Page "Pasta" Paragraph 7

In the 1st century BC writings of Horace, lagana ( Sing.

: laganum ) were fine sheets of dough which were fried and were an everyday food.

Writing in the 2nd century Athenaeus of Naucratis provides a recipe for lagana which he attributes to the 1st century Chrysippus of Tyana: sheets of dough made of wheat flour and the juice of crushed lettuce, then flavoured with spices and deep-fried in oil.

An early 5th century cookbook describes a dish called lagana that consisted of layers of dough with meat stuffing, a possible ancestor of modern-day lasagna.

However, the method of cooking these sheets of dough does not correspond to our modern definition of either a fresh or dry pasta product, which only had similar basic ingredients and perhaps the shape.

The first concrete information concerning pasta products in Italy dates from the 13th or 14th century.