ratchet_fan
Banned
- Messages
- 512
- Reaction score
- 38
- Points
- 0
I'd like to figure out the origin of pasta once and for all. Were there 1,2 or 3 centers of origin for noodles?
1. Italy
2. Iran
3. China
First off the Marco Polo story is complete BS. There was pasta in Europe well before that man was born.
However, is it possible noodles were invented in China and the concept traveled west along the Silk Road?
The first mention of noodles is from between 25- 220 CE in Chinese sources.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_noodles
The Silk Road started in 114 BCE.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silk_Road
Wikipedia unfortunately gives a Chinese origin for all noodles.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noodle
Then there was the apparent 4000 year old noodles found in China.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/10/4-000-year-old-noodles-found-in-china/
Except that seems like BS because you can't make noodles out of millet.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1475-4754.2010.00539.x
According to this source Greeks invented pasta but dried pasta is an Arab invention.
https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/food...ot-inspiration-pasta-historians-say-its-roots
There's also theories of pasta originating in Persia. Was this independent or influences by the other two centers?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/life...681c20-dfbd-11e5-8d98-4b3d9215ade1_story.html
There's even theories the Chinese learned noodles from Persians. Guess now they know what it feels like for your most previous food to be theorized to have outside origins based on shaky grounds.
http://languagehat.com/davidsons-companion-to-food/
I always thought Manti and other West/Central Asian dumplings were a Turkic invention (borrowed from the Chinese of course) but the reliable Oxford companion to Food says there was an ancient Iranian form of dumpling called Joshpara.
https://books.google.com/books?id=R...e&q=oxford companion to food joshpara&f=false
------------------------------------------------
So to sum up how many origins of noodles do we have? 1,2,3? Are some form of dumplings indigenous to Iran? Is ravioli related to anything eastern?
1. Italy
2. Iran
3. China
First off the Marco Polo story is complete BS. There was pasta in Europe well before that man was born.
However, is it possible noodles were invented in China and the concept traveled west along the Silk Road?
The first mention of noodles is from between 25- 220 CE in Chinese sources.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_noodles
The Silk Road started in 114 BCE.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silk_Road
Wikipedia unfortunately gives a Chinese origin for all noodles.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noodle
Then there was the apparent 4000 year old noodles found in China.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/10/4-000-year-old-noodles-found-in-china/
Except that seems like BS because you can't make noodles out of millet.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1475-4754.2010.00539.x
According to this source Greeks invented pasta but dried pasta is an Arab invention.
https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/food...ot-inspiration-pasta-historians-say-its-roots
There's also theories of pasta originating in Persia. Was this independent or influences by the other two centers?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/life...681c20-dfbd-11e5-8d98-4b3d9215ade1_story.html
There's even theories the Chinese learned noodles from Persians. Guess now they know what it feels like for your most previous food to be theorized to have outside origins based on shaky grounds.
Laksa a term which derives from the original Persian word for noodle, lakhsha(meaning ‘slippery’). Although Iran has not been a heavy consumer of noodles, it has an ancient history of noodle-making; indeed, there has been speculation that the Chinese learned the idea of noodle-making from the same Persian merchants who introduced the flour mill to them during the Han dynasty (206 BC-AD 220). The term lakhsha was certainly used in medieval Arabic and has shown considerable powers of survival. It is still used in E. Europe (Hungarian laska, Russian lapsha, Ukrainian lokshina, Lithuanian lakstiniai) and in Afghanistan (lakhchak).
Also, it is known that Arab traders or Indian Muslims had spread the use of pasta to Indonesia in perhaps the 13th century. The old Indonesian and Malaysian name laksashows that this pasta originated in Persia, not from a Chinese source (as in the case of the modern Indonesian name mie).
A quaint Persian tale retold in a 10th-century Arabic recipe collection has King Chosroes I offhandedly inventing laksha during a hunting expedition in the course of a discussion of how to flavour a soup of wild ass’s meat. However, by the 13th century, reshteh (‘string’) had supplanted it, and this is now the usual word for a flat, sliced noodle in the Near East.
http://languagehat.com/davidsons-companion-to-food/
I always thought Manti and other West/Central Asian dumplings were a Turkic invention (borrowed from the Chinese of course) but the reliable Oxford companion to Food says there was an ancient Iranian form of dumpling called Joshpara.
https://books.google.com/books?id=R...e&q=oxford companion to food joshpara&f=false
------------------------------------------------
So to sum up how many origins of noodles do we have? 1,2,3? Are some form of dumplings indigenous to Iran? Is ravioli related to anything eastern?