ABSTRACT
It seems obvious through his lack of reference that Marco Polo did not bring a taste for tea back to thirteenth-century Venice but some of the most prevalent popular legends about him concern his possible importation of spaghetti, ravioli and ice-cream from China to Europe. Pasta in all its Italian varieties is paralleled by Chinese noodles, also appearing in a variety of shapes, though usually tending to be long and thinnish, rather than butterfly or shell-shaped. Thus argument arises over whether Marco Polo took spaghetti and ravioli to China, where they were transformed into jiaozi and noodles, staple foods of the north, or whether he brought noodles and jiaozi back to Italy, where they became spaghetti and ravioli. It is possible that the Arabs also played a part in the transmission of ice-making, although it took a further 300 years for European scientists to understand the secret, for it is recorded in a thirteenth-century Arab medical work.
