The World's First Lasagna Was Made In A Unexpected Country

You won't find a dish like pasta e ceci at every Italian restaurant, and the average person probably doesn't know the difference between pandoro and panettone. But there are plenty of other Italian foods that are extremely popular outside of Italy. Foods like penne alla vodka, bruschetta, tiramisu, and cannoli, for example, can be found at practically any Italian food establishment, and most people know exactly what they are and how they taste. Lasagna is no different.

Consisting of cheese and tomato sauce layered between thinly rolled-out noodle sheets, lasagna is such an Italian classic that it exists in a number of different varieties. Some lasagnas use solely ricotta as the filling, while others have spinach mixed in. But whether you use ragu or marinara, make it from scratch, or eat it at a restaurant, most people agree on one thing — that lasagna is Italian. While that may be true now, it wasn't always that way, because lasagna actually originated elsewhere.

There was no such thing as lasagna in ancient Greece and Rome, however, there were two other dishes called laganon and lasanum. Laganon was a pasta dish created by the Ancient Greeks. It consisted of sauce layered between laganon, a type of pasta that closely resembles modern-day lasagna noodles. Aside from the fact that the sauce wasn't a tomato-based one, laganon isn't far off from what we now know as lasagna.

The Ancient Roman's lasanum also evolved into lasagna, but initially, it resembled neither Greek laganon nor modern Italian lasagna. Though it was always a layered dish, it was pancakes, eggs, and meat such as fish and chicken that made up the layers. Drawing influence from the Greek's laganon, Italian lasanum eventually evolved into a hybrid of the two that was referred to as lagnum or lagane. Tomato sauce, cheese, and the use of pasta instead of pancakes didn't come about until the 1800s, when it ultimately became "lasagna."

It may have Greek origins, but Italians are more known for lasagna simply because the Greeks call it something else: pastitsio. Much like laganon, its ancient predecessor, pastitsio is also made up of layers of pasta and sauce. But whereas the Italians have used tomato sauce in theirs since the 19th century, Greeks still don't. Instead, it's béchamel, a creamy white sauce that's made with flour, butter, milk, eggs, salty kefalotyri cheese, and seasoned with nutmeg. The sauce, along with the meat, is then layered between tubular noodles like bucatini, penne, or ziti rather than laganon or lasagna noodles.

While pastitsio is a staple in nearly every Greek household, Italian is the most popular cuisine both worldwide and in the U.S, according to statistics shared by YouGov, which naturally makes lasagna more well-known than pastitsio. Perhaps this explains why pastitsio is often called "Greek lasagna," while lasagna is never called "Italian pastitsio." But no matter what you decide to refer to them as, the Ancient Greeks were clearly on to something great when they began experimenting with layered pasta.