December 5, 2025 • 58 mins
This type of pasta with a long, thin cylindrical shape has become a global staple because it’s easy to make, store, and cook – and expound upon with whatever sauce you like. Anney and Lauren untangle the science and history of spaghetti.
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Hello, and welcome to Savor Protection of iHeartRadio. I'm Annie
Reese and.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
I'm Lauren Vogel Bam, and today we have an episode
for you about spaghetti.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Yes, and for a seemingly simple ingredient us on face value,
this is the longest outline we've written in a while.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Yep, yep, I knew it was going to be a
little bit of a tangle, and yet I did not.
Yeah that was a pun, and yeah, I did not
know exactly how much of one. And that is why
this episode is coming to you a little bit later
than it normally would be, because.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
That pretty much sums it up. That sounds I don't know,
but there's a lot. There is a lot about it
which is great, which is really fun.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
Now love that and many interesting things that I was like, well,
I can't not say this. I have to talk about this.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
I think I think you're in for a treat. Listeners.
If you don't know much about spaghetti, this is a
fun one. Was there any particular reason this was on
your mind?
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Lauren, Well, it is the holiday season and we've been
doing a lot of things that are like directly in
North America recently, and so I kind of wanted to
expand into a more global comfort food, and spaghetti is
absolutely that is. It is one of my very favorite things.
(01:40):
I really I really like like chewy foods, that that
texture is so satisfying to me, and yeah, and you
can just do so many things with it and it's
so nice and that it just has that bite and
it's all. Also, I do have very fond memories of
friend's dad always bringing a spaghetti pie to holidays and.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
So yeah, yeah, so many possibilities. I tried to stop myself. Okay,
I also love, love, love love spaghetti, and I've loved
it for a long time. When I was in kindergarten,
I made this. It was like a little recipe paddle
(02:26):
thing and I wrote out the recipe for spaghetti and
meat sauce. And my mom still has it and we
used to make it together. I love to make it
with her. My favorite part was because we usually made
it with meat sauce and so admittedly my favorite part
was putting in all the ingredients and string it together.
Less the boiling of the noodles. But I did have
(02:49):
a song for when the noodles were ready, because we
would throw them against the cabinet, and if they stuck,
that meant they are ready, And so it was spaghetti
is ready when it sticks to the wall. La la
la la. Anyway, I still can remember the song. It's
very embarrassing. It's very embarrassing. That's amazing.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
Yeah, you can just try eating a piece to see
if it's ready. You don't have to throw it. But
but I'm glad that you had a song. I'm glad
that you enjoyed it.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
Yes, I very much did. I'm sure my mom probably
was like, just let her get some energy out.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
Throw it at the wall. Yeah, this is easy to clean.
To be honest, let's go.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
Yes, she's having fun. It probably wasn't really helping her
make the dish. But anyway, I really enjoyed it. I've
told the story before, but now that I've done this research,
I don't think this is true. But in my family,
I quote ate it weird because I liked to keep
the noodle separate from the sauce and then I can
(03:53):
control how much.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
Sauce went into the noodle.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
But I think if I just had a straight tomatoes sauce,
that's what I really like, is the tomato with butter
and some like herbs as opposed to the meat sauce.
I felt like the meat kind of overwhelmed the the noodles.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
I strongly believe that, like Italian traditionists would agree with you.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
I feel kind of validated. To be honest, I've sort
of been teased about this most of my life, but
now I'm like, hmm, I was onto something.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
Yeah, I don't mind having like like kind of like
chunks of stuff in a spaghetti dish to kind of
like like spear along with a nice little nest of
spaghetti that I've twirled up. But yeah, like a thick
sauce belongs on a different noodle.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
Yeah, I'm very happy about this. Feel good. Also, just
want to know both Lauren and I have already satisfied
the craving.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
Oh yeah, no, like yeah, last night I was. I
had spent all day looking at pictures of spaghetti as
I was reading about and I was like, well, this
is what we're doing.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
Absolutely, we do go in a lot of tangents on
this episode. I have to say one I stopped myself
from going on is spaghetti squash. So just a note
good for you.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
Yeah, I had to stop at a certain point there
is so much Yeah, different, different episode for sure.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
Absolutely, And speaking of you can see our past pasta episodes.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
Like fifty Shapes of Pasta and also Macaroni Salad. Also,
perhaps it sounds weird, but it makes sense when you
think about it. Our Satan episode for more on.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
Glutens interesting, I'd say tomato. Maybe our Tetrazini episode, which
is a great use for leftover turkey by the way.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
If you're still looking for something with that, yep. Also
Forks always a fun episode, and our farewell episode from
our New Orleans trip, wherein we tell the tale of
mister Ferreira the spaghetti ghost.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
Yes, it's excellent, Yeah, very fun.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
After that, we did make sure to ask people about
any ghosts in the immediate presence of the podcasting team. Yes,
but it was the first time that we had ever
been presented with a ghost mid recording.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
Yes, and it's very difficult to predict a spaghetti ghost
coming up in an interview. That's just quite a thing,
to be honest.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
It was No Orleans. I feel like we should have
expected it like that, but but yes, so definitely check
that out if your curiosity is it all peaked.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
I mean mine would if I heard spaghetti ghost. I
would want more information, but that's just me perhaps, which
I guess does bring us to our question.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
A number of them, but one specific one for right now.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Yes, yes, spaghetti, what is it? Well?
Speaker 2 (07:21):
Spaghetti is a type of pasta that is extruded in
a thin, long cylindrical shape and typically manufactured in a
dried format to be rehydrated during cooking. It's traditionally made
with just two ingredients, water plus a coarse ground flower
(07:42):
of a specific variety of wheat called Durham, though it
can be made with other flowers, and the idea is
that you wind up with this shelf stable, portable, relatively
inexpensive staple grain that you only have to boil in
water for several minutes in order to cook, and from
(08:02):
that you wind up with just a lovely, tender, chewy,
slippy pile of noodles that's like real, mild and flavor,
a little sweet and earthy. And therefore it can be
expounded upon by adding all kinds of different savory sauces
that will coat the pasta and add whatever flavor or
flavors that you like. And you're looking for a sauce
(08:23):
to pasta ratio that lets both shine, and that really
depends on the sauce at hand. But yeah, you can
also bake boiled or parboiled spaghetti into casserole dishes, and
it can thus be served in a small portion as
like an early course in a meal, or as a
side dish, or can be portioned up and paired with
a heftier sauces or toppings as a main dish. Spaghetti
(08:47):
is endlessly adaptable and so pleasingly tender, chewy, and like
satisfyingly filling. It's like laying out and picking shapes out
of the clouds with someone dear to you, just like
really nice and completely what you make it.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
Yeah, it's really lovely. It's like lovely dish to share
with someone too.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
Oh it is, yeah, good spaghetti dinner. Oh man. But okay,
I threw a lot of words at y'all in that
first sentence, so let's unpack some of this, Okay. Pasta
just basic definition is a thick, unleavened dough cooked by
boiling or baking, usually in liquid to help it expand
(09:37):
and tenderize that it winds up being appliable, not like crisp. Yeah,
it's your cooking preferences can vary there, but anyway, Yeah,
in traditional spaghetti, the dough is made from just flour
and water, and as I said above, this specific type
of flour is made from Durham wheat, which is a
type of hard wheat that contains a little more protein
(10:00):
most other wheats, including glutens, which are this like sticky
elastic type of protein that can really glom onto water
and then set up into a flexible but stable matrix.
Glutens are generally what gives things like breads and pastas
their chew, and for spaghetti, that wheat is ground into
(10:24):
a coarse flower called semlina. Semalina refers to the coarse texture,
and the flour will be yellow in color. So you
take that flour and nat it with water to make
a thick but pliable dough. The needing helps develop the glutens,
which form up in flexible chains, and also some starches
which will form up in kind of little balls. You
(10:45):
then extrude the dough into the spaghetti shape, and extrusion
is the really unsexy term in food manufacturing that means
that you're pushing a dough through a mold or a
dye that will give it a shape. And you've probably
done this with play dough, you know, like you push
the dough through a mold and it streams out in
(11:06):
strings that are round or square or triangular, the skinnier
or thicker depending on the aperture the width of the
opening of the mold. Yeah, And as the dough extrudes
through the mold, you can cut it off at any
length that you like. For spaghetti, you're using a dye,
don't call it a mold. You're using a dye with
(11:28):
a round aperture between like one to two millimeters in
diameter about up to a tenth of an inch, and
thus creating a very long strand that will be cut
to a standard length either as it comes out of
the extruder or after drying. And again, spaghetti is most
often manufactured as a dried product. And note here that
(11:52):
the type of dye, like the material of the dye
that you use to extrude your pasta, will affect the
surface of the finished pasta. So if you use something
modern and extremely smooth, like a like teflon, you'll wind
up with smooth noodles. If you use something with more texture,
even on a microscopic level, like bronze. You'll wind up
(12:16):
with texture on the surface of your noodles, which generally
speaking is real good. It'll give it little nooks and
crannies that the sauce can adhere to you after you've
cooked them. But okay, drying. Drying occurs in two steps,
a shorter pre drying or wrapping stage to firm up
(12:37):
the outer surface the wrapping of the noodle, and then
like a low and slow stage to totally dry them out.
And this prevents the surface from cracking and preserves all
of the starches and glutens in there. After drying, if
you have not already cut your pasta, it will be
cut to length which is about ten to twelve inches
(12:58):
that's twenty five to thirty and then packaged and then
it is ready for sale. I will say this is
a very basic idea of the process, but both both
large and small scale manufacturers have really specific ratios of
flower to water and temperatures at which all this should
(13:19):
be done, and timings of how long it should be
done for and special equipment to create quality product at
whatever scale they're doing it at. And I also do
want to say that there are different ways of making pasta.
You know, you can include egg in the dough for
richness and tenderness. You can roll and cut the noodles
by hand if you'd like. I do believe, I mean,
(13:43):
I think from what I have read, rather that, strictly speaking,
adding egg or doing this by hand instead of extrusion,
makes a different type of pasta than a spaghetti. But
I cannot tell you what to do or what to
call your food. Nope, nope, nope, that's up to you.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
Not what we're here for.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
Uh No. But okay, So you buy some dried spaghetti,
it's gonna be a little poky if you just eat
it right out of the box. So you cook it.
Typically that's going to be by getting water to a
vigorous boil and then boiling the pasta until it's al
dente or a tender but with a like toothsome bite
to it. Yeah. What happens while it's cooking is that
(14:27):
those balls of starches will swell up with water, and
the glutens will swell a bit as well, and then
firm up or coagulate into a sort of meshy network
that traps entangles the balls of starch throughout so you
wind up with these flexible and chewy but still tender noodles,
(14:50):
the kind of chewy from the glutens and the tender
from the starches. But yeah, yeah, you then drain the
water and can further coat the spaghetti and whatever kind
of sauce that you like. And if you've ever wondered
why the texture of gluten free noodles tends to be
a little bit off, okay, research has been done into
(15:11):
this so that meshy gluten network prevents the starches from
overswelling and breaking apart during cooking. And that's yeah, why
gluten free noodles tend to get too soft and or
sort of dissolve or wind up kind of gummy due
to whatever sticky stuff you've swapped the gluten out for.
(15:33):
Researchers are working on it, though. A note here you
do not need to break spaghetti in half before you
add it to boiling water. You heathens, you put the
whole strands in the pot. Yes, the tops will be
sticking out. What you do is you stand there for
(15:56):
about thirty seconds, maybe up to sixty, and then and
then push around the submerged parts of the noodles with
the with the big spoon or something, because they'll have
softened in that time enough that they will bend and
allow the entire strands to submerge. Just just give it
another few stirs after that to ensure that they're not
(16:17):
sticking together, and repeat that stir once every couple of
minutes or so. The extra thirty seconds that only part
of the spaghetti it's boiled will not affect the final
texture of the pasta. You absolute heathens. Learn learn, learn
how to twirl it with a fork while you're at it.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
I listen, listeners, this is Lauren holding back on some
fasta opinions, which we know you all have.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
I and yeah, and look, man, if you enjoy breaking
your pasta, if you enjoy eating a shorter strand of pasta,
I don't understand you, but I support you and your choices.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
Some real hesitation.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
But yeah, yeah, if you ever do that in Italy,
people will be like, are you two years old? What's happening?
Speaker 1 (17:15):
But yeah, and now you can buy the half strands
of the store. The face Lauren just me, I'm just
needling her now.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
This is like when my friends say to me, but
I like a raisin bagel. But okay, Okay, we were
talking about spaghetti. Yes, speaking of sauce. Traditionally the sauces
that go with spaghetti are fairly thin because spaghetti is
(17:51):
fairly thin. But yeah, you can do whatever you want.
Another science tip here, best science tip for making spaghetti
and coating it with a so is that when the
pasta is like almost done and you're just about ready
to drain it, carefully scoop out like at least half
a cup of the starchy cooking water first. And pasta
(18:14):
water looks a little bit cloudy because some of the
starches from the dough will have like booped out before
the gluten network had a chance to trap them. Yeah,
so you save that starchy water and then you add
some of it to your sauce. It will help thicken
the sauce up and adhere to the pasta in the
same way that you might add corn starch to a
(18:35):
sauce or something like that thicken it up. It's generally
most effective to heat the cooked pasta, the sauce, and
the reserved water together, so that, yeah, like the sauce
soaks into the pasta a bit as it thickens. Lovely, lovely.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
I've always wanted to know how that works, So thank you, Lauren.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
Yeah, yeah, of course, of course. But beyond that, like, look,
this is not an episode about spaghetti. Sauces caccioi pepe
is a different episode. As much as everything that I
was reading wanted me to talk about it, it's a
different episode. There's a lot to read about spaghetti by itself.
There absolutely is, she says defensively. And one other note,
(19:21):
if you are wondering about the numbers on some like
spaghetti or pot or other pasta labels, those are not
an industry standard, but rather any given company's reference number
for the dye that they use to extrude that particular
pasta shape. So it's only really useful if you're like
familiar with the company. The names for different sizes of
(19:43):
spaghetti are also not standardized. Generally, a thin spaghetti is
called spaghettini and a thick spaghetti is spaghettoni. But beyond that,
you kind of have to look at the product to
see what's going going on. Just for one example, in
the United States, vermicelli means a long pasta that's very thin,
(20:07):
like thinner than spaghetti, and in Italy it means a
long pasta that's thicker than spaghetti.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
Fun so fun, love it, love it? Well, what about the.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
Nutrition that depends on what your spaghetti is made of
and what you put on them? Yeah, yeah, to choose
your own adventure there it is.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
Well, we do have some numbers for you. We do.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
In the US, federal regulations say that a product labeled
spaghetti must be between zero point zero six and zero
point one one inches in diameter. That's it. Anything else
gets a different name. Uh. There's a company called the
Egyptian Swiss Group that produces pastas for the global and apparently,
(21:01):
as of last year, twenty twenty four, they were working
to expand their production capacity for spaghetti from two tons
an hour a mere two tons an hour to four
tons an hour. So good for them. Good look, and
(21:22):
we have some world records. Hoo void, We have some
world records, all right. The Guinness record for the most
pasta eaten in three minutes was achieved question mark in
twenty twenty one in Germany with a medium thickness spaghetti.
That record was for two point h nine pounds of
(21:43):
medium thickness spaghetti to be specific, which is nine hundred
and fifty grams.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
Whoa mm hmm, yep, quite an accomplishment.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
It sure I couldn't do that. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:58):
No.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
The record for the most couples individually sharing a single
strand of spaghetto, which yes, is the singular of spaghetti simultaneously.
Not couples all sharing the same piece, but each sharing
their own piece.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
You got it.
Speaker 2 (22:16):
Yeah, that number of couples is four hundred and sixty three.
If you're unfamiliar for some reason, there's a scene in
the Disney animated classic Lady in the Tramp where this
happens between two dogs. It's real cute. This one was
achieved by a German restaurant group in twenty twenty three
(22:37):
in a Berlin airplane hangar.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
Two German records about spaghetti.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
You know interesting, you know? The largest bowl of spaghetti
was achieved in twenty ten in California when restaurant chain
Buca di Beppo put together a bowl that was three
and a half feet high and fifteen feet across and
filled it with thirteen thousand, seven hundred and eighty six
(23:06):
pounds of fresh spaghetti. For our metric friends, that's the
bowl measures one by four and a half meters and
that's six two hundred and fifty three kilos of pasta.
Six six chefs worked together to prepare it. It along
(23:30):
with over one hundred gallons of marinerasauce, which is some
four hundred meters, and they filled up the bowl using
a bucket brigadeo shop employees.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
I love all these records make me anxious. I don't
know why. I mean, watch spaghetti.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
If that bowl of spaghetti came to life, there would
be no defeating it, No would be done for.
Speaker 1 (23:59):
Little noodle appendages. No, what are we doing?
Speaker 2 (24:10):
And lastly, I am so sorry, but there is a
Guinness record for the furthest that someone has shot a
standard strand of spaghetti out of their nose. This record
is from nineteen ninety eight in the UK and the
distance achieved again with a question mark, is seven and
(24:31):
a half inches. That's about nineteen centimeters.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
So no one's tried to topple this record since nineteen
ninety eight, is what I'm hearing.
Speaker 2 (24:42):
Apparently not. Apparently not, And I believe that that occurred
on there. There was like a Guinness TV show for
a minute right around that time. I see, I'm very
slightly I'm really pretty sure that it's the distance shot,
not the length of the spaghetto, but I could be mistaken.
(25:04):
I haven't watched the clip because I don't like you
guys that much. And I say that I love y'all.
Mm hmm, just not enough to seek out that clip.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
Yeah, you've got to have some boundaries. Shooting a spaghetto
noodle out of the nose is one.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
That's all right, Yeah, yeah, that's boundaries are healthy. You're right,
thank you, Thank you. Well. I wanted to end on
that one for our top section here, just to give
everyone a little palate cleanser of an ad break.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
Yeah, smart, always thinking of you listeners, right, yeah, yes,
And we have so much history for you, oh.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
My heck, we do, and we are going to get
into that as soon as we get back from a
quick break for a word from our sponsors.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
And we're back, Thank you, sponsors, Yes, thank you. Okay.
So the history of pasta is it is long, it
has ancient roots. There's a lot of equivalent dough based
things that it's really hard to untangle, and there's so
(26:33):
many varieties around the around the world. So this was
a difficult one. This was one where I not only
was facing the hey, we're a food show problem, but
I was also facing this is an episode about spaghetti.
Stop getting drawn into other things like you were talking
about born.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
Focus.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
Yeah, focus, But we are going to have a very
very brief discussion about the history of pasta in Italy specifically,
which is a huge topic that could be a whole podcast.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
Oh, entirety of the podcast, not even an episode, right, no, yeah,
exactly exactly.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
So. Archaeological research suggests that noodles first originated in Asia
thousands of years ago and then spread west from there,
but no one is quite sure how pasta arrived in Europe.
Case in point, I'm sure many of you listeners have
heard this story. Many sources claim that pasta was first
introduced to Italy after Marca Polo was in China in
(27:34):
the thirteenth century and he witnessed the production of noodles
in Asia. He allegedly wrote a passage about it in
his book The Travels of Marco Polo, but it has
been lost to time, so a lot of this is
based on what other sources from the time wrote about
what Polo wrote about it. However, many point out that
(27:56):
this almost certainly is not true because pasta production was
already pretty well underway in Italy at the time. One
of the first known written references of dried pasta in
Italy is from eleven fifty four by Rigeio. The first.
He used an Arabic word that loosely translates to thin
strips of focaca, also fun with pronunciation. In this one,
(28:19):
I apologize in advance to describe this pasta. According to
his writings, a small town near Peralermo produced and exported
large amounts of this pasta in the Mediterranean. Another theory
is that pasta spread to the Mediterranean via Arab traders,
(28:39):
and that once it arrived there, Durham wheat became the
go to choice for making pasta, and this was because
of its relatively high levels of gluten, low moisture, and
the fact that once Duram pasta was dried, it boasted
a very long shelf life. It's also possible that Arabic
rulers of Sicily during the eight hundred CE introduced dried
(29:00):
Durham pastas, along with the techniques required for production and
manufacturing of them. Air physician Isho bar Ali described a
string like dried Durham pasta in the ninth century CE.
There are also records from one thousand to eight hundred
BCE out of ancient Greece for thin strips of pasta
(29:21):
sheets called laganon, believe to be a precursor to lasagna.
So again, nobody's foreshore.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
It could have been a little bit of all of these.
Speaker 1 (29:33):
It absolutely could have been. But however it got to
Italy because of its convenience, last ability, ease of adaptation,
with a variety of flavors, and affordable access, pasta became
popular throughout the country. Due to the abundance of fresh produce,
people could really experiment with what they added into their pastas.
(29:56):
At first, making spaghetti involved annually extruding pasta through dies,
and that wouldn't change until the mechanization and industrialization of
production during the eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 2 (30:09):
Yeah, those manual hand cranked extruding machines were developed sometime
around like the fifteen to sixteen hundreds. There are different designs,
but generally you place the dough in a chamber and
then use like a giant screw to force it down
through your die of choice. And today small producers or
(30:29):
people at home may still use hand cranked machines for
extrusion by the way, I couldn't find a better place
to add this note. In Italian, the word used for
this action, for this extrusion to extrude. The word is trafalare,
which directly translates as to draw, as in to draw
(30:52):
something through something. Yeah, which is a little less clear
than extrude in English, but sounds so much.
Speaker 1 (31:00):
Sir, I'm picking up that you really don't like extrude extrusion.
I look, I it's not It's okay.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
It's not a great word, or I mean, it's an
interesting word. It's not like, oh, man, I want this
applied to my food products.
Speaker 1 (31:17):
Yeah, yeah, I see you, I see you. The first
license for a commercial pasta manufacturing plant was issued in
Venice in seventeen forty, and by the eighteen hundreds Naples
was a hub of pasta production. This is also when
the word spaghetti, meaning string our thread, a diminutive of
(31:39):
the Italian word for cord, first appeared in a poem
by Neapolitan Antonio Viviani.
Speaker 2 (31:46):
Before then, this type of noodle would have been called
vermicelli literal meaning little worms, or the more general term macaroni,
which in Italy indicates a dried pasta product made from
and wheat.
Speaker 1 (32:02):
Yes, and in the early days spaghetti preparations were done
simply with only a few ingredients like pepper, cheese and
olive oil. Though the tomato was brought over to Italy
in the sixteen hundreds by colonizers, it took some time
for it to end up in pasta. You can see
our tomato episodes for more on that. But there were
some health concerns, some other concerns, especially amongst the upper class.
(32:26):
But once the ingredient was accepted, it became a favored
one in sauceas for pasta's like spaghetti, at least in
some areas, because I read in some places it still
was not you didn't add it to pasta. But yeah,
it became popular in some areas. I think it was
specifically a Neapolitan thing. Yes. By the late eighteen hundreds,
the first recipe for spaghetti with a tomato sauce was published.
(32:50):
While at first pasta in Italy was viewed as something
for the lower class, it soon became a thing enjoyed
by all classes and a source for experimentation.
Speaker 2 (33:01):
There was also, around this time just an absolute proliferation
of dried pasta factories around Italy here in the mid
eighteen hundreds. Also note that the late eighteen hundreds is
also when forks as dining implements really came into use
(33:21):
by common folks throughout Europe and Europe's territories. Before then,
I understand that people ate spaghetti with their hands.
Speaker 1 (33:29):
And then we have European colonizers who first brought pasta
to the Americas in the seventeen hundreds.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
But it would take a while and a few waves
of immigration for pastas to really take hold over here.
So like in the mid eighteen hundreds, Italian immigrants to
places like Peru and Mexico brought spaghetti and kind of
like redeveloped dishes and sauces with local tastes like talia
(33:57):
renes verdes, which is a spaghetti with a pesto ish
sauce topped with grilled meat usually and espagweite verde, which
is a spaghetti with like a cheesy cream sauce seasoned
with roasted Peblano peppers that are blended up with some
cilantro two just lovely green spaghetti sauces, just really gorgeous.
Speaker 1 (34:19):
Sounds so good. Yes, oh okay, so it was with
a large influx of Italian immigrants to the US towards
the end of eighteen hundreds that pasta grew in popularity
in the United States, particularly spaghetti. This was after decades
of negative stereotypes against Italian immigrants in America, so it
did take some time and sort of a US rebranding
(34:42):
that happened in the early nineteen hundreds to paint it
as a quote, non ethnic item. It was a cheap
food during the Great Depression, and later post World War Two,
with the return of American soldiers, it was rebanded once
again as sort of a romantic Old World Italian food,
and the popularity skyrocketed. It was affordable and easy to
(35:06):
adapt to local taste, which led to a lot of
regional varieties and what some call a real americanization of
spaghetti and dishes like spaghetti and meatballs and spaghetti and
tomato based sauces. Interestingly, in post war Italy, spaghetti also
seemed to shift from an affordable dish into something that
(35:27):
symbolized prosperity, and through this we got dishes like spaghetti
a la carbonara and spaghetti al palmondoro, and these became
iconic Italian dishes and spaghetti is sometimes referred to as
an international ambassador of Italy and its food.
Speaker 2 (35:45):
Also, apparently this was around the time that spaghetti's current
standard length really formed up, because before mid century, the
pasta might have been about twice as long as it
is today, around twenty inches or fifty centimeters.
Speaker 1 (36:04):
Wow. Another thing that fuels spaghetti's rise in popularity was
growing tourism to Italy in the mid twentieth century or later.
So tourists would try these spaghetti dishes and they would
try to find them or make them when they returned home.
And by this time spaghetti had gone pretty much worldwide.
(36:24):
You could find it all over.
Speaker 2 (36:25):
Yeah, and it was very much part of the popular
culture or consciousness in a lot of places. For example,
in nineteen forty nine, American physicist George F. Krrier published
this scientific article in the journal the American Mathematical Monthly,
posing what he called the spaghetti problem, having to do
(36:49):
with the oscillations of flexible cords of finite length and
how to control them. Basically, he was using the fact
that strands of spaghetti often slap you in the face
as you slurp them up in order to talk about
physics to like the common person. I haven't read the
(37:11):
full article, but the solution to the spaghetti problem is
to not slurp your noodles, but to twirl them into
a steady nest like bite when you do slurp noodles
in other cultures, as in like if you're eating ramen,
you use your chopsticks to control the oscillations of the
noodles during the slurps. So there are multiple methods of fixing.
Speaker 1 (37:32):
This, so many scientific ways to not get hit in
the face of the noodle as you're eating.
Speaker 2 (37:39):
He was like, this is a problem, let's talk about it.
Speaker 1 (37:43):
I enjoy it. Thank you. We do have a couple
of pop culture notes, although again that could be a
whole episode, absolutely, but yes. One of the big ones
is in the nineteen fifty five Disney film The Lady
in the Tramp, there was an iconic, kind of romantic
scene of Lady and the tramp sharing a connection over
(38:06):
a plate of spaghetti. And yes, one noodle very sweet.
It's very sweet. This one I'd never heard of neither,
Oh my goodness. In nineteen fifty seven, the BBC ran
a broadcast about the spaghetti tree, the source of all spaghetti.
It came out on April Fool's Day and received some
(38:28):
criticism later for using a serious platform for a joke. Yes,
and a few people felt really duped by the whole thing.
The broadcast depicted families in Switzerland harvesting spaghetti from a
tree and by the way, you can still see it,
you can. Yeah, it's online. Yeah, it's pretty wild, and
there was a lot of spaghetti to harvest because of
(38:51):
a spaghetti weavil. At the time, spaghetti was relatively unknown
in the UK, and hundreds of people allegedly called in
asking how to grow their own spaghetti trees. I have
to say, if I saw that, I thought it was
true and I could grow spaghetti on a tree, I
would be mad to find out that was.
Speaker 2 (39:10):
Like yeah, no, absolutely Yeah. When April Fool's jokes are
not appropriately tagged, I get pretty out of hand about it.
Speaker 1 (39:20):
You know, the BBC has had a couple of these instances,
They've done a couple of daring things of the years.
But I hadn't not heard of the spaghetti tree. That's
a new one. Spaghettio's debuted in nineteen sixty five, and
frozen Spaghetti Dinners came out in the nineteen fifties, and Okay,
(39:44):
over this period of popularization of spaghetti around the globe,
we start to see a whole roster of spaghetti dishes
being invented or taking off. And so I'm just going
to touch on some of these they hold up episodes.
Speaker 2 (40:00):
Oh absolutely, yeah, but.
Speaker 1 (40:02):
Yes, stepping back a bit. In nineteen fifteen, President Wood
Joe Wilson orchestrated the American occupation of Haiti, which lasted
until nineteen thirty four, and this involved the presence of
American marines in Haiti. It's believed that these American soldiers
introduced spaghetti with some type of tomato sauce to Haiti,
where it was adopted and adapted into spaghetti a dish
(40:27):
of noodles tossed with tomato sauce and or ketchup sausage
and or hot dogs and spices. Listeners, please write in
about any of these, please please please. Some of you've
already written in about this one, so whole episode for sure.
But Cincinnati chili served over spaghetti was allegedly invented in
(40:47):
nineteen twenty two. After a brief Italian occupation in the
nineteen thirties, Ethiopians adapted spaghetti to their taste and spices,
enjoying it with injera, which I actually just had recently.
Yeah yeah. According to a quick search, Japan, spaghetti Neapolitan
(41:08):
was created by a Japanese chef during the American occupation
of Japan post World War Two. It was part of
a long wave of a push for westernization in Japan,
all while preserving tradition, and the legend goes that the
chefs saw American soldiers eating spaghetti with ketchup and pepper,
so he whipped up some spaghetti with ketchup, bacon, onion, peppers,
and mushrooms stir fried together totably, and then assassin spaghetti.
(41:36):
Spaghetti al Assassinina was reportedly invented in the nineteen sixties,
according to one of the alleged inventors of the dish.
Again very brief search, so that'd be a whole different episode.
It was an accidental discovery after the chefs burned some spaghetti,
tomatoes and chili and decided to eat it anyway, and
(41:57):
then they found they actually liked the crunchy bits, so
they put it on the menu and added some more
spice and some more crunch It was a relatively local
dish for a long time, but it started to gain
more outside attention in the twenty tens, and apparently part
of the reason why is there was this physicist by
the name of Massimo del Eraba and he tried some
(42:19):
of the original and loved it so much he started
a Facebook group that translated to Academy of the Assassin,
dedicated to tasting and rating all the offerings of this
dish available to him locally, and the group reached hundreds
of members and word of the dishbread. I feel like, personally,
I've seen this a lot lately, so it's.
Speaker 2 (42:38):
Still it's still kicking. Yeah, it's still kicking. But yeah,
these are only a few, only a few, yes, a
bear few.
Speaker 1 (42:49):
So yes, So let us know if we missed one
from your neck of the woods, or if you want
us to expound on any of these, we would love to, obviously, or.
Speaker 2 (42:58):
If you have a more traditional favorite or anything. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
During this entire period of globalization, spaghetti also became a
popular metaphor so like in English referential terms like spaghetti
junction popped up by nineteen sixty three, you know, meaning
(43:21):
a twisty, loopy roadway interchange. Yeah, we got spaghetti Western
by nineteen sixty nine, meaning a film set in the
American Old West but filmed in Italy, and spaghetti strap
by nineteen seventy two, meaning a thin cord like shoulder
strap on a garment. Yeah, then spaghetification by nineteen eighty eight,
(43:43):
meaning what might happen to matter as it goes into
a black hole.
Speaker 1 (43:47):
Oh my, that is cool though, I'm glad to put
that in there.
Speaker 2 (43:53):
Yeah, my second of three science communication notes for this
episode about pasta.
Speaker 1 (44:01):
Yes, it's fantastic. It's fantastic. Food media like television and
the Internet really helped increase the popularity of spaghetti as well.
We've talked about that before. And then there's the Church
of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, which went mainstream in two
thousand and six after an open letter from the organization
(44:23):
behind this to the Kansas school Board. Very basically, it
was a way to comment on teaching religion and schools
and the arguments frequently used to do. So you can
look into it. They have a whole website.
Speaker 2 (44:36):
Yeah. Yeah, it's very very cheeky. It's saying, you know, yeah,
why not teach about the Flying Spaghetti Monster?
Speaker 1 (44:43):
Exactly, and those who follow the Flying Spaghetti Monster are
called Pastafarians. They regularly appear at Dragon Con. And you
there's someone who dresses as the Flying Spaghetti Monster, and
it's a really good costume.
Speaker 2 (44:57):
I have to say, yeah, yeah, if you've never seen
an of this, it's kind of a amorphous body made
up of spaghetti and with two meat balls as kind
of the eyes, and many, many, many noodle appendages. Yes,
may you be touched by his noodle appendages. Also in
(45:21):
two thousand and six, the Ignoble Prize winner was spaghetti related.
The Ignoble Prize, if you're unfamiliar, is a science prize
given to particularly silly or useless, but nonetheless rad scientific research.
They started up back in nineteen ninety one at MIT
(45:41):
a sort of parody of the Nobel Prizes and also
like a fun vehicle for science communication. And Okay, I
need to explain this one a little bit, because there's
been this question in physics for decades about why spaghetti
does not break in just two pieces when you grab
spit from either end and bend it. Yeah, Rather, the
(46:06):
two halves tend to further fragment into three or more pieces.
The legend goes that this question was raised by no
less than Richard Feynman, a physicist who won a regular
Nobel Prize in nineteen sixty five for his work in
like quantum physics. Apparently, dude love spaghetti. One day he
was like, why does it not split in two? And
(46:27):
spent a whole night just littering his kitchen with spaghetti fragments. Yes,
so he raised this question, and much later in two
thousand and five, these researchers from France did some work
and published a theory for how when you break a
strand of spaghetti with even pressure from both ends, it's
(46:49):
long enough and thin enough that the initial center break
creates a vibration through the two halves of the strand,
and it's further brittle enough that that vibration will cause
further fracture.
Speaker 1 (47:10):
Interesting.
Speaker 2 (47:11):
Uh huh, yeah, yeah, it's it's well. They well documented
it via slow motion photography and physical modeling. Then, following
up on all of this in twenty eighteen, a team
out of MIT published a study showing how to prevent
this from happening. Basically, you have to twist the noodles
(47:36):
as you bend them, and that way when the vibration
from the snap moves through the two halves, the two
new halves of the strand, its energy is sort of
canceled out by the strand attempting to untwist itself, you know,
to return to its original state as a straight rod. Yeah,
(47:58):
this might not be useful at home, because like, the
most effective twist is precisely two hundred and seventy degrees
applied to each strand individually. But but it may help
future researchers better understand cracks and fractures in like non
(48:19):
pasta materials like steel rods in structural engineering to help
prevent damage in buildings or even in microtubules in cells,
which are these microscopic rods that help provide a cell's structure.
(48:39):
And so one of the avenues of cancer research is
figuring out how to destabilize those microtubules.
Speaker 1 (48:49):
Wow, spaghetti, spaghetti potentially saving lives. That's this yesterday we
were going to record this yesterday at Lauren sent me
a note like, there's so much science involved. Who might
have to push this one? There is? And it's so
cool it is.
Speaker 2 (49:09):
I couldn't not say that, Like, once I knew that
this was a thing, I had to go with it. Ah, yeah, yes, yeah, anyway. Hu. Also,
I did really try to figure out why spaghetti of
all heck and pasta shapes became the one, you know,
like the icon that it is. And I think it's
(49:32):
really just that it's a very simple shape to make.
Speaker 1 (49:36):
That makes sense, and people people love it, they're familiar
with it. It's affordable. Yeah, it's easy to do what you
want with it.
Speaker 2 (49:44):
It's a fun word to say.
Speaker 1 (49:46):
It is a fun word to say. Yeah, but it's
it's it's really gotta it's iconic. Spaghetti is iconic.
Speaker 2 (49:56):
Yeah, yep, yeps.
Speaker 1 (50:00):
And we really only touched on We tried our best,
and it was already our longest outline.
Speaker 2 (50:07):
But in a while, in a while, yeah, I'm sure
we've had longer at some point, but this this ranks
up there.
Speaker 1 (50:14):
Yeah, it's But yes, listeners, if we if there is
something we missed or that you would love us to
revisit and expound upon any local spaghetti based dishes, oh
please write it.
Speaker 2 (50:30):
Oh oh absolutely. We do already have some listener mill
for you though, and we are going to get into
that as soon as we get back from one more
quick break for word from our sponsors, and we're back.
(50:52):
Thank you sponsor, Yes, thank you, and we're back with Listener.
Speaker 1 (51:05):
I did have a friend who had Italian heritage, and
she would make fun of me because I was not
good at the twirl. She would always like, give me
tips and tell me I'm correctly.
Speaker 2 (51:18):
It's I'm not. I'm not very accomplished with it without
using a spoon, which I understand is also a thing
that babies do. But but to be fair, I usually
have a spaghetti. I usually serve mine to myself in
a bowl, which doesn't really have a good surface for
a towirl on it.
Speaker 1 (51:39):
So yeah, yeah, but yeah, you just.
Speaker 2 (51:42):
Get a few strands on your fork, just just just
just a couple, less than several perhaps.
Speaker 1 (51:49):
Yeah, okay, maybe I was trying to go too big.
Speaker 2 (51:52):
Yeah, no, you go too big. You get the whole plate,
Get the whole plate on your fork. It's too many.
Speaker 1 (51:56):
You're right, You're right. I'll visit this. So we have
two messages from Connie, both about Halloween. Oh yeah, yes,
and they came in quick succession, and I wanted I
thought we should read them both. As the person who
chooses listener mail, I'm going to read the one that
(52:18):
came in second first, because I like to make Lauren
read the longer ones. Since I'm the one who chooses these,
It's okay.
Speaker 2 (52:30):
That's my lot in life because I make you choose them.
Speaker 1 (52:32):
So here we go. Yes, But also this first one
was kind of specifically addressing me. So here's the first
message that we received from Connie. I can't believe I'm
writing in two episodes in a row, but I had
to share this with you, especially Annie. Back during the
time they were changing the butterfinger recipe, I was listening
(52:54):
to a comedy podcast by Paula Poundstone. She was one
of those truly in by the change of the butterfinger recipe.
As a result, she wrote a song about it. I've
attached to YouTube link enjoy. I did, in fact enjoy.
So the song is called not My Butterfinger. You can
(53:17):
look it up. The lyrics are very funny, but the
chorus is essentially, some things need to change, some things
need to change, but not my butterfingers. But not my butterfingers,
and later we deserve the truth.
Speaker 2 (53:35):
I like the conspiratorial bent that that takes. Eventually, that's yeah.
Speaker 1 (53:40):
It's pretty good. She's like having this interface with the
person she's checking out with and they're like, you can't
get your money back, and it's a funny it's a
funny song.
Speaker 2 (53:53):
Yeah, okay, So this is the first message from Connie Technic. Hi.
I know this is late. I'm running a few weeks
behind on my podcast listening, but I'm older seventy ish
and wanted to relate my general experience with Halloween in
the nineteen sixties. I lived in central New Jersey. We
(54:13):
all went door to door then, as this was before
all the parents got paranoid that everyone was out to
poison their darlings, though my mom did inspect all my
candy before I got to eat any of it. Apples
were a big thing back then, and well meaning older
people used to put quarters in them. Almost every year.
There were reports of a kid having cracked a tooth
by biting into an apple and hitting a quarter. A
(54:34):
few reports of razors found also occurred, but rarely. Another
big thing was Halloween mini bags. I don't know if
they're still around, but they were small, decorated paper sleeves
that people would put in candy corn, hard candies, mini
tootsi rolls in the like hand them out. Occasionally we
would get candy apples on a stick, but mostly smaller
candy bars like you see now. Sometimes we'd get a
(54:56):
full size bar, and those houses were popular as words
spread throughout the neighborhood. There was one other aspect that
I did not hear you mention. The night before Halloween
was known as mischief Night. That was the evening that
the older kids would go out and write things, or
draw pictures, or just scrawl anything on car windows with soap.
The polite kids would be sure to use ivory soap
(55:18):
since it would scratch the windows of the car. Also,
there would be lots of trees in the area that
would sport lots of toilet paper. It was slightly annoying
for the adults who had to clean the mess the
next day, but it was generally viewed as kids just
having fun. And that's pretty much my remembrance of Halloween
back in the day.
Speaker 1 (55:36):
Well, thank you sure for sending this to us.
Speaker 2 (55:40):
Oh the quarters thing, Yeah, I had not heard about that.
Speaker 1 (55:44):
I had not heard about that either, And that does
I get the intent, sure, but it does sound like
a way for someone to break.
Speaker 2 (55:53):
There, to really crack a tooth. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I
this is also like like like firming up my concept
of not just chowing into whole fruit without cutting it
up first.
Speaker 1 (56:07):
Well, it's interesting how many because New Year's used to
I'm sure some people still do it, but it used
to be you'd put a coin in there in like
your black eyed peas or something.
Speaker 2 (56:18):
Oh, or I always thought that was risky or a
thing in the kincake for Carnival exactly.
Speaker 1 (56:24):
Yeah, it's like a fun I get it's a fun thing,
but it does seem.
Speaker 2 (56:30):
Slight danger, slight danger for your good luck, you know,
because it usually represents yeah, good luck.
Speaker 1 (56:37):
But it doesn't feel that way.
Speaker 2 (56:41):
Oh and and mischief night being allowed, that's terrific, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (56:47):
That is. I don't think that would fly to people
would call the cops, I think, yeah, but angry ransom online. Yeah,
the kids these days.
Speaker 2 (56:58):
Yeah, And when I was a kid, they did. They
did still have the little Halloween mini bags. That was
still definitely a thing when I was a kid, but
I think, as I like, by the time I hit
high school, it was more relegated to like using that
as a party favor rather than like at someone's house
that you know, rather than giving it out to people
(57:21):
who you don't know.
Speaker 1 (57:23):
Yeah, I think so. I've seen that before, but I
think it was usually my town used to do go
trick or treating at the college or going.
Speaker 2 (57:32):
These publica public spaces. Yeah, where you don't have some rando. Yeah, yeah,
you have a known rando.
Speaker 1 (57:41):
Yeah exactly, exactly. But thank you, thank you so much
for writing it about that, and we have loved hearing
about all of your Halloween memories or traditions. So even
if we're outside of that season.
Speaker 2 (57:55):
Oh no, keep them going. Yeah, Halloween, Halloween and Easter.
Speaker 1 (57:58):
Let's go. Oh yes, well, thank you so much too,
Connie for writing in. If you would like to write
to us, you can. Our email is Hello at favoritepod
dot com. We're also on social media.
Speaker 2 (58:11):
You can find us on Blue Sky and Instagram at
saver pod and we do hope to hear from you.
Save is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from
my Heart Radio, you can visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Thanks as
always to our super producers Dylan Fagan and Andrew Howard.
Thanks to you for listening, and we hope that lots
(58:31):
more good things are coming your way.
Hello, and welcome to Savor Protection of iHeartRadio. I'm Annie
Reese and.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
I'm Lauren Vogel Bam, and today we have an episode
for you about spaghetti.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Yes, and for a seemingly simple ingredient us on face value,
this is the longest outline we've written in a while.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Yep, yep, I knew it was going to be a
little bit of a tangle, and yet I did not.
Yeah that was a pun, and yeah, I did not
know exactly how much of one. And that is why
this episode is coming to you a little bit later
than it normally would be, because.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
That pretty much sums it up. That sounds I don't know,
but there's a lot. There is a lot about it
which is great, which is really fun.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
Now love that and many interesting things that I was like, well,
I can't not say this. I have to talk about this.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
I think I think you're in for a treat. Listeners.
If you don't know much about spaghetti, this is a
fun one. Was there any particular reason this was on
your mind?
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Lauren, Well, it is the holiday season and we've been
doing a lot of things that are like directly in
North America recently, and so I kind of wanted to
expand into a more global comfort food, and spaghetti is
absolutely that is. It is one of my very favorite things.
(01:40):
I really I really like like chewy foods, that that
texture is so satisfying to me, and yeah, and you
can just do so many things with it and it's
so nice and that it just has that bite and
it's all. Also, I do have very fond memories of
friend's dad always bringing a spaghetti pie to holidays and.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
So yeah, yeah, so many possibilities. I tried to stop myself. Okay,
I also love, love, love love spaghetti, and I've loved
it for a long time. When I was in kindergarten,
I made this. It was like a little recipe paddle
(02:26):
thing and I wrote out the recipe for spaghetti and
meat sauce. And my mom still has it and we
used to make it together. I love to make it
with her. My favorite part was because we usually made
it with meat sauce and so admittedly my favorite part
was putting in all the ingredients and string it together.
Less the boiling of the noodles. But I did have
(02:49):
a song for when the noodles were ready, because we
would throw them against the cabinet, and if they stuck,
that meant they are ready, And so it was spaghetti
is ready when it sticks to the wall. La la
la la. Anyway, I still can remember the song. It's
very embarrassing. It's very embarrassing. That's amazing.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
Yeah, you can just try eating a piece to see
if it's ready. You don't have to throw it. But
but I'm glad that you had a song. I'm glad
that you enjoyed it.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
Yes, I very much did. I'm sure my mom probably
was like, just let her get some energy out.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
Throw it at the wall. Yeah, this is easy to clean.
To be honest, let's go.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
Yes, she's having fun. It probably wasn't really helping her
make the dish. But anyway, I really enjoyed it. I've
told the story before, but now that I've done this research,
I don't think this is true. But in my family,
I quote ate it weird because I liked to keep
the noodle separate from the sauce and then I can
(03:53):
control how much.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
Sauce went into the noodle.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
But I think if I just had a straight tomatoes sauce,
that's what I really like, is the tomato with butter
and some like herbs as opposed to the meat sauce.
I felt like the meat kind of overwhelmed the the noodles.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
I strongly believe that, like Italian traditionists would agree with you.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
I feel kind of validated. To be honest, I've sort
of been teased about this most of my life, but
now I'm like, hmm, I was onto something.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
Yeah, I don't mind having like like kind of like
chunks of stuff in a spaghetti dish to kind of
like like spear along with a nice little nest of
spaghetti that I've twirled up. But yeah, like a thick
sauce belongs on a different noodle.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
Yeah, I'm very happy about this. Feel good. Also, just
want to know both Lauren and I have already satisfied
the craving.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
Oh yeah, no, like yeah, last night I was. I
had spent all day looking at pictures of spaghetti as
I was reading about and I was like, well, this
is what we're doing.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
Absolutely, we do go in a lot of tangents on
this episode. I have to say one I stopped myself
from going on is spaghetti squash. So just a note
good for you.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
Yeah, I had to stop at a certain point there
is so much Yeah, different, different episode for sure.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
Absolutely, And speaking of you can see our past pasta episodes.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
Like fifty Shapes of Pasta and also Macaroni Salad. Also,
perhaps it sounds weird, but it makes sense when you
think about it. Our Satan episode for more on.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
Glutens interesting, I'd say tomato. Maybe our Tetrazini episode, which
is a great use for leftover turkey by the way.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
If you're still looking for something with that, yep. Also
Forks always a fun episode, and our farewell episode from
our New Orleans trip, wherein we tell the tale of
mister Ferreira the spaghetti ghost.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
Yes, it's excellent, Yeah, very fun.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
After that, we did make sure to ask people about
any ghosts in the immediate presence of the podcasting team. Yes,
but it was the first time that we had ever
been presented with a ghost mid recording.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
Yes, and it's very difficult to predict a spaghetti ghost
coming up in an interview. That's just quite a thing,
to be honest.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
It was No Orleans. I feel like we should have
expected it like that, but but yes, so definitely check
that out if your curiosity is it all peaked.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
I mean mine would if I heard spaghetti ghost. I
would want more information, but that's just me perhaps, which
I guess does bring us to our question.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
A number of them, but one specific one for right now.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Yes, yes, spaghetti, what is it? Well?
Speaker 2 (07:21):
Spaghetti is a type of pasta that is extruded in
a thin, long cylindrical shape and typically manufactured in a
dried format to be rehydrated during cooking. It's traditionally made
with just two ingredients, water plus a coarse ground flower
(07:42):
of a specific variety of wheat called Durham, though it
can be made with other flowers, and the idea is
that you wind up with this shelf stable, portable, relatively
inexpensive staple grain that you only have to boil in
water for several minutes in order to cook, and from
(08:02):
that you wind up with just a lovely, tender, chewy,
slippy pile of noodles that's like real, mild and flavor,
a little sweet and earthy. And therefore it can be
expounded upon by adding all kinds of different savory sauces
that will coat the pasta and add whatever flavor or
flavors that you like. And you're looking for a sauce
(08:23):
to pasta ratio that lets both shine, and that really
depends on the sauce at hand. But yeah, you can
also bake boiled or parboiled spaghetti into casserole dishes, and
it can thus be served in a small portion as
like an early course in a meal, or as a
side dish, or can be portioned up and paired with
a heftier sauces or toppings as a main dish. Spaghetti
(08:47):
is endlessly adaptable and so pleasingly tender, chewy, and like
satisfyingly filling. It's like laying out and picking shapes out
of the clouds with someone dear to you, just like
really nice and completely what you make it.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
Yeah, it's really lovely. It's like lovely dish to share
with someone too.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
Oh it is, yeah, good spaghetti dinner. Oh man. But okay,
I threw a lot of words at y'all in that
first sentence, so let's unpack some of this, Okay. Pasta
just basic definition is a thick, unleavened dough cooked by
boiling or baking, usually in liquid to help it expand
(09:37):
and tenderize that it winds up being appliable, not like crisp. Yeah,
it's your cooking preferences can vary there, but anyway, Yeah,
in traditional spaghetti, the dough is made from just flour
and water, and as I said above, this specific type
of flour is made from Durham wheat, which is a
type of hard wheat that contains a little more protein
(10:00):
most other wheats, including glutens, which are this like sticky
elastic type of protein that can really glom onto water
and then set up into a flexible but stable matrix.
Glutens are generally what gives things like breads and pastas
their chew, and for spaghetti, that wheat is ground into
(10:24):
a coarse flower called semlina. Semalina refers to the coarse texture,
and the flour will be yellow in color. So you
take that flour and nat it with water to make
a thick but pliable dough. The needing helps develop the glutens,
which form up in flexible chains, and also some starches
which will form up in kind of little balls. You
(10:45):
then extrude the dough into the spaghetti shape, and extrusion
is the really unsexy term in food manufacturing that means
that you're pushing a dough through a mold or a
dye that will give it a shape. And you've probably
done this with play dough, you know, like you push
the dough through a mold and it streams out in
(11:06):
strings that are round or square or triangular, the skinnier
or thicker depending on the aperture the width of the
opening of the mold. Yeah, And as the dough extrudes
through the mold, you can cut it off at any
length that you like. For spaghetti, you're using a dye,
don't call it a mold. You're using a dye with
(11:28):
a round aperture between like one to two millimeters in
diameter about up to a tenth of an inch, and
thus creating a very long strand that will be cut
to a standard length either as it comes out of
the extruder or after drying. And again, spaghetti is most
often manufactured as a dried product. And note here that
(11:52):
the type of dye, like the material of the dye
that you use to extrude your pasta, will affect the
surface of the finished pasta. So if you use something
modern and extremely smooth, like a like teflon, you'll wind
up with smooth noodles. If you use something with more texture,
even on a microscopic level, like bronze. You'll wind up
(12:16):
with texture on the surface of your noodles, which generally
speaking is real good. It'll give it little nooks and
crannies that the sauce can adhere to you after you've
cooked them. But okay, drying. Drying occurs in two steps,
a shorter pre drying or wrapping stage to firm up
(12:37):
the outer surface the wrapping of the noodle, and then
like a low and slow stage to totally dry them out.
And this prevents the surface from cracking and preserves all
of the starches and glutens in there. After drying, if
you have not already cut your pasta, it will be
cut to length which is about ten to twelve inches
(12:58):
that's twenty five to thirty and then packaged and then
it is ready for sale. I will say this is
a very basic idea of the process, but both both
large and small scale manufacturers have really specific ratios of
flower to water and temperatures at which all this should
(13:19):
be done, and timings of how long it should be
done for and special equipment to create quality product at
whatever scale they're doing it at. And I also do
want to say that there are different ways of making pasta.
You know, you can include egg in the dough for
richness and tenderness. You can roll and cut the noodles
by hand if you'd like. I do believe, I mean,
(13:43):
I think from what I have read, rather that, strictly speaking,
adding egg or doing this by hand instead of extrusion,
makes a different type of pasta than a spaghetti. But
I cannot tell you what to do or what to
call your food. Nope, nope, nope, that's up to you.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
Not what we're here for.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
Uh No. But okay, So you buy some dried spaghetti,
it's gonna be a little poky if you just eat
it right out of the box. So you cook it.
Typically that's going to be by getting water to a
vigorous boil and then boiling the pasta until it's al
dente or a tender but with a like toothsome bite
to it. Yeah. What happens while it's cooking is that
(14:27):
those balls of starches will swell up with water, and
the glutens will swell a bit as well, and then
firm up or coagulate into a sort of meshy network
that traps entangles the balls of starch throughout so you
wind up with these flexible and chewy but still tender noodles,
(14:50):
the kind of chewy from the glutens and the tender
from the starches. But yeah, yeah, you then drain the
water and can further coat the spaghetti and whatever kind
of sauce that you like. And if you've ever wondered
why the texture of gluten free noodles tends to be
a little bit off, okay, research has been done into
(15:11):
this so that meshy gluten network prevents the starches from
overswelling and breaking apart during cooking. And that's yeah, why
gluten free noodles tend to get too soft and or
sort of dissolve or wind up kind of gummy due
to whatever sticky stuff you've swapped the gluten out for.
(15:33):
Researchers are working on it, though. A note here you
do not need to break spaghetti in half before you
add it to boiling water. You heathens, you put the
whole strands in the pot. Yes, the tops will be
sticking out. What you do is you stand there for
(15:56):
about thirty seconds, maybe up to sixty, and then and
then push around the submerged parts of the noodles with
the with the big spoon or something, because they'll have
softened in that time enough that they will bend and
allow the entire strands to submerge. Just just give it
another few stirs after that to ensure that they're not
(16:17):
sticking together, and repeat that stir once every couple of
minutes or so. The extra thirty seconds that only part
of the spaghetti it's boiled will not affect the final
texture of the pasta. You absolute heathens. Learn learn, learn
how to twirl it with a fork while you're at it.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
I listen, listeners, this is Lauren holding back on some
fasta opinions, which we know you all have.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
I and yeah, and look, man, if you enjoy breaking
your pasta, if you enjoy eating a shorter strand of pasta,
I don't understand you, but I support you and your choices.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
Some real hesitation.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
But yeah, yeah, if you ever do that in Italy,
people will be like, are you two years old? What's happening?
Speaker 1 (17:15):
But yeah, and now you can buy the half strands
of the store. The face Lauren just me, I'm just
needling her now.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
This is like when my friends say to me, but
I like a raisin bagel. But okay, Okay, we were
talking about spaghetti. Yes, speaking of sauce. Traditionally the sauces
that go with spaghetti are fairly thin because spaghetti is
(17:51):
fairly thin. But yeah, you can do whatever you want.
Another science tip here, best science tip for making spaghetti
and coating it with a so is that when the
pasta is like almost done and you're just about ready
to drain it, carefully scoop out like at least half
a cup of the starchy cooking water first. And pasta
(18:14):
water looks a little bit cloudy because some of the
starches from the dough will have like booped out before
the gluten network had a chance to trap them. Yeah,
so you save that starchy water and then you add
some of it to your sauce. It will help thicken
the sauce up and adhere to the pasta in the
same way that you might add corn starch to a
(18:35):
sauce or something like that thicken it up. It's generally
most effective to heat the cooked pasta, the sauce, and
the reserved water together, so that, yeah, like the sauce
soaks into the pasta a bit as it thickens. Lovely, lovely.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
I've always wanted to know how that works, So thank you, Lauren.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
Yeah, yeah, of course, of course. But beyond that, like, look,
this is not an episode about spaghetti. Sauces caccioi pepe
is a different episode. As much as everything that I
was reading wanted me to talk about it, it's a
different episode. There's a lot to read about spaghetti by itself.
There absolutely is, she says defensively. And one other note,
(19:21):
if you are wondering about the numbers on some like
spaghetti or pot or other pasta labels, those are not
an industry standard, but rather any given company's reference number
for the dye that they use to extrude that particular
pasta shape. So it's only really useful if you're like
familiar with the company. The names for different sizes of
(19:43):
spaghetti are also not standardized. Generally, a thin spaghetti is
called spaghettini and a thick spaghetti is spaghettoni. But beyond that,
you kind of have to look at the product to
see what's going going on. Just for one example, in
the United States, vermicelli means a long pasta that's very thin,
(20:07):
like thinner than spaghetti, and in Italy it means a
long pasta that's thicker than spaghetti.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
Fun so fun, love it, love it? Well, what about the.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
Nutrition that depends on what your spaghetti is made of
and what you put on them? Yeah, yeah, to choose
your own adventure there it is.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
Well, we do have some numbers for you. We do.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
In the US, federal regulations say that a product labeled
spaghetti must be between zero point zero six and zero
point one one inches in diameter. That's it. Anything else
gets a different name. Uh. There's a company called the
Egyptian Swiss Group that produces pastas for the global and apparently,
(21:01):
as of last year, twenty twenty four, they were working
to expand their production capacity for spaghetti from two tons
an hour a mere two tons an hour to four
tons an hour. So good for them. Good look, and
(21:22):
we have some world records. Hoo void, We have some
world records, all right. The Guinness record for the most
pasta eaten in three minutes was achieved question mark in
twenty twenty one in Germany with a medium thickness spaghetti.
That record was for two point h nine pounds of
(21:43):
medium thickness spaghetti to be specific, which is nine hundred
and fifty grams.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
Whoa mm hmm, yep, quite an accomplishment.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
It sure I couldn't do that. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:58):
No.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
The record for the most couples individually sharing a single
strand of spaghetto, which yes, is the singular of spaghetti simultaneously.
Not couples all sharing the same piece, but each sharing
their own piece.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
You got it.
Speaker 2 (22:16):
Yeah, that number of couples is four hundred and sixty three.
If you're unfamiliar for some reason, there's a scene in
the Disney animated classic Lady in the Tramp where this
happens between two dogs. It's real cute. This one was
achieved by a German restaurant group in twenty twenty three
(22:37):
in a Berlin airplane hangar.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
Two German records about spaghetti.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
You know interesting, you know? The largest bowl of spaghetti
was achieved in twenty ten in California when restaurant chain
Buca di Beppo put together a bowl that was three
and a half feet high and fifteen feet across and
filled it with thirteen thousand, seven hundred and eighty six
(23:06):
pounds of fresh spaghetti. For our metric friends, that's the
bowl measures one by four and a half meters and
that's six two hundred and fifty three kilos of pasta.
Six six chefs worked together to prepare it. It along
(23:30):
with over one hundred gallons of marinerasauce, which is some
four hundred meters, and they filled up the bowl using
a bucket brigadeo shop employees.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
I love all these records make me anxious. I don't
know why. I mean, watch spaghetti.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
If that bowl of spaghetti came to life, there would
be no defeating it, No would be done for.
Speaker 1 (23:59):
Little noodle appendages. No, what are we doing?
Speaker 2 (24:10):
And lastly, I am so sorry, but there is a
Guinness record for the furthest that someone has shot a
standard strand of spaghetti out of their nose. This record
is from nineteen ninety eight in the UK and the
distance achieved again with a question mark, is seven and
(24:31):
a half inches. That's about nineteen centimeters.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
So no one's tried to topple this record since nineteen
ninety eight, is what I'm hearing.
Speaker 2 (24:42):
Apparently not. Apparently not, And I believe that that occurred
on there. There was like a Guinness TV show for
a minute right around that time. I see, I'm very
slightly I'm really pretty sure that it's the distance shot,
not the length of the spaghetto, but I could be mistaken.
(25:04):
I haven't watched the clip because I don't like you
guys that much. And I say that I love y'all.
Mm hmm, just not enough to seek out that clip.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
Yeah, you've got to have some boundaries. Shooting a spaghetto
noodle out of the nose is one.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
That's all right, Yeah, yeah, that's boundaries are healthy. You're right,
thank you, Thank you. Well. I wanted to end on
that one for our top section here, just to give
everyone a little palate cleanser of an ad break.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
Yeah, smart, always thinking of you listeners, right, yeah, yes,
And we have so much history for you, oh.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
My heck, we do, and we are going to get
into that as soon as we get back from a
quick break for a word from our sponsors.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
And we're back, Thank you, sponsors, Yes, thank you. Okay.
So the history of pasta is it is long, it
has ancient roots. There's a lot of equivalent dough based
things that it's really hard to untangle, and there's so
(26:33):
many varieties around the around the world. So this was
a difficult one. This was one where I not only
was facing the hey, we're a food show problem, but
I was also facing this is an episode about spaghetti.
Stop getting drawn into other things like you were talking
about born.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
Focus.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
Yeah, focus, But we are going to have a very
very brief discussion about the history of pasta in Italy specifically,
which is a huge topic that could be a whole podcast.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
Oh, entirety of the podcast, not even an episode, right, no, yeah,
exactly exactly.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
So. Archaeological research suggests that noodles first originated in Asia
thousands of years ago and then spread west from there,
but no one is quite sure how pasta arrived in Europe.
Case in point, I'm sure many of you listeners have
heard this story. Many sources claim that pasta was first
introduced to Italy after Marca Polo was in China in
(27:34):
the thirteenth century and he witnessed the production of noodles
in Asia. He allegedly wrote a passage about it in
his book The Travels of Marco Polo, but it has
been lost to time, so a lot of this is
based on what other sources from the time wrote about
what Polo wrote about it. However, many point out that
(27:56):
this almost certainly is not true because pasta production was
already pretty well underway in Italy at the time. One
of the first known written references of dried pasta in
Italy is from eleven fifty four by Rigeio. The first.
He used an Arabic word that loosely translates to thin
strips of focaca, also fun with pronunciation. In this one,
(28:19):
I apologize in advance to describe this pasta. According to
his writings, a small town near Peralermo produced and exported
large amounts of this pasta in the Mediterranean. Another theory
is that pasta spread to the Mediterranean via Arab traders,
(28:39):
and that once it arrived there, Durham wheat became the
go to choice for making pasta, and this was because
of its relatively high levels of gluten, low moisture, and
the fact that once Duram pasta was dried, it boasted
a very long shelf life. It's also possible that Arabic
rulers of Sicily during the eight hundred CE introduced dried
(29:00):
Durham pastas, along with the techniques required for production and
manufacturing of them. Air physician Isho bar Ali described a
string like dried Durham pasta in the ninth century CE.
There are also records from one thousand to eight hundred
BCE out of ancient Greece for thin strips of pasta
(29:21):
sheets called laganon, believe to be a precursor to lasagna.
So again, nobody's foreshore.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
It could have been a little bit of all of these.
Speaker 1 (29:33):
It absolutely could have been. But however it got to
Italy because of its convenience, last ability, ease of adaptation,
with a variety of flavors, and affordable access, pasta became
popular throughout the country. Due to the abundance of fresh produce,
people could really experiment with what they added into their pastas.
(29:56):
At first, making spaghetti involved annually extruding pasta through dies,
and that wouldn't change until the mechanization and industrialization of
production during the eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 2 (30:09):
Yeah, those manual hand cranked extruding machines were developed sometime
around like the fifteen to sixteen hundreds. There are different designs,
but generally you place the dough in a chamber and
then use like a giant screw to force it down
through your die of choice. And today small producers or
(30:29):
people at home may still use hand cranked machines for
extrusion by the way, I couldn't find a better place
to add this note. In Italian, the word used for
this action, for this extrusion to extrude. The word is trafalare,
which directly translates as to draw, as in to draw
(30:52):
something through something. Yeah, which is a little less clear
than extrude in English, but sounds so much.
Speaker 1 (31:00):
Sir, I'm picking up that you really don't like extrude extrusion.
I look, I it's not It's okay.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
It's not a great word, or I mean, it's an
interesting word. It's not like, oh, man, I want this
applied to my food products.
Speaker 1 (31:17):
Yeah, yeah, I see you, I see you. The first
license for a commercial pasta manufacturing plant was issued in
Venice in seventeen forty, and by the eighteen hundreds Naples
was a hub of pasta production. This is also when
the word spaghetti, meaning string our thread, a diminutive of
(31:39):
the Italian word for cord, first appeared in a poem
by Neapolitan Antonio Viviani.
Speaker 2 (31:46):
Before then, this type of noodle would have been called
vermicelli literal meaning little worms, or the more general term macaroni,
which in Italy indicates a dried pasta product made from
and wheat.
Speaker 1 (32:02):
Yes, and in the early days spaghetti preparations were done
simply with only a few ingredients like pepper, cheese and
olive oil. Though the tomato was brought over to Italy
in the sixteen hundreds by colonizers, it took some time
for it to end up in pasta. You can see
our tomato episodes for more on that. But there were
some health concerns, some other concerns, especially amongst the upper class.
(32:26):
But once the ingredient was accepted, it became a favored
one in sauceas for pasta's like spaghetti, at least in
some areas, because I read in some places it still
was not you didn't add it to pasta. But yeah,
it became popular in some areas. I think it was
specifically a Neapolitan thing. Yes. By the late eighteen hundreds,
the first recipe for spaghetti with a tomato sauce was published.
(32:50):
While at first pasta in Italy was viewed as something
for the lower class, it soon became a thing enjoyed
by all classes and a source for experimentation.
Speaker 2 (33:01):
There was also, around this time just an absolute proliferation
of dried pasta factories around Italy here in the mid
eighteen hundreds. Also note that the late eighteen hundreds is
also when forks as dining implements really came into use
(33:21):
by common folks throughout Europe and Europe's territories. Before then,
I understand that people ate spaghetti with their hands.
Speaker 1 (33:29):
And then we have European colonizers who first brought pasta
to the Americas in the seventeen hundreds.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
But it would take a while and a few waves
of immigration for pastas to really take hold over here.
So like in the mid eighteen hundreds, Italian immigrants to
places like Peru and Mexico brought spaghetti and kind of
like redeveloped dishes and sauces with local tastes like talia
(33:57):
renes verdes, which is a spaghetti with a pesto ish
sauce topped with grilled meat usually and espagweite verde, which
is a spaghetti with like a cheesy cream sauce seasoned
with roasted Peblano peppers that are blended up with some
cilantro two just lovely green spaghetti sauces, just really gorgeous.
Speaker 1 (34:19):
Sounds so good. Yes, oh okay, so it was with
a large influx of Italian immigrants to the US towards
the end of eighteen hundreds that pasta grew in popularity
in the United States, particularly spaghetti. This was after decades
of negative stereotypes against Italian immigrants in America, so it
did take some time and sort of a US rebranding
(34:42):
that happened in the early nineteen hundreds to paint it
as a quote, non ethnic item. It was a cheap
food during the Great Depression, and later post World War Two,
with the return of American soldiers, it was rebanded once
again as sort of a romantic Old World Italian food,
and the popularity skyrocketed. It was affordable and easy to
(35:06):
adapt to local taste, which led to a lot of
regional varieties and what some call a real americanization of
spaghetti and dishes like spaghetti and meatballs and spaghetti and
tomato based sauces. Interestingly, in post war Italy, spaghetti also
seemed to shift from an affordable dish into something that
(35:27):
symbolized prosperity, and through this we got dishes like spaghetti
a la carbonara and spaghetti al palmondoro, and these became
iconic Italian dishes and spaghetti is sometimes referred to as
an international ambassador of Italy and its food.
Speaker 2 (35:45):
Also, apparently this was around the time that spaghetti's current
standard length really formed up, because before mid century, the
pasta might have been about twice as long as it
is today, around twenty inches or fifty centimeters.
Speaker 1 (36:04):
Wow. Another thing that fuels spaghetti's rise in popularity was
growing tourism to Italy in the mid twentieth century or later.
So tourists would try these spaghetti dishes and they would
try to find them or make them when they returned home.
And by this time spaghetti had gone pretty much worldwide.
(36:24):
You could find it all over.
Speaker 2 (36:25):
Yeah, and it was very much part of the popular
culture or consciousness in a lot of places. For example,
in nineteen forty nine, American physicist George F. Krrier published
this scientific article in the journal the American Mathematical Monthly,
posing what he called the spaghetti problem, having to do
(36:49):
with the oscillations of flexible cords of finite length and
how to control them. Basically, he was using the fact
that strands of spaghetti often slap you in the face
as you slurp them up in order to talk about
physics to like the common person. I haven't read the
(37:11):
full article, but the solution to the spaghetti problem is
to not slurp your noodles, but to twirl them into
a steady nest like bite when you do slurp noodles
in other cultures, as in like if you're eating ramen,
you use your chopsticks to control the oscillations of the
noodles during the slurps. So there are multiple methods of fixing.
Speaker 1 (37:32):
This, so many scientific ways to not get hit in
the face of the noodle as you're eating.
Speaker 2 (37:39):
He was like, this is a problem, let's talk about it.
Speaker 1 (37:43):
I enjoy it. Thank you. We do have a couple
of pop culture notes, although again that could be a
whole episode, absolutely, but yes. One of the big ones
is in the nineteen fifty five Disney film The Lady
in the Tramp, there was an iconic, kind of romantic
scene of Lady and the tramp sharing a connection over
(38:06):
a plate of spaghetti. And yes, one noodle very sweet.
It's very sweet. This one I'd never heard of neither,
Oh my goodness. In nineteen fifty seven, the BBC ran
a broadcast about the spaghetti tree, the source of all spaghetti.
It came out on April Fool's Day and received some
(38:28):
criticism later for using a serious platform for a joke. Yes,
and a few people felt really duped by the whole thing.
The broadcast depicted families in Switzerland harvesting spaghetti from a
tree and by the way, you can still see it,
you can. Yeah, it's online. Yeah, it's pretty wild, and
there was a lot of spaghetti to harvest because of
(38:51):
a spaghetti weavil. At the time, spaghetti was relatively unknown
in the UK, and hundreds of people allegedly called in
asking how to grow their own spaghetti trees. I have
to say, if I saw that, I thought it was
true and I could grow spaghetti on a tree, I
would be mad to find out that was.
Speaker 2 (39:10):
Like yeah, no, absolutely Yeah. When April Fool's jokes are
not appropriately tagged, I get pretty out of hand about it.
Speaker 1 (39:20):
You know, the BBC has had a couple of these instances,
They've done a couple of daring things of the years.
But I hadn't not heard of the spaghetti tree. That's
a new one. Spaghettio's debuted in nineteen sixty five, and
frozen Spaghetti Dinners came out in the nineteen fifties, and Okay,
(39:44):
over this period of popularization of spaghetti around the globe,
we start to see a whole roster of spaghetti dishes
being invented or taking off. And so I'm just going
to touch on some of these they hold up episodes.
Speaker 2 (40:00):
Oh absolutely, yeah, but.
Speaker 1 (40:02):
Yes, stepping back a bit. In nineteen fifteen, President Wood
Joe Wilson orchestrated the American occupation of Haiti, which lasted
until nineteen thirty four, and this involved the presence of
American marines in Haiti. It's believed that these American soldiers
introduced spaghetti with some type of tomato sauce to Haiti,
where it was adopted and adapted into spaghetti a dish
(40:27):
of noodles tossed with tomato sauce and or ketchup sausage
and or hot dogs and spices. Listeners, please write in
about any of these, please please please. Some of you've
already written in about this one, so whole episode for sure.
But Cincinnati chili served over spaghetti was allegedly invented in
(40:47):
nineteen twenty two. After a brief Italian occupation in the
nineteen thirties, Ethiopians adapted spaghetti to their taste and spices,
enjoying it with injera, which I actually just had recently.
Yeah yeah. According to a quick search, Japan, spaghetti Neapolitan
(41:08):
was created by a Japanese chef during the American occupation
of Japan post World War Two. It was part of
a long wave of a push for westernization in Japan,
all while preserving tradition, and the legend goes that the
chefs saw American soldiers eating spaghetti with ketchup and pepper,
so he whipped up some spaghetti with ketchup, bacon, onion, peppers,
and mushrooms stir fried together totably, and then assassin spaghetti.
(41:36):
Spaghetti al Assassinina was reportedly invented in the nineteen sixties,
according to one of the alleged inventors of the dish.
Again very brief search, so that'd be a whole different episode.
It was an accidental discovery after the chefs burned some spaghetti,
tomatoes and chili and decided to eat it anyway, and
(41:57):
then they found they actually liked the crunchy bits, so
they put it on the menu and added some more
spice and some more crunch It was a relatively local
dish for a long time, but it started to gain
more outside attention in the twenty tens, and apparently part
of the reason why is there was this physicist by
the name of Massimo del Eraba and he tried some
(42:19):
of the original and loved it so much he started
a Facebook group that translated to Academy of the Assassin,
dedicated to tasting and rating all the offerings of this
dish available to him locally, and the group reached hundreds
of members and word of the dishbread. I feel like, personally,
I've seen this a lot lately, so it's.
Speaker 2 (42:38):
Still it's still kicking. Yeah, it's still kicking. But yeah,
these are only a few, only a few, yes, a
bear few.
Speaker 1 (42:49):
So yes, So let us know if we missed one
from your neck of the woods, or if you want
us to expound on any of these, we would love to, obviously, or.
Speaker 2 (42:58):
If you have a more traditional favorite or anything. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
During this entire period of globalization, spaghetti also became a
popular metaphor so like in English referential terms like spaghetti
junction popped up by nineteen sixty three, you know, meaning
(43:21):
a twisty, loopy roadway interchange. Yeah, we got spaghetti Western
by nineteen sixty nine, meaning a film set in the
American Old West but filmed in Italy, and spaghetti strap
by nineteen seventy two, meaning a thin cord like shoulder
strap on a garment. Yeah, then spaghetification by nineteen eighty eight,
(43:43):
meaning what might happen to matter as it goes into
a black hole.
Speaker 1 (43:47):
Oh my, that is cool though, I'm glad to put
that in there.
Speaker 2 (43:53):
Yeah, my second of three science communication notes for this
episode about pasta.
Speaker 1 (44:01):
Yes, it's fantastic. It's fantastic. Food media like television and
the Internet really helped increase the popularity of spaghetti as well.
We've talked about that before. And then there's the Church
of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, which went mainstream in two
thousand and six after an open letter from the organization
(44:23):
behind this to the Kansas school Board. Very basically, it
was a way to comment on teaching religion and schools
and the arguments frequently used to do. So you can
look into it. They have a whole website.
Speaker 2 (44:36):
Yeah. Yeah, it's very very cheeky. It's saying, you know, yeah,
why not teach about the Flying Spaghetti Monster?
Speaker 1 (44:43):
Exactly, and those who follow the Flying Spaghetti Monster are
called Pastafarians. They regularly appear at Dragon Con. And you
there's someone who dresses as the Flying Spaghetti Monster, and
it's a really good costume.
Speaker 2 (44:57):
I have to say, yeah, yeah, if you've never seen
an of this, it's kind of a amorphous body made
up of spaghetti and with two meat balls as kind
of the eyes, and many, many, many noodle appendages. Yes,
may you be touched by his noodle appendages. Also in
(45:21):
two thousand and six, the Ignoble Prize winner was spaghetti related.
The Ignoble Prize, if you're unfamiliar, is a science prize
given to particularly silly or useless, but nonetheless rad scientific research.
They started up back in nineteen ninety one at MIT
(45:41):
a sort of parody of the Nobel Prizes and also
like a fun vehicle for science communication. And Okay, I
need to explain this one a little bit, because there's
been this question in physics for decades about why spaghetti
does not break in just two pieces when you grab
spit from either end and bend it. Yeah, Rather, the
(46:06):
two halves tend to further fragment into three or more pieces.
The legend goes that this question was raised by no
less than Richard Feynman, a physicist who won a regular
Nobel Prize in nineteen sixty five for his work in
like quantum physics. Apparently, dude love spaghetti. One day he
was like, why does it not split in two? And
(46:27):
spent a whole night just littering his kitchen with spaghetti fragments. Yes,
so he raised this question, and much later in two
thousand and five, these researchers from France did some work
and published a theory for how when you break a
strand of spaghetti with even pressure from both ends, it's
(46:49):
long enough and thin enough that the initial center break
creates a vibration through the two halves of the strand,
and it's further brittle enough that that vibration will cause
further fracture.
Speaker 1 (47:10):
Interesting.
Speaker 2 (47:11):
Uh huh, yeah, yeah, it's it's well. They well documented
it via slow motion photography and physical modeling. Then, following
up on all of this in twenty eighteen, a team
out of MIT published a study showing how to prevent
this from happening. Basically, you have to twist the noodles
(47:36):
as you bend them, and that way when the vibration
from the snap moves through the two halves, the two
new halves of the strand, its energy is sort of
canceled out by the strand attempting to untwist itself, you know,
to return to its original state as a straight rod. Yeah,
(47:58):
this might not be useful at home, because like, the
most effective twist is precisely two hundred and seventy degrees
applied to each strand individually. But but it may help
future researchers better understand cracks and fractures in like non
(48:19):
pasta materials like steel rods in structural engineering to help
prevent damage in buildings or even in microtubules in cells,
which are these microscopic rods that help provide a cell's structure.
(48:39):
And so one of the avenues of cancer research is
figuring out how to destabilize those microtubules.
Speaker 1 (48:49):
Wow, spaghetti, spaghetti potentially saving lives. That's this yesterday we
were going to record this yesterday at Lauren sent me
a note like, there's so much science involved. Who might
have to push this one? There is? And it's so
cool it is.
Speaker 2 (49:09):
I couldn't not say that, Like, once I knew that
this was a thing, I had to go with it. Ah, yeah, yes, yeah, anyway. Hu. Also,
I did really try to figure out why spaghetti of
all heck and pasta shapes became the one, you know,
like the icon that it is. And I think it's
(49:32):
really just that it's a very simple shape to make.
Speaker 1 (49:36):
That makes sense, and people people love it, they're familiar
with it. It's affordable. Yeah, it's easy to do what you
want with it.
Speaker 2 (49:44):
It's a fun word to say.
Speaker 1 (49:46):
It is a fun word to say. Yeah, but it's
it's it's really gotta it's iconic. Spaghetti is iconic.
Speaker 2 (49:56):
Yeah, yep, yeps.
Speaker 1 (50:00):
And we really only touched on We tried our best,
and it was already our longest outline.
Speaker 2 (50:07):
But in a while, in a while, yeah, I'm sure
we've had longer at some point, but this this ranks
up there.
Speaker 1 (50:14):
Yeah, it's But yes, listeners, if we if there is
something we missed or that you would love us to
revisit and expound upon any local spaghetti based dishes, oh
please write it.
Speaker 2 (50:30):
Oh oh absolutely. We do already have some listener mill
for you though, and we are going to get into
that as soon as we get back from one more
quick break for word from our sponsors, and we're back.
(50:52):
Thank you sponsor, Yes, thank you, and we're back with Listener.
Speaker 1 (51:05):
I did have a friend who had Italian heritage, and
she would make fun of me because I was not
good at the twirl. She would always like, give me
tips and tell me I'm correctly.
Speaker 2 (51:18):
It's I'm not. I'm not very accomplished with it without
using a spoon, which I understand is also a thing
that babies do. But but to be fair, I usually
have a spaghetti. I usually serve mine to myself in
a bowl, which doesn't really have a good surface for
a towirl on it.
Speaker 1 (51:39):
So yeah, yeah, but yeah, you just.
Speaker 2 (51:42):
Get a few strands on your fork, just just just
just a couple, less than several perhaps.
Speaker 1 (51:49):
Yeah, okay, maybe I was trying to go too big.
Speaker 2 (51:52):
Yeah, no, you go too big. You get the whole plate,
Get the whole plate on your fork. It's too many.
Speaker 1 (51:56):
You're right, You're right. I'll visit this. So we have
two messages from Connie, both about Halloween. Oh yeah, yes,
and they came in quick succession, and I wanted I
thought we should read them both. As the person who
chooses listener mail, I'm going to read the one that
(52:18):
came in second first, because I like to make Lauren
read the longer ones. Since I'm the one who chooses these,
It's okay.
Speaker 2 (52:30):
That's my lot in life because I make you choose them.
Speaker 1 (52:32):
So here we go. Yes, But also this first one
was kind of specifically addressing me. So here's the first
message that we received from Connie. I can't believe I'm
writing in two episodes in a row, but I had
to share this with you, especially Annie. Back during the
time they were changing the butterfinger recipe, I was listening
(52:54):
to a comedy podcast by Paula Poundstone. She was one
of those truly in by the change of the butterfinger recipe.
As a result, she wrote a song about it. I've
attached to YouTube link enjoy. I did, in fact enjoy.
So the song is called not My Butterfinger. You can
(53:17):
look it up. The lyrics are very funny, but the
chorus is essentially, some things need to change, some things
need to change, but not my butterfingers. But not my butterfingers,
and later we deserve the truth.
Speaker 2 (53:35):
I like the conspiratorial bent that that takes. Eventually, that's yeah.
Speaker 1 (53:40):
It's pretty good. She's like having this interface with the
person she's checking out with and they're like, you can't
get your money back, and it's a funny it's a
funny song.
Speaker 2 (53:53):
Yeah, okay, So this is the first message from Connie Technic. Hi.
I know this is late. I'm running a few weeks
behind on my podcast listening, but I'm older seventy ish
and wanted to relate my general experience with Halloween in
the nineteen sixties. I lived in central New Jersey. We
(54:13):
all went door to door then, as this was before
all the parents got paranoid that everyone was out to
poison their darlings, though my mom did inspect all my
candy before I got to eat any of it. Apples
were a big thing back then, and well meaning older
people used to put quarters in them. Almost every year.
There were reports of a kid having cracked a tooth
by biting into an apple and hitting a quarter. A
(54:34):
few reports of razors found also occurred, but rarely. Another
big thing was Halloween mini bags. I don't know if
they're still around, but they were small, decorated paper sleeves
that people would put in candy corn, hard candies, mini
tootsi rolls in the like hand them out. Occasionally we
would get candy apples on a stick, but mostly smaller
candy bars like you see now. Sometimes we'd get a
(54:56):
full size bar, and those houses were popular as words
spread throughout the neighborhood. There was one other aspect that
I did not hear you mention. The night before Halloween
was known as mischief Night. That was the evening that
the older kids would go out and write things, or
draw pictures, or just scrawl anything on car windows with soap.
The polite kids would be sure to use ivory soap
(55:18):
since it would scratch the windows of the car. Also,
there would be lots of trees in the area that
would sport lots of toilet paper. It was slightly annoying
for the adults who had to clean the mess the
next day, but it was generally viewed as kids just
having fun. And that's pretty much my remembrance of Halloween
back in the day.
Speaker 1 (55:36):
Well, thank you sure for sending this to us.
Speaker 2 (55:40):
Oh the quarters thing, Yeah, I had not heard about that.
Speaker 1 (55:44):
I had not heard about that either, And that does
I get the intent, sure, but it does sound like
a way for someone to break.
Speaker 2 (55:53):
There, to really crack a tooth. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I
this is also like like like firming up my concept
of not just chowing into whole fruit without cutting it
up first.
Speaker 1 (56:07):
Well, it's interesting how many because New Year's used to
I'm sure some people still do it, but it used
to be you'd put a coin in there in like
your black eyed peas or something.
Speaker 2 (56:18):
Oh, or I always thought that was risky or a
thing in the kincake for Carnival exactly.
Speaker 1 (56:24):
Yeah, it's like a fun I get it's a fun thing,
but it does seem.
Speaker 2 (56:30):
Slight danger, slight danger for your good luck, you know,
because it usually represents yeah, good luck.
Speaker 1 (56:37):
But it doesn't feel that way.
Speaker 2 (56:41):
Oh and and mischief night being allowed, that's terrific, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (56:47):
That is. I don't think that would fly to people
would call the cops, I think, yeah, but angry ransom online. Yeah,
the kids these days.
Speaker 2 (56:58):
Yeah, And when I was a kid, they did. They
did still have the little Halloween mini bags. That was
still definitely a thing when I was a kid, but
I think, as I like, by the time I hit
high school, it was more relegated to like using that
as a party favor rather than like at someone's house
that you know, rather than giving it out to people
(57:21):
who you don't know.
Speaker 1 (57:23):
Yeah, I think so. I've seen that before, but I
think it was usually my town used to do go
trick or treating at the college or going.
Speaker 2 (57:32):
These publica public spaces. Yeah, where you don't have some rando. Yeah, yeah,
you have a known rando.
Speaker 1 (57:41):
Yeah exactly, exactly. But thank you, thank you so much
for writing it about that, and we have loved hearing
about all of your Halloween memories or traditions. So even
if we're outside of that season.
Speaker 2 (57:55):
Oh no, keep them going. Yeah, Halloween, Halloween and Easter.
Speaker 1 (57:58):
Let's go. Oh yes, well, thank you so much too,
Connie for writing in. If you would like to write
to us, you can. Our email is Hello at favoritepod
dot com. We're also on social media.
Speaker 2 (58:11):
You can find us on Blue Sky and Instagram at
saver pod and we do hope to hear from you.
Save is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from
my Heart Radio, you can visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Thanks as
always to our super producers Dylan Fagan and Andrew Howard.
Thanks to you for listening, and we hope that lots
(58:31):
more good things are coming your way.
Savor News
Hosts And Creators
Anney Reese
Lauren Vogelbaum
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