Spaghetti anyone? Made in China .. or does it grow on trees?

Just one brief comment in The Earth’s Crust post by Jannie about the Chinese – “they invented spaghetti, I think”. well ... off I went and yes, to a point they did .. most of us I expect would have said ‘well - Italy’. But come on ... it grows on trees – as we all know ... doesn’t it?!

To add veracity to this statement the BBC in 1957 reported on its current affairs programme, Panorama, a tale of a family in Switzerland harvesting spaghetti from their trees. Well the BBC is renowned for its investigative journalism and it just simply had to be true. A picture appeared on the programme of a woman harvesting the sprouting spaghetti.

Spaghetti Harvest in Switzerland 1957 (above)

A Panorama cameraman had dreamt up the story after remembering how teachers at his school in Austria teased the class for being so stupid, telling them ... if they were told it ... they’d believe spaghetti grew on trees!

The BBC team agreed the spoof and a whole report was dreamt up around the bumper spaghetti harvest, the eradication of the spaghetti weevil, and an erudite discussion on the trees’ breeding programme to achieve spaghetti of perfect length!

Different types of pasta on display in a shop window

Hundreds of people contacted the switchboard and it completely dumbfounded the British public .. and many others .. as like a few of us .. we know it’s April Fool’s Day – but then we forget!

The Director-General of the BBC at the time is quoted as having said “When I saw that item, I said to my wife, ‘I don’t think spaghetti grows on trees’, so we’d looked it up in Encyclopaedia Britannica. Do you know – the Encyclopaedia didn’t even mention spaghetti!”

An amazing story .. but which well and truly hoaxed the world .. the CNN later calling it ‘the biggest hoax that any reputable news establishment had ever pulled’. I can’t believe I took cognisance of it in 1957 .. but I do remember later on seeing the picture and thinking that can’t be true ....

So now was Spaghetti invented in China? Well not quite ... but as humans started exploring the huge continent of Asia from their Greek, Roman, Persian, Indian and European bases .. the explorers collected knowledge with which to enrich their masters back home.

It looks like Jannie, and no doubt many other North Americans, were taken in by the Macaroni Journal reprint of 1986, publishing an account of Marco Polo(1254 – 1324) importing pasta from China, with the goal of promoting pasta in the United Sates. Well it seems to have succeeded!

Marco Polo describes a food similar to the Latin word Laganum, which refers to a thin sheet of dough .. possibly heralding the use of the word lasagne, which we know so well today. While spaghetti is the plural form of the Italian word spaghetto, which is a diminutive of spago, meaning "thin string" or "twine".

Spaghetti with fresh tomato sauce

The truth .. as best it can be ascertained .. seems to be that many different cultures ate some sort of noodle-like food, composed mostly of grain, from as long ago as 4,000 years BC .. while today the cultures continue to adapt and adopt different ingredients to their spaghetti-noodle dishes.

When I found the Macaroni Journal and the Marco Polo legend, it referenced back to a wonderful article about pasta ...which is well worth a read for its evocativeness ... so I quote one passage – as I had no idea the Normans conquered as far south as Sicily – and this passage relays the fact that sightseeing and tourists were a part of life even then, with history being recorded in journals at the same time ...

Sicily at the toe of Italy ..

“In the twelfth century an Arab geographer, commissioned by the Norman king of Sicily to write a sort of travel book about the island, reported seeing pasta being made.

The geographer called it itriyah, from which seems to have come trii, which is still the word for spaghetti in some parts of Sicily and is also current in the name for a dish made all over Italy—ciceri e trii, pasta and chick-pea soup.

Making pasta; illustration from the 15th century edition of Tacuinum Sanitatis, a Latin translation of the Arabic work Taqwīm al-sihha by Ibn Butlan (the Tacuinum Sanitatis is a medieval handbook on wellness,("Maintenance of Health"), an eleventh-century Arab medical treatise.)

The soup reflects the original use for pasta, which was as an extender in soups and sometimes desserts. Serving pasta as a dish in itself with a bit of sauce does seem to be an Italian rather than a Greek, Persian, or Arab invention. (Classic Cuisine of the Italian Jews, a wonderful book by Edda Servi Machlin, has delicious pasta recipes that show some of the many influences that the Arab world had on Italian food.)”

The article appears in the 1986 version of The Atlantic magazine (see below) (ex Macaroni Journal) .. and I’ve checked the book is still available – it looked so interesting.

So does spaghetti grow on trees? – no ... but it does provide a good story 50+ years on .... and was spaghetti made in China ... probably not ... but the peoples of this world seem to end up utilising their resources in much the same way ..

Boy with Spaghetti by Julius Moser, c. 1808

The ingredients vary .. but that wonderful mix of slurping spaghetti – be it with a fresh tomato olive oil rich sauce, a Genovese pine nut, basil and parmesan pesto, a Mediterranean herby based sauce, or the Bolognese loved by so many .. makes for a delicious meal at any time of the year.

Marinara sauce is an American-Italian term for a simple tomato sauce with herbs—mostly parsley and basil—but, contrary to its name (which is Italian for coastal, seafaring) without anchovies, fish or seafood. In other countries, marinara refers to a seafood and tomato sauce.

There’s sweet spaghetti too .. as evidenced in Mrs Beeton using a sweet custard, or the Arabic mixes of spices and fruits, SuZen of ErasingtheBored blog mentions serving Spaghetti squash to her kids, which I’ve only ever eaten as a vegetable, which as she describes it: They actually LIKED spaghetti squash once I added butter, raisins and a bit of cinnamon.

Liu Xiaobo - the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize winner

And one last small reference out of the Saturday Times yesterday – the journalist Jane Macartney in Beijing advises that she met Liu Xiaobo, the Chinese dissident, just awarded the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize, back in 1987 when he dined at her house.

She says he sat at the head of the table, battling with his stammer and a dish of Spaghetti Bolognese to ensure that every guest could hear his views on contemporary Chinese writing and the Cultural Revolution.

The piece in the Saturday Times 9 October 2010 is titled “China bloggers beat news ban as jailed dissident wins the Nobel Peace Prize” – unfortunately not free to read .. but here’s some more information on an interesting journalist, Jane Macartney.

Spaghetti Bolognese

So bloggers, people wishing to spread the word, and China’s youngest professor .. all of us eat spaghetti in some form or other .. with or without meatballs, with or without custard ... but we do like to get our stories, views and opinions over ...

Long may spaghetti grow on trees to amuse the future generations .. and long may food travel and evolve as much as it has ... as is evidenced from the original Macaroni Journal article in 1929.

The Atlantic Magazine - Pasta article

Dear Mr Postman .. my mother has been enjoying the Commonwealth Games so we’ve been spending quite a bit of time together, which is good. We’re having incredibly balmy weather at the moment .. it is really lovely being outside ..

Hilary Melton-Butcher
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