Lasagna must be one of the most delicious dishes in the Italian repertoire. Lasagna, however, unlike most Italian dishes, is not a simple preparation. Lasagna is a carefully planned setup. While the individual lasagna ingredients are fairly straightforward, the assembly of those ingredients is very complex; And, depending on what you plan to include, it can be expensive. In my childhood, lasagna was not something that was seen at any time. In my childhood, lasagna was a dish reserved for parties. For some acquaintances of Italian extraction, lasagna was not known at any time of the year. In my family lasagna was always the first main dish for Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter. It was a dense casserole of alternating layers of lasagna noodles, ricotta cheese, and what we call “sauce.”
Of course, since lasagna was served only on holidays, it was only one part of a many-course holiday dinner. Such dinner parties usually started around 1:00 pm and continued into the night. On vacation there was a complex arrangement of dishes. First came the fruit salad. This was a mix of canned Dole fruit salad with the addition of selected fresh fruits served in tall glass glasses chilled with ice. I do not know the origin of this course. It certainly wasn’t Italian. It may have been influenced by what restaurants served in the 1950s.
But what is the history of lasagna? In the world of internet access to information from all over the world, I have made an extensive review of the history of lasagna online. Working from Google Italy and our own American Google, I found a lot of variations on lasagna recipes and history. According to various sites, lasagna is a very old food. It seems that lasagna may have its origins in an ancient Greek dish “laganon” or “lasonon”. The Romans adopted this dish and called it “lansanum”. There are also several sites that claim that lasagna is a dish of British origin called “loseyns” as found in a medieval cookbook from the late 14th century. While these fountains may be somewhat possible, I should also point out that a fair amount of water has flowed under the bridge since ancient times. I have some doubts that the “lasanum” of the Romans or the “loysens” of the British is the lasagna we know today. Then there is also the tomato issue. While all lasagna recipes don’t call for tomatoes (there are a fair number of “white lasagna” dishes), tomatoes in most recipes now matter. But, the use of tomatoes in the dish would not have happened until long after Columbus. The use of tomatoes also took some time. When they were first introduced to Europe from the New World, they were believed to be poisonous. In 1544 the Italian herbalist Pietro Matthioli classified tomatoes as highly poisonous. Only later, after passing through a stage where tomatoes were thought to be aphrodisiacs, did tomatoes find their way onto the table, especially in Naples and southern Italy. From what I’ve found, the first printed recipe with tomatoes appears in 1692. If lasagna as we know it today includes tomatoes, then it wouldn’t have been known in its current form until around 1700. I’m guessing lasagna as we know it today , it may not have ancient roots, but it may very well be a dish that was reinvented at a much later date.
So what about lasagna as we know it today? Some of the earliest references seem to date back to the 17th century. One of the most interesting sites I found maintains that traditional lasagna is a peasant dish based on the most basic products of the pig. For many, the main source of meat was pork. The pig would be slaughtered in the winter. The best parts would go to the “patron”, the owner. The peasants would keep the offal, the viscera and other portions of fragments. From leftovers that had some measurable meat, the peasants would make sausages. From the bone portions they created the base of the tomato sauce (what we call gravy).
My lasagna research took me in many directions. I even went back to my cookbook library to re-investigate my 1988 pre-celebrity chef Giulio Bugialli “On Pasta.” It seems that lasagna takes a different form not only in the different provinces of Italy but in the diversity of each home. Some lasagnas are based on meat, others based on vegetables such as artichokes or escarole. Some people, like my relatives, add hard-boiled eggs and peas; Others don’t. In the end, what happens between the layers of pasta is as variable as the things you can find to put between them. Yes, what we know in America has cousins in Italy. There’s nothing like intertwined strips of pasta with a delicious ricotta and meat sauce. But there are also vegetarian-based lasagna, like a wonderful lasagna with artichokes.
The recipe I finally settled on is a compromise of my family’s traditions, the wisdom of Bugialli, and the countless sites Googled. In recognition of what seems to be one of the fundamental elements of lasagna, I have used ground pork and pork sausage as the meat base. For the cheeses, I have selected those found in Campania: ricotta, percorino romano and scarmorzza. Scamorzza is a solid cheese found in southern Italy. Lasagna is not a simple recipe. You can’t do it as a 30-minute meal. It takes time, time and time. Carrying out a recipe like this tells why lasagna was just a holiday dish.
