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The world oldest “kitchen book” is from Babylon. The 3 tablets written in cuneiform characters 4000 years ago were in Akkadian, an Semitic language spoken in ancient Mesopotamia. Those texts mention several types of pasta: risnatu, bapirru and quiiatu.
- Risnatu comes from the Akkadian root a rasanu.The cereal flour was kneaded with water in order to get a dough roll. This roll was then grated with a sifter. The resulting crumbles were poached in a consommé called me.
They will evolve in the arabo-persian rishta, that was not grated anymore but directly cut from the rolled dough in thin strips.
- Bapirr: comes from the Sumerian bappir. It is about the same as risnatu.
- Qaiiatu comes from qalu which are a kind of roasted pasta balls that were crumbled afterwards. They were likely to look alike the Sardinian fregola (or fregula), a coarse semolina dough that is rolled into balls 2-3mm in diameter and toasted in an oven.
Bappiru/risnatu pasta is thus grated pasta, also known in Italian as pasta grattugiata.
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