Although tomatoes were brought back to Europe shortly after their discovery in the New World, it took a long time for the plant to be considered edible.
In fact, tomatoes are a member of the nightshade family, and rumors of tomatoes being poisonous continued in parts of Europe and its colonies until the mid 19th century.
Therefore it was not until 1839 that the first pasta recipe with tomatoes was documented. However, shortly thereafter tomatoes took hold, especially in the south of Italy. The rest of course is delicious history.
As the production of pasta became increasingly industrialized in the mid-18th century, it was still both expensive and labor-intensive. After harvesting the durum wheat to make flour, the fun truly began.
In early factories, workers mixed water and flour to form a paste and then an operator sitting on a wood bar bounced up and down to knead the pasta, a process which took over two hours to complete.
Only then could the second team of burly men begin to form the paste into what one would recognize as pasta.
