Pesto
sauce made from basil, pine nuts, Parmigiano Reggiano, olive oil, and garlic
Pesto (Italian: [ˈpesto]), also known as pesto genovese, is an Italian paste traditionally made with leaves of Genovese basil, extra virgin olive oil, Parmesan (alternatively Grana Padano), pecorino sardo, pine nuts, and garlic. It originated in the Ligurian city of Genoa and is used to dress pasta.
Etymology
The name pesto is the past participle of the Genoese verb pestâ (Italian: pestare), meaning 'to pound', 'to crush': the ingredients are "crushed" or ground in a marble mortar through a circular motion of a wooden pestle. The same Latin root is the basis for pestle. There are other foods called "pesto", but pesto by itself usually means pesto alla genovese.
History
Pesto is thought to have had two predecessors in ancient times, going back as far as the Roman age. The ancient Romans used to eat a similar paste called moretum, which was made by crushing garlic, salt, cheese, herbs, olive oil, and vinegar (and sometimes pine nuts) together. The use of this paste in the Roman cuisine is mentioned in the Appendix Vergiliana, an ancient collection of poems in which the author details the preparation of moretum. During the Middle Ages, a popular sauce in the Genoan cuisine was agliata, which was a mash of garlic and walnuts, as garlic was a staple in the nutrition of Ligurians, especially for the seafarers.
The introduction of basil, the main ingredient of modern pesto, occurred in more recent times and is first documented only from the 1850s.
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This entry incorporates text from “Pesto” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.