DashJ

In the 50s, you couldn't get a bowl of spaghetti for love nor money. Now pasta is practically our national dish. So how did that happen? Gary Younge and Jemima Sissons investigate

By the time Luciano Pavarotti came to sing Tosca almost 40 years later, a great deal had changed. What was once unusual was now ubiquitous. Pavarotti wandered into one of the many Italian restaurants around Covent Garden and finished four plates of tagliatelle - two with truffles and two with tomato and basil - before tucking into some cutlets and salad.

If recent research is to be believed, we will soon be eating more pasta than anything else. According to one survey, pasta is British children's favourite food, ahead of burgers, fish, pizza and chips.

We still eat far less than the Italians - 2.5kg a head here compared with 27kg - but none the less our consumption has increased more than 15-fold in the past 20 years. We consume £272m worth of pasta a year. Britain accounts for 8% of the European dried pasta market and 50% of the pasta sauce market - more than Italy, France and Germany combined.

Food critic and broadcaster Tony de Angeli says there are good reasons for pasta's growth in popularity. "It is quick and easy to cook and goes with just about everything. But it also comes in a lot of different varieties, so there is something for everyone. It's good food but it's also classless in a way. If you've got a lot of money you can try something really fancy. If you don't you can just have spaghetti."

The range of options, from £20 lobster ravioli to prepared microwave lasagne, mirrors the social, economic, lifestyle and age ranges of those who eat pasta. Students adore it for its simplicity. "It takes longer to peel a potato than boil some pasta," says Jaqueline O' Neill, a fresh pasta buyer for Tesco. "You can eat it a few times a week and not get bored with it."

Parents refer to it with near reverence because it is one of the few things that children will willingly eat that is actually good for them. "Pasta is beneficial as it contains complex carbohydrates, and a good energy source," says Claire Mac Evilly, a scientist from the British Nutrition Foundation. "Used with a tomato-based sauce, it boosts the lycopene levels, which help to prevent cancer."

It is a hit with the health-conscious: "There is an increase in fresh pasta sales after the Christmas binge as it is seen as a healthy eating option," says Beverley Singer, a fresh pasta buyer at Waitrose.

And food fetishists love it because the right kind cooked in the right way can be a gourmet experience. Supermarkets are creating novelty striped and flavoured versions to sate increasingly exotic British appetites, with hundreds of different shapes from tagliatelle to tortelloni.

Spaghetti remains the most popular pasta, with a 30% share of the market, but we are a long way from the alphabets swimming in tomato sauce that dominated the 70s.

Contrary to popular belief, the Italians did not invent pasta. The mix of water and semolina flour is one of the world's oldest foods, with almost every wheat-growing nation having its own version - udon in Japan, pirogi in Poland or me in China. But it is the Italians who have claimed it as their own, elevating it to such a status that it now enjoys its own museum in Rome, the Museo Nazionale delle Paste Alimentari.

Pasta made its way on to our dinner tables with the help of an influx of Italian immigrants in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The first pasta production line came to Britain in 1936 and it was another 20 years - after rationing ended - before the first pasta houses were set up in London. Pasta remained a minority interest for some time. "There weren't so many people cooking it then," says Rose Gray of London's River Cafe. "You had to go to Soho to get decent pasta; there were fewer books too." Gastronome Antonio Carluccio agrees: "Restaurants used to just serve cannelloni, lasagne and spaghetti, and they would never cook it right." Indeed, the only place to find olive oil used to be the chemists.

As more Italians moved to Britain, restaurants became more widespread, and this encouraged retailers to stock more authentic ingredients. The Barilla pasta company, which has 40% of the market in Italy, has recently come to England: Tesco stocks 15 of its several hundred varieties.

And as more Brits made their way to Italy, they brought the tastes of their holidays home - not only pasta, but also cappuccinos, croissants and chianti. "We have developed a taste for the Mediterranean," says Gray. "We like anything foreign as it gives us the luxury of eating in a different way. And with the opening up of Europe to more travellers, people are looking more at what others are cooking. Everything is easier to get hold of now. Tinned tomatoes have improved a lot, which means you can make a good pasta sauce in the winter too."

But our enthusiasm for pasta does not mean that we necessarily do it justice. "In the old days people would eat roast beef and fish here, but now they are expensive and time-consuming, so they eat pasta," says Paulo Fillo de Torre, a London-based reporter for the Italian newspaper La Repubblica. "It's a religious thing here the way you cook it. In Italy it's just like fish and chips - it's nothing special. But you would never get tinned pasta in Italy. It's a pity there are so many good English dishes and the British insist on cooking bad pasta."

Tinned spaghetti and ravioli are still popular in Britain, but those with a back-to-basics approach in the kitchen - and the help of a few Bodum trinkets - are making their own. "We sell lots of pasta machines," says Annie Price of Le Cuisiniere shop in London. "Most people buy them as wedding presents. Younger people buy them more as they are more adventurous, and men buy more than women." The kitchen lumberjack has finally found his tool of trade.

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7tbTEoKyaqpSerq96wqikaJ9iZMC1u9GyZmlkY2t9dXiScGhubGdhfXF6x62kpQ%3D%3D