History of Lasagna: How Italy’s Beloved Layered Pasta Evolved

Italy is the home of ultimate comfort food. Pasta, rich meat sauce, decadent bechamel and heaps of melted cheese layered in warmest hug that is lasagna. Some of the histories written about how a beloved kitchen staple baked dish comes to be, had taken centuries of evolution in order for what we consider delicious lasagna today.

Historians trace the earliest simple baked pasta called lasagna back to these origins. Antiquity, but a study history of lasagna demonstrates how that assumption developed to recognize as Italy greatest-conventional baked pasta sort.

The Not so Ancient Start: The Greeks & Romans

Lasagna is now almost-but-not-quite Italian, but its story reaches deep into the past:

Ancient Greece: The word lasagne most likely goes back to the Greek word laganon, a kind of flat sheet dough cut into strips.

Ancient Rome: Based on this, the Romans developed lasanum (the wall picture), which literally referred to the container or pot used to bake layers of times together.

The 4th-century Roman cookbook De Re Coquinaria featured a few recipes for meat and spices pressed between thin sheets of dough. These may not be the typical fillings we find in today’s more traditional modern ingredients. But they established the very principles of dough with savoury filling layered within.

The Middle Ages: The Birth of Layered Pasta

In Italian Middle ages, lasagna began near its advanced shape. The 13th- and 14th-century Italian cookbook Liber de Coquina explicitly describes boiled dough sheets layered with grated cheese and spices.

Ancient Laganon (Greek Strips)

Medieval Boiled Dough (Layered and with Cheese)

Baked (Greek Strips or Layers)+(Layered & with Cheese)=>Eggs & Rich Meats of the Renaissances

As they started introducing eggs to the dough. Then we had a softer sheet of pasta similar to what you would have seen in Renaissance chefs. However, one crucial element was still absent is tomatoes. But tomatoes originated in the Americas. So no one was able to add them to Italian cuisine until the 16th or 17th centuries.

Bologna Vs. Naples — The Regionally Significant Rivalry

In 19th century Italy to achieve lasagnas of two main regional styles.

The chefs of the northern part (Bologna) of this region come up with Lasagne alla Bolognese. An oft considered gold standard version of the real lasagna. Its northern style with tangle strands of spinach and fresh green egg noodles — tagliatelle pasta dough. Once the pasta sheets are adherent a cooked cow and pork meat sauce (ragù bolognese) is mixed with tina grated parmesan cheese. In addition to a thick silky-smooth béchamel (besciamella). This means flour, milk together with butter. The Béchamel sauce (i.e., milk, butter and flour) that gives a soft & creamy texture to made by Bolognese lasagna also gives moisture.

Further south in Campania (Naples), they made an entirely different one called Lasagne di Carnevale. In southern Italy, pasta is made with a type of un-enriched semolina without eggs. In Neapolitan lasagna, it contains creamy ricotta cheese, the melted mozzarella di bufala, mini-meatballs and sliced boiled eggs in place of béchamel. And it is all interspersed with a rich, meaty Neapolitan style tomato sause. This is a denser, hearty-baed bread that is evocative of breads baked for celebrations.

All these regional types represent a region in Italy that took a simple idea for structured pasta and built another palate-pleasing variation on the foundation.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Did England invent lasagna?

No. An English recipe for loseyns from that century includes layers of noodles and cheese. However, as Italian chronicles have discovered lasagna for much further back to the time of writing of the English manuscript.

So if you were wondering why do we use lasagna vs. lasagne?

Lasagna (without the last ‘a’) is a single sheet of pasta, while lasagne (with an ‘e’ on the end) conveys the completed dish with numerous sheets prepared with filling. In American English it is commonly “lasagna” but in British English “lasagne.”

What year were tomatoes added to lasagna?

Europeans introduced tomatoes to Italy from the Americas in the 16th century, but Italian authors did not publish recipes for tomato-based pasta sauces until the late 17th century.

How lasagna evolved over the centuries — once strips of dough in ancient Greece and now a regional Italian classic Fans of the northern béchamel, and others for southern ricotta each slice a piece of history.