, New York-based chef Hector Bawardi. He believed that Americans did not have the knowledge of Italian food as they should and decided to do something about it.
At first, he packaged pasta and sold it under the name Bo-Yar-D, which quickly caught the attention of John Hartford, an executive of a food distribution chain, and then appeared on store shelves.
