Piquant Pesto: Origins Of Italy’s Favourite Sauce

If I begin to list some of my favourite Italian dishes, the vast array of sauces will surely make it to the top of the list. Italian sauces have a unique aroma, flavour and texture which have kept a majority of the population hooked to them. Be it the creamy Alfredo sauce or the decadent and flavourful Ragu, Italian sauces can go with anything and everything. Not gonna lie, I sometimes use my leftover Alfredo pasta sauce to spread on a flatbread and have it for breakfast. Keeping the other sauces for another time, let’s talk about the very popular pesto sauce today. Primarily made with basil and cheese and flavoured with pine nuts, garlic and extra virgin olive oil, pesto sauce has managed to tug at the heartstrings of millions. 

Pesto is typical to the Liguria region which is filled with aromatic herbs. It is believed that the use of aromatic herbs for culinary purposes originated in the Middle Ages and the use of basil for flavouring purposes began back then in the Arab region. A legend has it that the origin of pesto is attributed to a friar who lived in a convent on the heights of Pra near Genoa. The friar used to collect medicinal herbs and stumbled upon basil or basilicum one day and mixed it with some other ingredients available with him to make the first pesto in history. However, the original recipe of pesto dates back to the second half of the 19th century when Giovanni Battista Ratto, a well-known gastronome wrote it in his book ‘The Genoese Cuisine’. The recipe consisted of basil, garlic, dutch cheese and parmesan cheese and was used for dressing Lasagne and Gnocchi.