Stories: Naples 1600 — Where Spaghetti Met Tomato

By the late Renaissance, Italy was already a land in love with pasta. It was boiled, baked, layered, stuffed, and dried in every possible way — from Sicily’s Arab-inspired macaroni to Tuscany’s lasagne sheets and Venice’s delicate noodles. But one thing was still missing from the story: the tomato.

It’s hard to imagine now, but for nearly 200 years after it arrived from the Americas, the tomato was a botanical curiosity rather than a beloved ingredient. Europeans admired its bright red color but feared its potential poison. As a relative of deadly nightshade, it was treated with suspicion, grown in ornamental gardens, and nicknamed pomo d’amore — the “apple of love” — for its exotic allure rather than its taste.

And yet, by the end of the 17th century, in Naples — loud, crowded, sun-drenched Naples — something revolutionary was beginning to simmer.

The Arrival of the Tomato in Naples

Naples at that time was one of Europe’s largest and most cosmopolitan cities. It was the beating heart of the Spanish Viceroyalty, a melting pot of traders, nobles, and laborers. Ships from across the world docked at its ports carrying goods — spices, sugar, fabrics — and new foods. Among these new arrivals, sometime in the mid-1500s, came the tomato.

For decades it remained a curiosity. People didn’t know what to do with it. Some used it for decoration, some for medicine, and a few adventurous cooks began experimenting in the kitchen. The first real clue that Neapolitans were doing something edible with tomatoes comes from Antonio Latini, the head steward for the Spanish Viceroy of Naples.

In 1692, Latini published Lo Scalco alla Moderna (“The Modern Steward”) — one of the earliest modern cookbooks. Tucked inside its pages was a short recipe titled Salsa di Pomodoro alla Spagnuola — “Spanish-style tomato sauce.” It was the first recorded tomato sauce in Italian history. The recipe was simple: chopped tomatoes cooked with onion, thyme, and a little salt. Latini didn’t yet pour it over pasta — he served it with meat and fish — but something was starting to change.

The Long Courtship: Pasta Meets Tomato

By the 18th century, pasta was Naples’ great democratic food. In a city of extremes — palaces above, poverty below — pasta united everyone. It was cheap, filling, and easy to prepare. Naples’ famous maccaronari (street pasta vendors) could be found on every corner, selling steaming plates of noodles to workers, sailors, and children for a few coins.

Still, those early bowls weren’t yet red. Pasta was typically eaten with grated cheese, black pepper, or sometimes just a drizzle of olive oil and salt. The tomato remained on the sidelines, occasionally used in aristocratic kitchens but not yet part of everyday life.

Then, somewhere between the late 1700s and early 1800s, the marriage finally happened.

We don’t know the exact moment — there’s no single eureka recipe — but we do know that Francesco Leonardi, chef to the Russian court and author of L’Apicio Moderno (1790), was the first to record the pairing of pasta and tomato in print. By the early 19th century, Neapolitan cookbooks were beginning to include versions of maccheroni al sugo di pomodoro. The city’s pasta sellers, always pragmatic, must have seen the brilliance: tomato sauce was cheap, flavorful, and it clung perfectly to pasta.

The transformation was unstoppable.

Naples Becomes the Red-Sauce Capital

By the mid-1800s, pasta and tomato sauce were no longer an experiment — they were a national obsession. The combination captured everything essential about Neapolitan cooking: simplicity, vibrancy, and a deep respect for ingredients.

The city’s unique geography helped. The volcanic soil around Mount Vesuvius was perfect for growing tomatoes — rich in minerals, fertile, and sun-drenched. Out of that earth came varieties that would one day become world-famous: the San Marzano tomatoes, long and sweet, with few seeds and thick pulp. They were tailor-made for sauce.

Meanwhile, Naples’ working-class quarters became living test kitchens. Cooks found that if you simmered ripe tomatoes with olive oil, garlic, and basil, you could create a sauce that was both bright and deeply satisfying. Unlike meat-based ragùs, tomato sauce was accessible to everyone. It was a flavor of the people — sunny, affordable, and endlessly adaptable.

Street vendors — those same maccaronari who once tossed plain noodles — began ladling red sauce over pasta in tin bowls, selling it to hungry crowds. It was Naples’ first true fast food.

The Birth of Passata

With tomatoes now a beloved staple, Neapolitans faced a practical challenge: how to preserve them for the long months when the vines were bare.

In southern Italy, where summers were long and hot, families developed ingenious ways to capture the season’s flavor. The earliest versions of passata di pomodoro (literally “passed tomato”) were homemade — the result of necessity, sunshine, and collective labor.

At the end of summer, families would gather to process the year’s tomato harvest. Ripe tomatoes were washed, blanched in boiling water to loosen their skins, then crushed by hand or with wooden pestles. The pulp was pushed through a sieve or a passatutto — a simple hand-cranked mill — to remove skins and seeds. What remained was a smooth, vivid red liquid: the essence of tomato.

Some households simmered this purée briefly to thicken it; others left it raw for freshness. Then it was poured into clean glass bottles, sealed tightly — sometimes under a layer of olive oil for protection — and boiled again to sterilize. Bottles were stored in cool cellars or buried in sand to keep for the winter.

This ritual became a hallmark of southern Italian life. Even today, in Campania, Puglia, and Sicily, entire families still gather in August for the annual giornata della passata — a day of laughter, labor, and red-stained aprons.

The first industrial tomato preserves would appear later, after the Frenchman Nicolas Appert invented airtight canning in the early 19th century. By the mid-1800s, Italian producers in Parma and Naples were experimenting with canned tomato paste and bottled purée. But long before factories, there was the family kitchen — where the sun, the pot, and the sieve turned fresh fruit into something eternal.

From Sauce to Symbol

As tomato passata became commonplace, Neapolitans began refining the art of sugo di pomodoro — the cooked tomato sauce. Every neighborhood had its version. Some added onion, others garlic. Some cooked it fast and bright; others slow and mellow.

By the late 19th century, these sauces had become the backbone of iconic dishes:

• Spaghetti al Pomodoro — long, thin noodles tossed with a quick sauce of tomatoes, olive oil, garlic, and basil. It became the defining dish of Italian simplicity.
• Ziti al Forno — tubular pasta baked with tomato sauce, cheese, and sometimes meat — a festive favorite for weddings and Sunday lunches.
• Pasta e Fagioli — pasta with beans in a tomato-based broth, the perfect blend of frugality and comfort.
• Ravioli di Ricotta al Pomodoro — soft ricotta-filled pillows dressed with tomato sauce, balancing richness and acidity.
• Linguine alle Vongole — a coastal cousin where tomato plays a light supporting role, staining the sauce pink and evoking the sea.

These were not aristocratic inventions but the everyday poetry of Neapolitan cooking — a cuisine born in the streets, perfected in family kitchens, and passed down with love.

The Spread Across Italy and Beyond

In the 19th century, as millions of Italians emigrated — to northern Europe, to the Americas, to Australia — they carried their red-sauce traditions with them. Tomato and pasta became the edible symbol of Italy itself.

Cookbooks across Europe began featuring “macaroni with tomato,” and soon foreign diners were declaring it the very essence of Italian cuisine. By the time industrial pasta and canned tomatoes reached supermarket shelves in the 20th century, what had started as a local experiment in Naples had become a global love story.

Why the Tomato Changed Everything

The success of tomato sauce wasn’t just about flavor. It changed how Italians cooked. Before the tomato, pasta sauces were mostly white or brown — based on oil, cheese, nuts, or meat stock. The tomato added color, brightness, and acidity. It balanced the richness of cheese and oil, cut through the saltiness of cured meats, and complemented seafood.

It also transformed the rhythm of cooking itself. You could make a delicious meal with only a few ingredients: tomatoes, pasta, olive oil, salt, and a little basil. That economy — both in cost and in concept — became the soul of Italian cuisine: few ingredients, perfectly combined.

Fun Facts: Naples & the Rise of Spaghetti

• The first tomato sauce recipe in Italy was published in Naples in 1692 by Antonio Latini.
• The first pasta-and-tomato combination in print appeared a century later, in Francesco Leonardi’s L’Apicio Moderno (1790).
• San Marzano tomatoes, now DOP-protected, grow on the volcanic slopes near Mount Vesuvius and are prized for their sweetness and low acidity.
• Passata takes its name from the Italian passare — “to pass through,” referring to the sieve or mill that removes seeds and skins.
• Neapolitan street vendors, or maccaronari, helped popularize pasta al pomodoro by selling quick bowls to workers — an early version of fast food.
• Sun-dried tomato paste, called estratto or strattu in Sicily, was an ancestor of passata, made by drying thick tomato purée on wooden boards under the summer sun.
• Industrial canning of tomato products in Italy began around 1850, paving the way for mass-produced passata and paste.

A Legacy in Every Spoonful

When you lift your fork and twist it into a swirl of spaghetti al pomodoro, you’re tasting four centuries of history. You’re tasting the curiosity of the first cooks who dared to simmer a “poisonous” fruit, the ingenuity of Neapolitan families who turned it into a sauce, and the annual summer ritual of passata bottling that still stains doorsteps red across the south of Italy.

The pairing of pasta and tomato didn’t just create a dish. It created an identity — one that embodies the Italian genius for simplicity, adaptation, and joy.

From the 17th-century kitchens of Naples to your dinner table today, this love story continues to simmer — bright, bold, and endlessly alive.