Lasagna (2024)

Traditional lasagna must be one of the most delectable dishes in the Italian repertoire. The history of lasagna is old and may date to Roman times. Unlike most Italian dishes traditional lasagna is not a simple preparation.Traditional lasagna is a carefully planned assembly.Traditional lasagne is an assiduous, step by step construction. While the individual ingredients of lasagna are rather straightforward, what the ingredients are depend on what part of Italy your family came from. The assembly of those ingredients is very complex; and, depending it what you chose to include can be somewhat costly.
In my childhood, lasagna was not something you saw at just any time. In my childhood, lasagna was a dish reserved for holidays.
When I interviewed other Italians about their recollections of lasagna I found that for some lasagna was not known at all. Go figure,
In my family lasagna was always the first main course for Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter. It was a dense casserole of alternating layers of the lasagna noodles, ricotta cheese and what we called “gravy.” The lasagna noodles themselves were store bought. They were dried. They kind anyone can find in a box. In Italy this dried form of pasta is called "pasta sciutta."
This kind of "boxed" commercial pasta is usually also made from semolina flour and water. There are no eggs.
Pasta fresca, however, is a completely different animal. Pasta fresca is made with eggs. It is not dried and it is served almost immediately. Now, except for the extremely rare preparation of ravioli, I don't remember any preparation of "pasta fresca", in my childhood. The lasagna and all other macaroni came in a box. The lasagna was boiled at great length. The the lasagna were poured into a colander to drain off the water. Once the water was gone, the wide noodles attached themselves to one another. Each strip was then detached from the mass and went layer by layer in to the rectangular aluminum baking pan. The pan had already been oiled. Then the first layer of noodles went down to cover the pan. On top of the first layer of lasagna noodles came a layer of ricotta covered with gravy. The layering continued in succession: ricotta, gravy and noodles were couched every so carefully in their bed. The top layer was covered in a thin layer of scamorza, (what we called skah-muhtz) a dense drier form of mozzarella. Cheese was the foundation. In our house lasagna did not have any layers of ground beef or ground pork as one might find as a recipe suggestion on a box of commercial lasagna noodles. Meatballs, sausages and veal bones were simmered in the gravy to create the gravy's sweetness. But the meats were not set into the casserole itself. The meat elements were served on the side. Among some of my relatives, the layers also included sliced hard boiled eggs, and olives: additions that I have found on numerous Italian sites. But for my part, I have never cared for the more leathery texture of the hard boiled eggs and olives mixed with the creamy softness of the ricotta.
Of course, since lasagna was served only on holidays, it was only a part of a many course holiday dinner. Such dinners usually began around 1pm and continued into the night. On holidays there was a complex arrangement of dishes. First came the fruit salad. This was a mixture of canned Dole fruit salad with the addition of select fresh fruits served in high glass cups chilled with ice. I don’t know the origin of this course. It was certainly not Italian. It may have been influenced by what restaurants were serving in the 1950’s. Yet, on certain holidays, there was no fruit co*cktail. For New Year’s the fruit co*cktail was supplanted by soup, a “straciatella:” what folks these days call “Italian Wedding Soup.” After the fruit co*cktail or the soup came the “antepasto.” This dish was an amalgam of lettuce leaves, salami, olives, orange slices and what was called “giardiniera” a purchased in a jar blend of marinated Italian items. Then there was always a side dish of split celery stalks stuffed with Philadelphia cream cheese and accompanied by canned black olives. Here again, I don’t know the origin of this very American dish other than the possible imitation of what American restaurants were serving. In any event, we thought they were wonderful. Just to see the fruit salad in a tall stemmed cup nestled in crushed ice took us to a very special culinary place. Even if these presentations may have been somewhat farcical in our present evaluation of food, they taught us that there were levels of food and presentation. The care and delicacy with which these appetizers were presented showed us that there were ways to do things well.
Only after these appetizers came the anticipated lasagna. Lasagna was the first principal course after the fruit salad, antipasto or soup. The lasagna was not just set out on the table; it was gracefully swirled to a central position like a ballerina on the stage. No small part of the choreography was inspired by the hot edges of the pan that even oven gloves could not diminish. The pan was hot. My mother’s dishtowel covered fingers carried the pan quickly from the kitchen to the dining room, her face strained with upturned eyebrows to avoid the heat; carrying the pan as far ahead of her as possible she set it quickly on the several layers of dishtowels set on the table to receive its steamy heat.
The lasagna still wore its veil of aluminum foil which was briskly ripped away to reveal the still bubbling gravy and cheese. The reveal evoked a chorus of sighs and heavy breaths in anticipation of the delight to follow. Out came the large knife and the spatula. Generous squares were cut for each person. Meatballs, sausage and veal in their thick gravy were spooned on the side of each serving. The lasagna was so dense and so all-encompassing that it induced complete euphoria. the lasagna brought on sleep. After the lasagna course, and before the main course of turkey or ham or lamb, the men would retreat to the living room. In the living room, the men, our fathers. would rest on one arm and partially doze. While they indulged in the depths of the first course, the women scurried about in the kitchen finishing the details of the main course. In the meantime we children played on the center hall staircase. The world was divided into three realms: the men dozing, the women scurrying, the children playing. It was the very heart of Thanksgiving or Christmas or Easter.

But memory can often cloud reality. Frankly, that lasagna, as sublime as it was in its day, is not something I would like to return to. The noodles themselves were soft and overcooked. What we called the "gravy" was too heavy. It was made from several kinds of meat and three types of canned tomatoes. In those days the "gravy" required three elements: a can of crushed tomatoes, a can of tomato puree and a tiny can of tomato paste.The blend simmered and bubbled on the stove from early morning until Sunday dinner at 2pm. Where did that recipe come from? It must have certainly been what Lydia Bastianich calls a "cuisine of accommodation." The "gravy" of those days was extremely sweet and extremely heavy. The pasta was overcooked.
The notion that there could be something even better did not strike me until later in my youth, At sixteen I traveled to Italy. Everything I knew about food suddenly changed.
In high school, in my junior year, the Latin department offered a tour to Italy. I was a very good Latin student. Languages came easily to me. But, the thought of travel to Italy was an incitement that could not be mollified. I was going to Italy The family gave consent. I would be the first to go back to Italy in over one hundred years. The experience taught me not only about history and art, but also opened my eyes and tongue to food. In Italy I discovered an entirely new world of pasta dishes and sauces. In fact, it was in Italy that I learned the word “pasta.” At home, no one ever said “pasta,” it was always macaroni and only sometimes spaghetti. And the only sauce was what we called “gravy.” Gravy was that dense, overly sweet amalgam of canned crushed tomatoes, tomato puree and tomato paste stewed all morning with veal and beef bone and eventually meatballs. And except for pastina and eggs, there was no pasta dish that was not smothered in that gravy. Sunday gravy was embracing. Sunday gravy was aunts and uncles and cousins. Sunday gravy was happy and wonderful. Sunday gravy was the family. After my trip to Italy, I discovered a new world in the old world.
Now, in the world on internet access to information from all over the world I’ve done an extensive review of lasagna’s history on line. Working from Google Italy and our own American Google, I found a wealth of variations on lasagna recipes and history. According to several site, lasagna is a most ancient food. It seems that lasagna may have its origins in an ancient Greek dish “laganon,” or “lasonon.” It seems that the Roman food writer, Apicius mentions this dish and called it “lasanum.” The Roman poet Horace mentions something called "laganum" but with no detailed description. (Horace,Sermones I.6.115.) So, there is no way to know that Horace's version is the same thing that we know today. It is also said that Cicero liked laganum because it was easy for the teeth of an old man.

So, what about lasagna as we know it today? How far back does our contemporary lasagna go? Some of the earliest references seem to date from the 16th century. Bartolomeo Scappi, (1500-1577) offers a recipe for lasagna that is clearly more like a dessert something of a sweet with sugar and cinnamon. You can read the Italian at http://archive.org/stream/operavenetiascap00scap#page/n733/mode/2up
or the English translation:
http://books.google.com/books?id=GrvhZvK5pCgC&pg=PA475&dq=bartolomeo+scappi+lasagna&hl=en&sa=X&ei=ttx5T5z6IOao0AGazameDQ&ved=0CD8Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=bartolomeo%20scappi%20lasagna&f=false

One of the most interesting sites I found contends that traditional lasagna is peasant dish based on the most elemental pork products. Under the old regime peasants had to turn over the best meats to the landlord. For many, the main meat source was pork. The pig would be slaughtered in the winter. The best parts would go to the “patrone,” the landlord. The peasants would be left with the offal, the innards and other fragment portions. From the left overs that had some measurable meat, the peasants would makes sausages. From the boney portions they created the foundation of the tomato sauce (what we called gravy). The use of pork by-products by the Italian peasant while the finer pork meat went to the landowner is not all that different from the way that African American slaves made use of pork offal in earlier times in America.

Of course the base of the dish was the broad flat noodle we call lasagna. But, in this fundamental form the pasta was made from semolina and water. Egg based pasta made with finer white flour was a later, more elaborate addition. If this information on the history of lasagna is valid, lasagna was an economic way to feed a large family in a satisfying way. If the farmer had some dried cheeses available these would be added.

My research on lasagna took me in many directions. I even went back to my cook book 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 various provinces of Italy but in the diversity of every home. Some lasagna are meat based, others a founded on greens such as artichokes or endive. Some folks, like my relatives, add hard-boiled eggs and peas; others do not. In the end, what goes 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 is nothing like strips of pasta interlaced with delectable ricotta and meat sauce. But there are also lasagnas that are vegetarian based, like a wonderful lasagna with artichokes.

The recipe I set out here is a compromise of my family’s traditions, Bugialli’s wisdom, and countless googled sites. 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. To accommodate the Bolognese side of lasagna, I have added beef to the meat balls (polpetoni). For the cheeses, I have selected those found in Campania: ricotta, percorino romano and scarmorzza. Scamorzza is solid cheese found in the South of Italy. It is usually sold as “little men,” a name based on the shape of the finished cheese. Do not dismiss this essential cheese from the recipe. Scamorzza is the very backbone of a hearty lasagna. The ricotta I use is fresh, homemade ricotta prepared by our local provider, Carlino’s. Real ricotta has almost nothing in common with the grocery store version. But, if you do not have a good local Italian source for ricotta, the commercial “Sorrento” brand is better than nothing. For this recipe I have not used olives or hard boiled eggs as Bugialli suggests and as some of my relatives used. I personally do not like the texture of eggs with tomato sauce. And to me, olives just don’t work with ricotta. My other variation is the meatballs. Many Italian recipes, including those of Bugialli, call for ‘polpettine,” that is, “tiny meatballs,” that should go between the layers of pasta. Here again, I was not keen on the texture of the meatballs used in that way, particularly since I was using slices of sausage in the layers. So, for my version, I thought I would make standard style meat balls more as an accompaniment in recognition of the way they were served as a side dish in my childhood. So, while I use them to flavor the sauce, as they did in Italian American cooking, the meatballs are set out on their own on the top of the lasagna. Meatballs in this way would be something of recognition of Italian American meatballs served with any Sunday gravy. 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 only a holiday dish. The ingredients are broken down into several headings.