A Genovese Tradition

This one took up a lot of my time in the week set aside for it, but it was ultimately quite enjoyable and worthwhile. The assignment, as well as I can remember it, was to take an important family recipe or some such thing, research it and one of its ingredients, and write about it and its history, which required a decent bit of research. Honestly, I never knew basil was so fascinating!

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A Genovese Tradition


Ours is not a “culinary” family, strictly speaking- our menu typically revolves around only a few items, and the closest thing we have to a “secret family recipe” is an exceedingly simple concoction of Graham crackers, peanut butter, and M&Ms that my younger sister invented sometime around her toddler years. Of the few dishes that we have managed to squeeze some small sense of tradition from, however, perhaps the most beloved is Basil Pesto, a well-known recipe my grandmother, one of the editors of The New American Cuisine (Meredith Corporation) passed on to my parents. We’re so fond of it, we’ve even taken to growing our own basil to better flavor (and afford!) this Italian delight.

Basil Pesto, or Pesto Genovese, is a pasta sauce that is made, according to The New American Cuisine, by blending two cups of fresh sweet basil leaves, two cloves of garlic, a quarter cup of pine nuts (my father’s allergic, so we use walnuts instead), and three-quarters of a cup of olive oil. Next, the paste is taken to a mixing bowl and half a cup and a quarter cup, respectively, of freshly grated Parmesan and Romano cheese is stirred in, followed by salt and pepper to taste (Meredith Corporation 187). Tossed with the pasta variety of choice and garnished (should the server feel particularly jaunty) with a sprig of fresh basil, it’s a simple yet delicious feast; a great boon to the modern family cook. It’s also one of the few pasta sauces my tomato-hating sister will willingly ingest.

But pesto is, and has been, far more than a simple food-processor pasta-paste. The ancient origins of Pesto in general are murky, but Genovese-style basil pesto is believed to have been around at least as early as the 1800s. Almost certainly invented in the Italian city of Genoa, the capital of the region of Liguria, pesto derives its name from a word meaning “pestle”, due to its original preparation style: crushing the ingredients together with a mortar and pestle (Olver). Indeed, many chefs today continue to trumpet the virtues of this technique, warning that a food processor or blender will “block the ends of the veins” of the basil leaves, preventing them from releasing as much flavor as desired, while a well-applied pestle allows one to crush the leaves and smear the oils of the plant much more liberally (Pesto.net).

It is appropriate that basil pesto should be the most popular variety, because basil (Ocimum scientifically, which derives from the ancient Greek word okimon, which means smell) itself has enjoyed much attention and notoriety. Believed to have originally come from Asia and Africa, it is speculated that Alexander the Great carried it to Greece around 356-323 B.C.E., after which it made its slow way around the world, arriving in the US in the early seventeenth century (Meyers).

According to basil’s entry on the Herb Society of America’s webpage, the first known recorded mention of the herb, as stated by Helen Noyes Webster in a 1936 Herbalist article, was by Chrysippus (Pre-206 B.C.E.), who is quoted as saying “Ocimum exists only to drive men insane.” (Meyers).

Regardless of what the leader of the stoics may have thought, though, basil was a cultural hit practically across the board, taking on a myriad of meanings throughout the world: it’s a symbol of love in some places, chastity in others. It’s been used as a good-luck charm, a symbol of poverty, and in burial rites. In the Victorian language of flowers, basil can indicate either hatred or best wishes, depending on the variety. It has also given rise to a wide range of (often quite kooky) beliefs throughout the ages, not the least amusing of which was the idea that basil could spontaneously create scorpions in your brain (Meyers). One can only imagine the horror someone laboring under this delusion would feel if offered a bowl of pesto!

I personally believe, however, that no use for basil is nearly as good as that to which it is most often put in my family’s kitchen. Because, you see, none of these symbolic uses have much of anything to do with filling our stomachs with a good, simple, home-cooked meal.


Works Cited

Meredith Corporation. The New American Cuisine. New York City: Harmony Books, 1981.

Meyers, Michele. "Basil: An Herb Society of America Guide." 2003. The Herb Society of America. 23 February 2008 .

Olver, Lynne. The Food Timeline. 24 November 2007. 23 February 2008 .

Pesto.net. 2007. 23 February 2008 .