Lasagna

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Lasagne alla bolognese Lasagna bolognese.jpg
Lasagne alla bolognese

Lasagna, also known by the plural form lasagne, is a type of pasta made in wide, flat sheets. It originates in Italian cuisine, where it is served in a number of ways , including in broth (lasagne in brodo), but is best known for its use in a baked dish made by stacking layers of pasta, alternating with fillings such as ragù (ground meats and tomato sauce), béchamel sauce, vegetables, cheeses (which may include ricotta, mozzarella, and Parmesan), and seasonings and spices. [1] Typically, cooked pasta is assembled with the other ingredients, topped with grated cheese, and then baked in an oven ( al forno ): regional variations of this dish are found across Italy. [2]

Contents

Name

As with most other types of pasta, the Italian word is a plural form: lasagne (Italian: [laˈzaɲɲe] ) meaning more than one sheet of lasagna ( UK: /ləˈzænjə/ , [3] US: /ləˈzɑːnjə/ ; Italian: [laˈzaɲɲa] ). When referring to the baked dish, regional usage in Italy favours the plural form lasagne in the north of the country and the singular lasagna in the south. [4] The former plural usage has influenced the usual spelling found in British English, while the southern Italian singular usage has influenced the spelling often used in American English. [4] Both lasagna and lasagne are used as singular non-count (uncountable) nouns in English. [5]

Etymology

In ancient Rome, there was a dish similar to a traditional lasagna called lasana or lasanum (Latin for 'container' or 'pot') described in the book De re coquinaria by Marcus Gavius Apicius, [6] but the word could have a more ancient origin. The first theory is that lasagna comes from Greek λάγανον ( laganon ), a flat sheet of pasta dough cut into strips. [7] [8] [9] [10] The word λαγάνα (lagana) is still used in Greek to mean a flat thin type of unleavened bread baked for the Clean Monday holiday. [11]

Another theory is that the word lasagna comes from the Greek λάσανα (lasana) or λάσανον (lasanon) meaning 'trivet', 'stand for a pot' or 'chamber pot'. [12] [13] [14] The Romans borrowed the word as lasanum, meaning 'cooking pot'. [15] The Italians used the word to refer to the cookware in which lasagna is made. Later the food took on the name of the serving dish.[ citation needed ]

Another proposed link or reference is the 14th-century English dish loseyn [16] as described in The Forme of Cury , a cookbook prepared by "the chief Master Cooks of King Richard II", [17] which included English recipes as well as dishes influenced by Spanish, French, Italian, and Arab cuisines. [18] This dish has similarities to modern lasagna in both its recipe, which features a layering of ingredients between pasta sheets, and its name. An important difference is the lack of tomatoes, which did not arrive in Europe until after Columbus reached the Americas in 1492. The earliest discussion of the tomato in European literature appeared in a herbal written in 1544 by Pietro Andrea Mattioli, [19] while the earliest cookbook found with tomato recipes was published in Naples in 1692, but the author had obtained these recipes from Spanish sources. [19]

Origins and history

Lasagna originated in Italy during the Middle Ages. The oldest known written reference to lasagna appears in 1282, in a ballad transcribed by a Bolognese notary, "Pur bii del vin, comadre, e no lo temperare" ('Just drink some wine, my woman, and do not dilute it'), part of the Memoriali Bolognesi (lit. 'Bolognese Memorials'): [20]

Italian

Giernosen le comadre trambedue a la festa,
de gliocch'e de lasagne se fén sette menestra

— Rime dei memoriali bolognesi on the IntraText Digital Library
Translation:
English

Both women went to the festival,
and had seven portions of gnocchi and lasagne

—Zancani (2010), p.146

From a similar time, Salimbene di Adam's Cronica contains a 1284 reference to lagana cum caseo (lit. 'lasagna with cheese'). [20] As was typical of pasta dishes, lasagna was relatively expensive. [21]

The first recorded recipe was set down in the early 14th century in the Liber de Coquina (The Book of Cookery). [22] It bore only a slight resemblance to the later traditional form of lasagna, featuring a fermented dough flattened into thin sheets, boiled, sprinkled with cheese and spices, and then eaten with a small pointed stick. [23] Recipes written in the century following the Liber de Coquina recommended boiling the pasta in chicken broth and dressing it with cheese and chicken fat. In a recipe adapted for the Lenten fast, walnuts were recommended. [23]

Variations

Pasta

Mass-produced lasagne with a ruffled edge is called lasagna riccia, doppio festone, sciabò, and sciablò. [24] In recent times, lasagne used in the baked dish have tended to be of a long, narrow rectangular shape called a lasagna a nastro or pappardella, although a more traditional square shape is still found. [25]

In the Veneto, factory-produced lasagne are called bardele or lasagnoni. [24] Narrower lasagne are mezze lasagne, and if with a ruffled edge, mezze lasagne ricche. [24] Similar pastas are the narrower lasagnette and its longer cousin, the lasagnotte (cappellasci [sic] in Liguria [24] [26] ), as well as the sagne of Salento (the "heel" of the Italian "boot"), [24] and lagana in the remainder of Apulia. [24]

Dish

Lasagne al forno Meaty Lasagna 8of8 (8736299782).jpg
Lasagne al forno

There are many regional variations of the dish in Italy; these were often traditionally served during religious celebrations, which were some of the few times in the year that many people would eat meat. [27] The lasagna of Naples, lasagne di Carnevale, is layered with local sausage, small fried meatballs, hard-boiled eggs, ricotta and mozzarella cheeses, and sauced with Neapolitan ragù, a meat sauce. [28] The dish is eaten at Carnival, and is not held in high esteem locally; food writer Arthur Schwartz details that "almost without fail", Neapolitans tell visitors "the really good lasagne is from Bologna". [29] Italian-American recipes show an influence of Neapolitan lasagna, often using ricotta cheese in place of the besciamella or béchamel sauce found in northern Italian recipes. [30] Another southern Italian recipe, lasagne Pugliese , is also associated with a religious festival, in this case Christmas: it uses a capon broth in place of ragù, and is layered with veal meatballs, mozzarella, prosciutto, and Parmesan cheese. [31]

Lasagne al forno, layered with a thick ragù and béchamel and corresponding to the most common version of the dish outside Italy, is traditionally associated with the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy. In its capital, Bologna, lasagne alla Bolognese is layered with ragù (a thick sauce made with onions, carrots, celery, finely ground pork and beef, butter, and tomatoes), [32] [33] béchamel sauce, and Parmesan cheese. [34] [35] Lasagne alla Ferrarese, from the town of Ferrara, features sheets of green pasta (created by mixing spinach into the pasta dough) and may include pancetta, chicken livers, and other meats. [36] A version from the Marche, known as vincisgrassi , features mushrooms and offal such as chicken livers and sweetbreads. [37] Lasagne alla Genovese, from Genoa, combines a light béchamel with pesto and is then baked, although some more modern Genoese versions omit the béchamel and use boiled pasta. [38]

Traditionally, pasta dough prepared in southern Italy used semolina and water; in the northern regions, where semolina was not available, flour and eggs were used. In Emilia-Romagna the dough or sfoglia was traditionally rolled paper-thin by hand, often by a professional sfogline. [25] In modern Italy, since the only type of wheat allowed for commercially sold dried pasta is durum wheat, industrial dried lasagne sheets are made from durum wheat semolina. [39]

See also

Commons-logo.svg Media related to Lasagne (layered dish) at Wikimedia Commons Wikibooks-logo-en-noslogan.svg Lasagne at the Wikibooks Cookbook subproject

References

  1. ↑ "Lasagna". Merriam-Webster. Retrieved 30 June 2017.
  2. ↑ MacAllen, Ian (2022). Red Sauce: How Italian Food Became American. Rowman and Littlefield. p. 123.
  3. ↑ The Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford University Press.
  4. 1 2 Buccini, A. F. (2013). "Lasagne, a layered history". In McWilliams (ed.). Wrapped & Stuffed Foods: Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery. Prospect. p. 95. ISBN   9781903018996. ... in referring to baked versions of the dish, regional usage in Italy favours the plural form lasagne in the north and the singular form lasagna in the south; from the former usage stems the British use of 'lasagne' and from the latter the American 'lasagna'. Neither usage can be considered 'more correct' ....
  5. ↑ Laurie Bauer, Rochelle Lieber and Ingo Plag. The Oxford Reference Guide to English Morphology. Oxford University Press, 2015. p. 139. ISBN   9780198747062.
  6. ↑ De re coquinaria. Apicio.
  7. ↑ λάγανον, Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, on Perseus.
  8. ↑ Dalby, Andrew (2003). Food in the ancient world from A to Z. London: Routledge. ISBN   9780415232593. OCLC   892612150.
  9. ↑ "Everyone Eats: Understanding Food and Culture", Eugene Newton Anderson, NYU Press, 2005.
  10. ↑ "The Origins of pasta". The Real Italian Pasta. Archived from the original on 22 July 2011. Retrieved 10 March 2017.
  11. ↑ "The history of lagana and its delicious secrets". Greek City Times. 24 October 2022. Retrieved 8 February 2025.
  12. ↑ λάσανα, Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, on Perseus.
  13. ↑ Muhlke, Christine (2 April 1997), "A Lighthearted Look at How Foods Got Their Names", Cookbook Shelf:Book Review, Salon.com, archived from the original on 8 August 2007, retrieved 30 September 2007.
  14. ↑ "lasagna". Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary. Retrieved 10 March 2017.
  15. ↑ Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles. "lăsănum". A Latin Dictionary. Perseus Digital Library. Retrieved 10 March 2017.
  16. ↑ "Loseyns (Lozenges)". Celtnet. Dyfed Lloyd Evans. Archived from the original on 5 December 2012. Retrieved 24 March 2012.
  17. ↑ John Rylands University Library of Manchester (1996). Things sweet to taste: selections from the Forme of cury: a fourteenth-century cookery book in the John Rylands Library. John Rylands Library. ISBN   0863731341. OCLC   643512620. Thys fourme of cury ys compyled of þe mayster cokes of kyng Richard þe secund ... by assent of Maysters of physik and of phylosophye.
  18. ↑ Bouchut, Marie Josèphe Moncorgé; Bailey, Ian (trans.); Hunt, Leah (trans.). "Oldcook: Forme of Cury and cookery books in English". Archived from the original on 24 June 2016. Retrieved 24 August 2016.
  19. 1 2 Smith, Andrew F. (1994). The tomato in America: early history, culture, and cookery . Columbia, S.C, USA: University of South Carolina Press. ISBN   1-57003-000-6.
  20. 1 2 Zancani, Diego (2010). "Notes on the vocabulary of gastronomy in literary works from Boccaccio to Giulio Cesare Croce". The Italianist. 30 (sup2): 132–148. doi:10.1080/02614340.2010.11917482.
  21. ↑ Rebora, Giovanni; Sonnenfeld, Albert (2001). Culture of the Fork: A Brief History of Everyday Food and Haute Cuisine in Europe. New York & Chicester, West Sussex: Columbia University Press. p. 28. ISBN   0-231-12150-4.
  22. ↑ Liber de Coquina (1285), De lasanis. Gloning.
  23. 1 2 Serventi, Pasta: the story of a universal food, Columbia UP, 2012, p. 235.
  24. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Oretta Zanini De Vita. Encyclopedia of Pasta. University of California Press, 2019. p. 148. ISBN   9780520322752.
  25. 1 2 De Vita (2019) p.150
  26. ↑ Gaetano Frisoni. "Cappellasci" entry in Dizionario moderno genovese-italiano e italiano-genovese. A. Donath, 1910. p. 65.
  27. ↑ MacAllen, Ian (2022). Red Sauce: How Italian Food Became American. Rowman and Littlefield. p. 123.
  28. ↑ Del Conte, Anna (1 December 2013). Gastronomy of Italy. Pavilion. ISBN   978-1862059580.
  29. ↑ Schwartz, Arthur (1998). Naples at Table: Cooking in Campania. New York: HarperCollins. p.  206. ISBN   0-06-018261-X.
  30. ↑ MacAllen, Ian (2022). Red Sauce: How Italian Food Became American. Rowman and Littlefield. p. 123.
  31. ↑ De Peppo, Marinella (1994). L' Arte della Cucina secondo la Tradizione napoletana. A. Mondadori. p. 119.
  32. ↑ Hess, Reinhardt; Sälzer, Sabine (1999). Regional Italian cuisine: typical recipes and culinary impressions from all regions. Barron's. ISBN   9780764151590. OCLC   42786762.
  33. ↑ Root, Waverley. The Cooking of Italy. New York: Time-Life, 1968. Print.
  34. ↑ Svitlana (11 December 2021). "Lasagna Al Forno". Italian Recipe Book. Retrieved 12 February 2025.
  35. ↑ Florence, Tyler. "Lasagna al Forno". Food Network . Retrieved 12 February 2025.
  36. ↑ Bugiali, Giuliano (1977). The Fine Art of Italian Cooking. Quadrangle. p. 190.
  37. ↑ Ayto, John (2012). The Diner's Dictionary. OUP. p. 388.
  38. ↑ Bugialli, Giuliano (1982). Giuliano Bugialli's Classic Techniques of Italian Cooking. Simon and Schuster. p. 159.
  39. ↑ "Decreto del Presidente della Repubblica n. 187" [Presidential Decree n. 187](PDF). Gazzetta Ufficiale della Repubblica Italiana (in Italian). 117: 5. 9 February 2021. Archived (PDF) from the original on 18 June 2022. Retrieved 22 June 2022– via translation by Union of the Organizations of Manufacturers of Pasta Products in the E.U.

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