A brief history of the most eaten green sauce in the world.
Often, during cooking classes, my guests ask how old the pesto recipe is.
In their imagination (and perhaps in that of many Ligurians too), pasta with pesto has always existed on Ligurian tables, perhaps they imagine rustic tables with red and white checked tablecloths where giant plates of steaming trenette al pesto are ready to feed large families.
Each time I amuse myself by debunking this myth, as well as many others that now hover over Italian cuisine.
Surprisingly enough the Genoese basil pesto recipe we know now is not a very old recipe. In the panorama of the many traditional Ligurian and Genoese recipes, we can say that it is a youngster.
If you want to listed to the history of pesto (and discover many other interesting things about this iconic sauce) I was recently interviewed on this subject by UntoldItaly Podcast. You can listen to the episode tapping here.
Otherwise, keep on reading!
A brief history of basil pesto sauce
Truth is that the recipe of the most well known Ligurian green sauce – made with Genovese basil leaves, garlic, pine-nuts, parmesan cheese and EVO oil – is the result of endless, casual, experiments.
It’s a recipe that actually developed over the centuries.
Since middle-ages, a continuous mixing and pounding in the mortar of different ingredients – taking place in humble as well as in noble kitchens – eventually lead to the magical pattern and there definitely crystalized. We are at the beginning of the ‘900.
The base sauce, the ancestor of pesto, was a sauce made of crushing garlic in the mortar and mixing it with olive oil. A very common seasoning for meat, fish and vegetables on Middle Ages tables. Garlic indeed with its antiseptic properties was normally used to sanitize food.
This is the main reason why pesto without garlic – becoming very popular in the last decade – to me is a nonsense.
Then, little by little, people started adding fresh herbs in the mortar. Liguria is well known for using fresh herbs as a main ingredient in lots of their recipes. So, they started adding in the mortar some fresh herbs picked in the backyard or on the window sill, but not necessarily basil. The oldest written recipes we have about pesto (backdating 1860) provides, indifferently, for parsley, marjoram, sage, basil, even them all together.
As to nuts, probably the first nuts used in this – let’s call it – “herby pesto sauce” were walnuts. Probably the Genoese learned to use walnut sauces for seasoning from the Muslims, with whom they had intense trades during Middle Ages. Still nowadays in Middle East cuisine we can find different walnut sauce recipes for seasoning meats.
Then walnuts were replaced by pine-nuts. It’s not easy to say when and why. Actually scrolling the few ancient basil pesto recipes we have, pine-nuts are never mentioned in the pattern of ingredients but for one recipe (in “La Cucina di Strettissimo Magro” from Padre Gaspare delle Piane”), especially written for “sacrifice days” when animal products consumption was forbidden. And here probably pine-nuts were used in lieu of cheese to give creaminess to the sauce.
There are indeed some area, in the western backcountry of Liguria, where basil pesto still nowadays is made with walnuts instead of pine nuts. So, don’t worry, it’s not a heresy making basil pesto with walnuts: always better good walnuts rather than cheap, tasteless, bad pine-nuts! (but no cashew, please).
Coming to cheeses, the story is even more curious.
Today we primarily use Parmigiano Reggiano, preferably matured, over 24 months.
In the past, in lieu of – or jointly with – Parmigiano Reggiano Genovese, cooks used matured Pecorino cheese from Sardinia (“Fiore Sardo”). This because Sardinia was historically a “colony” of the Genova Marina Republic and most of the pecorino cheese produced in Sardinia used to be shipped to Genova and then from here sold elsewhere in the north of Italy. This cheese, therefore, was commonly available in Genoa markets at reasonable low prices.
Pecorino Sardo though has a spicy, salty, smoky flavor and tend to be overwhelming. This is why when we make pesto nowadays, or we skip it at all, or we use it in a very small percentage. Our palates are less “rude” than those of our ancestors!
For the very same reason (availability) some old recipes call for the Dutch cheese Edam (the one with the red wax skin) in pesto! It may seem very strange, but again this is because of the historical intense commercial relationships between Genoa and The Netherlands: in Genoa there was a big community of Dutch, importing, consuming and selling their cheese on our markets. It was available and cheep.
I have to mention also that in the Easter villages outside Genova, in Golfo del Tigullio, it’s a tradition to add to basil pesto a tablespoon of prescinseua, our local fresh sour cheese/curd (something in between ricotta and yogurt), to give extra creaminess and some acidity to the sauce.
Finally, extra virgin olive oil has always been – jointly with garlic – a pillar of the pesto recipe. Some old Ligurian cooks, though, does not disdain a nut of butter in the sauce, to make pasta al pesto even more delicious (just to let you know that this is the local hottest controversial topic when discussing with friends about the best pesto recipe).
In conclusion, the basil pesto recipe “codified” in the last decades probably was invented by chance.
Maybe one morning a home cook, after having crushed that fresh garlic clove in the mortar, looking around in the kitchen decided to put a handful of those shining basil leaves on the window sill, that grated Parmigiano left over from the evening before and those few pine-nuts laying in the jar. A pinch of rock salt, and then she smashed, pounded, crushed rhythmically swinging her hips in the summer breeze. She stared proud at her thin paste in the mortar, she poured a thin string of gold extra-virgin olive oil, stirred gently and WHAM, the magic had happened.
Some more things about pesto you may like to know.
A long time ago I wrote on the blog a complete guide for making pesto, with a description in depth of the essential (current) ingredients, my recipe of course (with mortar and with blender), and many tips and tricks to make it at home like a local. You can read it here.
This year I have added a bunch of new private experiences to my offer. One of these is the “Basil Farm and pesto making experience”.
It’s a one- day visit to the iconic Ligurian basil sea-view greenhouses, with a pesto making experience and a traditional peasant lunch. This is a private experience for groups (min. 6 people). If you are interested, just send me an e-mail!
Finally, if you come to Genoa, I also organize basil pesto making classes as an optional additional experience to my Genoa Food tours.
