To understand the nature of lasagne, ask not what it is or how it’s made but who’s eating it. Like many world-wandering dishes, lasagne is not so much a recipe as a reflection of human taste, in all its wild variety. Ancient Greece can lay some claim to being its birthplace, with laganon.

This is said by some to have been the first pasta — sheets of dough cut into strips — from which the Romans likely took the name for their lagane, the basis for lasagne patina. Little is known about this trailblazing dish, except that it called for the inclusion of sow’s belly and fish. Since then, however, it’s travelled the globe, evolving and acquiring innumerable iterations.