"Pasta" is the Italian word for "paste." All pasta is made from a dough of grain flour mixed with water. There are many different shapes and sizes of pasta. While most are made from wheat, other grains can also be used on their own (for people who are gluten intolerant) or combined with wheat. Pasta is a universally enjoyed food, and almost every country serves a type of noodle.

It may be that the pasta and meat courses came to be combined into one dish in Italian restaurants for reasons of speed. That's one reason Italian restaurants also adopted the deplorable custom of precooking pasta and reheating it when a customer orders it.

Pasta is one of the greatest things that ever happened to grains. Pasta may have its origins in Asia and the Mediterranean, but its growing popularity has made it truly an American health food.

Dried pasta comes in many shapes and sizes, most of which are better suited to one type of sauce than another. Generally speaking, long pasta, such as spaghetti, is best with a light sauce based on olive oil, as this allows the strands to stay slippery and separate. The thicker long shapes are dressed with heavier sauces based on cream, cheese, eggs or meat

Many pastas on Europian menus today were rarely seen outside their native regions only a decade ago. But local pasta lists have two shortcomings. First, they change so frequently that some diners are disappointed when their favorites are missing. (Remedy: Give the restaurant a couple of days? notice and your favorite is likely to be among the daily specials.) Second, we are missing the great variety of pastas with the vegetable sauces one finds throughout Italy. Why? Because they are hard to sell to patrons who order pasta as a main course and therefore desire substantial sauces of seafood or meat or game. Even the stellar combination of artichokes, capers, garlic, and black olives tossed with spaghetti that is such an appetite-whetting first course will lose the interest of diners who order it as a whole rather than a half portion.