PASTA is among the most popular foods consumed across the world today, and every pasta-eater has a favourite shape whose superiority they swear by. When the “cascatelli” (the word translates to “waterfall” in Italian) was introduced by James Beard Award winning food expert Dan Pashman in 2021, it joined a pantheon of over 350 pasta shapes. Just how did so many pasta shapes evolve?

IN THE BEGINNING, there were noodles. The roots of modern-day pasta lie in the starchy noodles of China, made from wheat, rice, even millets and tapioca. The wheat used at the time would have only been used to make fresh noodles, not the dried and cut variety we are used to today.