From Ancient Hearths to Laganelle and Beyond

The Humble Heartbeat of Italian Food

If olive oil is Italy’s blood, lentils are its heartbeat — steady, quiet and patient.
They’ve simmered in pots since before the nation existed, sustaining farmers, monks and travellers long before pasta, tomatoes or potatoes entered the kitchen.

Across the peninsula, lentils have always stood for constancy: the ingredient that never fails you, never flaunts itself, yet somehow holds the meal together.
From the volcanic soils of Sicily to the stony terraces of Abruzzo, every region grows its own kind — small, mottled, adapted to its soil, but united by the same earthy sweetness.

And in Abruzzo, on a wind-blown plateau 1,200 metres above sea level, one tiny variety reigns supreme: the Lenticchia di Santo Stefano di Sessanio — the lentil that tastes of mountains.

Ancient Origins: Food Older than History

Lentils are among humanity’s oldest domesticated crops.
Archaeologists have found their remains in Neolithic sites from Anatolia to Apulia.
The Etruscans cultivated them as early as the 8th century BCE, calling them lens culinaris, a name the Romans later adopted.

Roman soldiers carried dried lentils on campaign because they kept indefinitely and cooked quickly. Cato the Elder listed them in De Agricultura; Apicius included them in his recipes for soups scented with coriander and lovage.

They were democratic food: eaten by peasants and senators alike.
A proverb already existed in Latin — parvula sed fortis: “small but strong.”

From Monasteries to Mountain Tables

Through the Middle Ages, lentils became monastic currency.
Benedictine and Cistercian monks cultivated them on terraced slopes, trading sacks for wine or wool.
They thrived in poor soil, demanded little water, and fixed nitrogen naturally — an early form of sustainable agriculture before anyone used the phrase.

In the high villages of Abruzzo, Umbria and Basilicata, lentils became survival itself.
When winter closed the passes and the last sheep were slaughtered, it was lentils that kept hunger at bay.

They were cooked slowly in clay pots over embers, flavoured with garlic, bay, and maybe a rind of cheese.
No meat, no luxury — just patience.

Lenticchie di Santo Stefano di Sessanio — The Mountain Jewel

At 1,250 metres, Santo Stefano di Sessanio looks carved from the rock itself.
This medieval village sits inside the Gran Sasso e Monti della Laga National Park, a landscape of high plains, dry air and fierce winters.
Here, lentils are not a crop so much as a form of coexistence with nature.

Tiny but Tenacious

The Lenticchia di Santo Stefano is among the smallest in the world — each seed barely 2–3 mm.
The thin skin means it cooks in minutes without soaking.
Its flavour is intense, almost nutty, with a faint metallic echo of the stony soil.

An Endangered Tradition

By the 1980s, industrial agriculture had nearly erased it.
Then came a revival: farmers re-established ancient seed stocks and created a Slow Food Presidium to protect it.
Today, fewer than twenty growers produce it, entirely by hand, following organic methods.

In local folklore it’s known as la lenticchia che non si arrende — “the lentil that never gives up.”

Map of Italian Lentils

Italy’s biodiversity makes the country a living lentil atlas.
Each region produces a seed shaped by its own soil, altitude, and wind.
Here are some of the most distinctive:

• Lenticchia di Santo Stefano di Sessanio (Abruzzo) — tiny, aromatic, and mountain-grown, this Slow Food Presidium thrives on rocky soil over 1,200 metres high. It cooks in minutes and tastes of minerals and herbs.
• Lenticchia di Castelluccio di Norcia (Umbria) — perhaps the most famous, grown on the windswept Piano Grande plateau. Mottled in colour, with a thin skin and delicate sweetness, it holds its shape beautifully in soups and salads.
• Lenticchia di Ustica (Sicily) — jet-dark seeds grown on volcanic soil facing the Tyrrhenian Sea. They carry smoky notes of ash and sea salt; farmers still hand-harvest them on the island’s steep terraces.
• Lenticchia di Montalcino (Tuscany) — small and pale brown, soft in texture and slightly sweet, often paired with pork or cotechino.
• Lenticchia di Onano (Lazio) — ancient and nutty, cultivated since Etruscan times near Lake Bolsena. Known for its firm bite and earthy aroma.
• Lenticchie di Villalba (Sicily/Sardinia border) — medium-sized and high in protein, grown in clay soils of central Sicily; one of Italy’s most productive IGP-protected lentils.

Each variety mirrors its landscape:
the smaller the seed, the harsher the climate;
the darker the colour, the richer the soil;
and everywhere, the same quiet resilience — Italy’s humility captured in a pulse.

Symbolism and Superstition

In Italy, lentils carry more meaning than any other legume.
They’re eaten on New Year’s Eve, traditionally with cotechino (a rich pork sausage), because their coin-like shape symbolises money.
“Chi mangia lenticchie a Capodanno, conta soldi tutto l’anno” — whoever eats lentils on New Year’s Day will count money all year.

But their symbolism is older: in ancient Rome, mourners offered lentils at funerals because they were round — representing the eternal cycle of life.
Thus, one humble seed embodies both wealth and mortality — a reminder that everything comes full circle.

Laganelle e Lenticchie — The Ancestral Marriage

When lentils meet pasta, the result feels prehistoric — because it almost is.

Lagane, the ancestor of modern tagliatelle, was already described by Horace in the 1st century BCE as being eaten cum pisis et lenticula, with chickpeas and lentils.
Two millennia later, Abruzzo still honours that pairing.

Laganelle con Lenticchie e Peperone Dolce

In mountain kitchens around Sulmona and Castel del Monte, cooks prepare thin hand-cut laganelle and toss them with slow-cooked lentils, sweet dried peppers, garlic and a drizzle of local oil.

It’s both soup and pasta, both poor and rich — the perfect expression of Italian cucina contadina, where nothing is wasted and flavour is built through patience, not expense.

The version from Pasta Love’s Abruzzo collection celebrates the Lenticchia di Santo Stefano di Sessanio, whose tiny size allows the sauce to wrap around each ribbon like a shawl.

Regional Variations Beyond Abruzzo

• Umbria: Lenticchie di Castelluccio with sausage or cotechino — a dish of New Year and frost.
• Sicily: Lentils stewed with wild fennel, tomatoes and olive oil, often served over couscous in Ustica.
• Tuscany: Zuppa di lenticchie alla maremmana — lentil and cavolo nero soup, smoky with pancetta.
• Puglia & Basilicata: Lentils combined with cicoria or lampascioni for sharp bitterness against sweetness.
• Veneto & Trentino: Rarely grown, but imported from Umbria to make hearty mountain soups.

Everywhere, the lentil bridges class and geography — as welcome in an osteria as in a Michelin-starred tasting menu.

Nutrition and Sustainability

Science finally praises what peasants knew instinctively.
Lentils are nutritional powerhouses: high in protein (around 26%), fibre, iron and folate, yet low in fat.
They require one-tenth the water of comparable grain crops and enrich the soil by fixing nitrogen.

Modern agronomists consider them key to regenerative farming in Mediterranean climates.
In Italy, new cooperatives in Molise, Abruzzo and Sicily are re-introducing rotation systems where lentils precede cereals, reducing the need for fertilisers.

So the “poor man’s meat” has become the planet’s smart food.

Cultural Afterlives — Lentils in Language and Literature

Italian idioms are full of lentils.
To say “stare alle lenticchie” means to live modestly, literally “to live on lentils.”
Another proverb — “Chi disprezza le lenticchie non ha fame” — “Who despises lentils has never been hungry.”

Writers from Giovanni Verga to Carlo Levi mention them as shorthand for poverty with dignity.
In Verga’s Malavoglia, lentil soup marks the family’s fall from grace; in Levi’s Christ Stopped at Eboli, lentils represent the moral core of southern endurance.

Even in art, they appear quietly — in still-life paintings by 17th-century Neapolitans, small brown dots beside the gleam of copper pots.

Modern Revival and Chefs’ Re-imaginings

Today’s chefs embrace lentils for their texture and narrative.

• Niko Romito (Reale, Castel di Sangro) serves a Crema di lenticchie di Santo Stefano with wild herbs — minimal, elegant, elemental.
• Massimo Bottura reinterprets the New Year tradition with Lenticchie in crosta d’oro, lentils cooked in butter, coated in edible gold leaf — irony and homage in one dish.
• Vegan innovators across Italy use lentil flour for gluten-free pasta and crackers, proving its adaptability from monastery to modern lab.

What unites all these versions is respect for rhythm — slow cooking, deep flavour, minimal intervention.

Fun Facts & Curiosities

• The Italian word lenticchia shares its root with lente (lens); early optical lenses were named for their lentil shape.
• One hectare of Abruzzo soil yields only about 8 quintals of Santo Stefano lentils — less than half industrial yields, but double the flavour.
• Lenticchie e cotechino at New Year date back to Roman Saturnalia feasts.
• The Slow Food Presidium for Santo Stefano lentils was founded in 2002, rescuing the crop after near extinction.
• Each seed’s colour varies with altitude: higher fields produce greener hues.
• In medieval contracts, shepherds often paid rent in lentils — a literal currency of trust.
• Astronauts on the International Space Station have tested Italian lentils as a sustainable protein crop for space missions.

Reflection — Small Things, Big Stories

The lentil asks for nothing spectacular.
It doesn’t climb trellises or boast bright flowers.
It just grows — quietly binding nitrogen, holding the soil, feeding whoever waits long enough to simmer it.

In a bowl of Laganelle con Lenticchie e Peperone Dolce, you taste more than sustenance: you taste continuity.
It’s food that remembers droughts and feasts, prayers and economies, the patient work of generations.

When Italians say “le lenticchie portano fortuna” — lentils bring good luck — they’re really saying that good fortune grows slowly, seed by seed, meal by meal.

In the end, lentils remain what they’ve always been: the small proof that simplicity, given time and care, can outlast empires.