History of Italian food

When you dig into the history of Italian food you realize that there is much more to it than cheese dripping pizza and heaped up piles of pasta. Italy expands over a sizeable piece of southern Europe and has many different regions each having their own special cuisine and eating habits. The cooking styles and ingredients also vary from area to area. The cuisine of Italy has also been influenced with the changes that have taken place in the world through the passage of time. Today the Italian cuisine features meals that retain the pre Roman era taste along with others that are strikingly different to the traditional cuisine of Italy.
The early origins
Tracing down the culinary history of Italy we find that it started to make its mark during the Roman Empire movement more than 2000 years ago. The Italians even have a cookbook dating back to the first century B.C which shows how important a place food had in society. The structure of Italy as a country underwent a huge change after the fall of the Roman Empire. Italy was now a body of individually governed states that had separate and distinctive identities and hence developed their own tradition. This era was the time when the cuisine of Italy started developing its diversity that we find in it today. Each region developed its own distinctive style of cooking and a formalized menu based on the local ingredients and the lifestyle of the people living there. You would find great variance in the way similar dishes are prepared in different regions.
regional Italian food
Tuscan beef is an item belonging to the north whereas black truffles originated in Marches. The south is credited for producing mozzarella cheese and provolone along with a rich growth of citrus fruits. There was great variance even amongst the most commonly consumed items in Italy such as the different types or breads and pastas. We find the southern part of Italy was into hard boiled spaghetti whereas the northern regions were more akin to consuming soft egg noodles. Pizza originated from Naples, tortellini from Bologna and Milan is famous for risotto.
Through the course of time however Italian cuisine has evolved into a breed of its own due to a large amount of external influences. The Italians had initially absorbed ancient Greek cookery into their culture. With Roman ships bringing back wheat, wine, fine spices and other exotic ingredients the Italians added new imports to their kitchens. The Italians got their ingredients from all across the world going even as far as China.
The coastal regions of Italy are credited for all the lovely fish and seafood recipes that we have today. Anchovies, swordfish, lobster and sardines are some of the main seafood items used in the coastal areas. Traces of Arab influence can also be found especially in the cuisine of Sicily with its spices and sweets. The origins of pasta are till date disputed as some claim it to be a product imported from China whereas others say it is Italy’s local produce which was consumed during Etruscan and Roman times. Today however Italian cuisine is extremely diverse and rich which is why it is considered one of the most unique and amazing

Many non-Italians identify Italian cooking with a few of its most popular dishes, like pizza and spaghetti. People often express the opinion that all Italian cooking is pretty much alike. However, those who travel through Italy notice differences in eating habits between cities, even cities only a few miles apart. Not only does each region have its own style, but each community and each valley has a different way of cooking as well.


Every town has a distinctive way of making sausage, special kinds of cheese and wine, and a local type of bread. If you ask people, even in the same area, how to make pasta sauce, they will all have different answers. Variations in the omnipresent pasta are another example of this multiplicity: soft egg noodles in the north, hard-boiled spaghetti in the south, with every conceivable variation in size and shape. Perhaps no other country in the world has a cooking style so finely fragmented into different divisions. So why is Risotto typical of Milan? Why did Tortellini originate in Bologna? And why is Pizza so popular in Naples?


This is so for the same reason that Italy has only one unifying Italian language, yet hundreds of different spoken dialects. Italy is a country of great variety, and cooking is just another aspect of the diversity of Italian culture.
This diversity stems largely from peasant heritage and geographical differences. Italy is a peninsula separated from the rest of the continent by the highest chain of mountains in Europe. In addition, a long spine of mountains runs down north to south through this narrow country. These geographic features create a myriad of environments with noticeable variations: fertile valleys, mountains covered with forests, cool foothills, naked rocks, Mediterranean coastlines, and arid plains. A great variety of different climates have also created innumerable unique geographical and historical areas.

But geographical fragmentation alone will not explain how the same country produced all of the rich, fat, baroque food of Bologna, based on butter, parmigiano, and meat; the light, tasty, spicy cooking of Naples, mainly based on olive oil, mozzarella, and seafood; the cuisine of Rome, rich in produce from the surrounding countryside; and the food of Sicily, full of North African influences.

The explanation is hidden in the past; the multitudes of Italian cooking result from its history. Divided for a long time into many duchies, princedoms, kingdoms, and states—often hostile to one another—political unification in Italy did not occur until 1861. Many populations in the past three thousand years have occupied Italian territory, and most of them contributed their own traditions. And the original people, the Etruscans and Greeks, left influences still felt today.


The Romans politically controlled the territory about two thousand years ago, integrated Greek civilization, and created an empire that laid the foundations of Western civilization. They imported all kinds of foods from all over the known world. Roman ships carried essential foods, such as wheat and wine, as well as a variety of spices from as far away as China, to satisfy the Romans’ appetite for exotic ingredients. Roman cooking habits fascinated and influenced generations in the centuries that followed. The fall of the Roman Empire was caused by unstoppable waves of invading people—barbarians who came from as far away as Tibet. They pillaged and destroyed, but they also brought with them new cooking customs. It took centuries before some order was restored and medieval peoples could begin to rebuild something that could be called a cuisine.


After the decline of the city states, the territory of northern Italy was partially occupied from time to time by France or Austria, which left additional culinary influences in the Northeast. The richness of the cities of northern Italy is reflected in particular in the creation of a “culture” of fresh pasta. While dry macaroni was an item of mass production, fresh pasta associated with eggs, cheese, sugar, cream, and other expensive items was a luxury item. Even though fresh pasta became diffused throughout the peninsula and outside the borders of Italy, it is in northern Italy that we find the most spectacular recipes. It is no coincidence that many consider Bologna the gastronomic capital of Italy.

Tuscany represents a phenomenon by itself in Italian history. Starting in the thirteenth century, the city of Florence in particular became rich during the evolution of the banking system. The De Medicis, a family of merchants and bankers, would become patrons of the arts and would accelerate the movement that became known as the Renaissance. It was the birth of a new way of viewing human beings as in conrol of their own destinies. New social rules were created here and exported all over Europe, which was on the verge of great transformation due to the discoveries of the age of exploration. The Renaissance initiated a great revolution in the arts, also reflected in spectacular and extravagant new ways of cooking.


While the north would see the creation of many small independent political entities, the south of Italy remained mostly unified for a long time. Separated from the great trading routes with northern Europe, the south suffered greater poverty and isolation. The people of southern Italy made the best of what they had. But it is here, in southern Italy, that spectacular dishes like spaghetti and pizza originated. Born as the poor people’s way of cooking, these dishes were exported by groups of Italian emigrants and disseminated outside their regions of origin, making them extremely popular everywhere. Dry pasta is the greatest contribution from southern Italy.
Dry macaroni is suitable for storing, trading, and transporting. The invention of the bronze press industrialized the manufacturing of pasta, making macaroni affordable. Present in Sicily since Arab occupation, macaroni became extremely popular in Naples in the 1700s. It is from there that dry pasta started its journey conquering the world. Sicilian history is fascinating for all the different people that occupied the island during different times. The greatest influence was left by the Muslim occupation that lasted for two centuries. Muslims contributed greatly to Western cuisine with a variety of foods, including rice, spinach, alcohol, oranges, lemons, apricots, sugar, and more. In Sicily, their influence is still greatly felt today.


Local traditions result from long complex historical developments and strongly influence local habits. Distinctive cultural and social differences remain present throughout Italy, although today mass marketing tends to cause a leveling of long-established values. In a country so diverse, it is impossible to define an “Italian” cooking style, but traditional food is still at the core of the cultural identity of each region, and Italians react with attachment to their own identity when confronted with the tendency toward flattening their culture.