Lasagna: then and now

Lasagna must be one of the most delicious dishes in the Italian repertoire. However, lasagna, unlike most Italian dishes, is not a simple preparation. Lasagna is a carefully planned assembly. While the individual lasagna ingredients are fairly straightforward, assembling those ingredients is very complex; And depending on it, what you choose to include can be somewhat costly. In my childhood, lasagna was not something you saw at any time. In my childhood, lasagna was a dish reserved for the holidays. Of some acquaintances of Italian extraction, lasagna was not known at any time of the year. In my family, lasagna was always the first main dish for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter. It was a dense casserole of alternating layers of lasagna noodles, ricotta cheese, and what we call “sauce.”

Of course, since lasagna was served only on holidays, it was just one part of a many-course holiday dinner. Usually these dinners started around 1pm and continued into the evening. On holidays there was a complex arrangement of dishes. First came the fruit salad. This was a canned Dole fruit salad mix with the addition of selected fresh fruits served in tall glass tumblers chilled with ice. I do not know the origin of this course. It was certainly not Italian. It may have been influenced by what restaurants served in the 1950s.

But what is the history of lasagna? In the world on Internet access to information from around the world, I have done an extensive review of the history of lasagna online. Working from Google Italy and our own American Google, I found a lot of variations on lasagna recipes and history. According to various sites, lasagna is a very old food. It seems that lasagna may have originated from an ancient Greek dish “laganon” or “lasonon”. The Romans adopted this dish and called it “lansanum”. There are also several sites that claim that lasagna is a dish of British origin called “loseyns” as found in a medieval cookbook from the late 14th century. While these fountains may be somewhat possible, I should also point out that a fair amount of water has passed under the bridge since ancient times. I doubt a little that the “lasanum” of the Romans or the “loysens” of the British is the lasagna we know today. Then there is also the question of the tomato. While all lasagna recipes don’t call for tomatoes, (there are a fair number of “white lasagna” dishes), the tomatoes in most recipes are now important. But, the use of tomatoes in the plate would not have happened until long after Columbus. The use of tomatoes also took some time. When they were first introduced to Europe from the New World they were believed to be poisonous. In 1544 the Italian herbalist Pietro Matthioli classified tomatoes as highly poisonous. Only later, after going through a stage where tomatoes were thought to be aphrodisiacs, did tomatoes make it to the table, especially in Naples and southern Italy. From what I have found, the first recipe printed with tomatoes appears in 1692. If lasagna as we know it today includes tomatoes, then it would not have been known in its current form until around 1700. I would say lasagna as we know it Today it may not have ancient roots, but it is very possible that it is a dish that was reinvented much later.

So what about lasagna as we know it today? Some of the earliest references seem to date from the seventeenth century. One of the most interesting sites I found maintains that traditional lasagna is a peasant dish made from the most basic pork products. For many, the main source of meat was pork. The pig would be slaughtered in winter. The best parts would go to the “patron”, the owner. The peasants would keep the spoils, the entrails and other fragments. From the leftovers that had some measurable meat, the peasants made sausages. From the bone portions they created the base of the tomato sauce (what we call sauce).

My research on lasagna took me in many directions. I even went back to my cookbook library to re-do my research on my pre-1988 celebrity chef Giulio Bugialli “On Pasta.” It seems that lasagna takes a different form not only in the different provinces of Italy, but in the diversity of each home. Some lasagna are meat based, others are based on vegetables like artichokes or endives. Some people, like my relatives, add hard boiled eggs and peas; Others do not. In the end, what happens between the layers of pasta is as variable as the things you can find to put between them. Yes, what we know in America has cousins ​​in Italy. There’s nothing like pasta strips intertwined with delicious ricotta and meat sauce. But there are also lasagna that are vegetarian, like a wonderful lasagna with artichokes.

The recipe that I finally decided on is a compromise of my family’s traditions, Bugialli’s wisdom, and countless Google sites. In recognition of what appears to be one of the fundamental elements of lasagna, I have used ground pork and pork sausage as the base of the meat. For the cheeses, I have selected those found in Campania: ricotta, percorino romano and scarmorzza. Scamorzza is a solid cheese found in southern Italy. Lasagna is not a simple recipe. You can’t make it like a 30 minute meal. It takes time, time and time. Carrying out a recipe like this explains why lasagna was just a Christmas dish.