When was noodles made

The Cook Up recipes. Korean at home. China loves a good noodle dish - but did it invent this Asian staple? Previous Next Show Grid. Previous Next Hide Grid. SBS seeks answers from like-minded noodle and pasta enthusiasts around the world. By Yasmin Noone. Discover 31 new recipes and a bowl-ful of noodle stories in our interactive map. From whimsical marketing ploys to an outrageous carbonara, humble pasta has had a bumpy ride through the ages.

Love ramen? This week's top Food TV picks. SBS On Demand. Watch all of Season 1 as Frank Pinello explores the incredible world of pizza from Chicago's deep dish to the New York 'fold'. Newly added. What does a recipe mean when it calls for neutral oil? Shatter the dessert ceiling with broken glass. Rosemary lamb steak with quick bean stew. Tomato, spinach and chickpea angel hair soup. The scientists determined the noodles were made from two kinds of millet, a grain indigenous to China and widely cultivated there 7, years ago.

Modern North American and European noodles are usually made with wheat. Archaeochemist Patrick McGovern at the University of Pennsylvania's Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Philadelphia said that if the date for the noodles is correct, the find is "quite amazing.

Even today, he said, deft skills are required to make long, thin noodles like those found at Lajia. Noodles have been a staple food in many parts of the world for at least 2, years, though whether the modern version of the stringy pasta was first invented by the Chinese, Italians, or Arabs is debatable.

Prior to the discovery of noodles at the Lajia archaeological site, the earliest record of noodles appears in a book written during China's East Han Dynasty sometime between A. Other theories suggest noodles were first made in the Middle East and introduced to Italy by the Arabs. Italians are widely credited for popularizing the food in Europe and spreading it around the world. Additional evidence is needed to prove that the noodles found at Lajia are the ancestor of either Asian noodles or Italian pasta.

Gary Crawford, an archaeologist at the University of Toronto at Mississauga in Canada, said finding 4,year-old noodles in China is not a surprise. To determine what the noodles were made from, Lu and colleagues compared the shape and patterning of the starch grains and seed husks in the noodle bowl with modern crops.

The team concluded the noodles were made from two kinds of millet—broomcorn millet and foxtail millet. The grain was ground into flour to make dough, which was then likely pulled and stretched into shape. Foxtail millet alone, the researchers say, lacks the stickiness required to allow the dough to be pulled and stretched into strings. While archaeological evidence suggests wheat was present in China 4, years ago, it was not widely cultivated until the Tang Dynasty A.

According to Crawford, the fact that the noodles were made of millet is not surprising. His own research at a similarly dated site in northern China shows ample millet and rice but very little wheat. However, he added, the discovery of well-preserved millet noodles helps explain the lack of grain seeds found at some archaeological sites.

That would not necessarily leave much in the way of grains to be … recovered," he said. According to Lu, in poor, rural areas of northwestern China, millet is still used to make noodles.

This was one of the most interesting pieces of research I came across -- that noodles in China actually began with its tradition of bread, something that is still widely eaten across northern China. Another early mention of noodles has been traced to the Jerusalem Talmud, dating back to the fifth century A. Of course, these documented mentions of noodles come later than when noodles first developed -- and unlike other inventions, like say, the telephone, it's rather difficult to pinpoint exactly when and where noodles came from given that they relied on the innovation of cooks in their homes.

I got to see many of these cooks in action on the Silk Road, one of the great pleasures of writing this book. I'm fascinated by your travels through Central and West Asia. What connections through food did you discover with Turkic and Persian cultures? I learned through my travels that the word Turkic is much more encompassing that the nation of Turkey: there are ethnic Turkic groups that span from western China to Turkey itself.

Linguistically and culturally, these groups are all linked. In Iran, there is an ethnic Turkic group called the Azeris.

These Turkic groups share one really interesting dish -- dumplings. In the northwestern region of China and Central Asia, Uighurs and Uzbeks make a dish called manta , steamed dumplings filled with mutton and pumpkin and served with cream.

In Turkey, the dish evolves into manti , tiny tortellini-like dumplings that are boiled and served with yogurt, mint-infused oil, paprika, and crushed walnuts. Some researchers have theorized that Genghis Kahn and his empire that spanned from east Asia to central Europe has something to do with the development of dumplings in the form of pierogi all along this path -- it was an easy food to make and boil while on the road and the filling could be easily varied.

That was one of the most fascinating experiences of my trip. In Iran, I had to travel with a tour guide who was essentially a government minder.