Industrial dried pasta (Trabia itriyya)
Pasta seca industrial (itriyya de Trabia)
- Date
- 1154 · confidence medium
- Place
- Trabia, Palermo, Sicily, Italy
- Credited to
- Arab and Norman producers of Sicily
- Field
- Life & health
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
In 1154 the geographer al-Idrisi describes how at Trabia strands of dried semolina dough (itriyya) were made in great quantities and exported by ship to Muslim and Christian lands. It is the first mention of dried pasta made and traded at scale.
The legend that Marco Polo brought it from China is false; the Jerusalem Talmud (5th century) already mentions a boiled itrium, and it is debated whether dried pasta is an Arab contribution or continuity from the ancient world (laganum).
What it led to
- the pasta industry of Gragnano and Naples
- non-perishable food for travel and armies
- pasta as a basis of the Italian diet
Built on
- Wheat domestication (einkorn and emmer)c. 9000 BCE
- Smoking and drying of food