Marcato Pastamaker
notes: label: Description
content: Inspired by regional traditions of France and Italy, cooks, farmers, storekeepers, and adventurous eaters in the 1980s led the charge to revitalize and reinvent an artisanal world of food largely ignored in America. They turned to the fresh, local, and regional in the United States, and, with the European influences, developed a new American cuisine.
label: Description
content: In the 1980s, the old American standby “spaghetti,” was transformed into “pasta,” and both pasta making machines and highly refined (0 0) Italian flour for making fresh pasta came on the market. This pasta machine, a highly popular version made in Italy by Marcato and successfully marketed in the new American kitchenware stores such as Williams-Sonoma and Sur La Table.
label: Description
content: With its different attachments, the machine presses out the dough fed into it into various shapes, capelli d’angelo (angel’s hair), trenette, spaghetti, and curly lasagna, in addition to simple sheets of pasta from which one can make ravioli or lasagna.
label: Description
content: The machine was purchased by the son of a retired Foreign Service officer as a gift for his mother to remind her of the family’s time living in Italy. However, this particular machine remained little used by his mother and she agreed to put it, through her daughter, a curator at the museum, into the Smithsonian food collections.
topic: label: Subject
content: Food Culture
label: Subject
content: Eating
setName: label: See more items in
content: Home and Community Life: Domestic Life
label: See more items in
content: Food
label: See more items in
content: FOOD: Transforming the American Table 1950-2000
label: Exhibition
content: Food: Transforming the American Table
label: Exhibition Location
content: National Museum of American History
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Betty Jean Boudreau
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: 2011.0238.02.a
label: accession number
content: 2011.0238
label: catalog number
content: 2011.0238.02.a
objectType: label: Object Name
content: pastamaker
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: metal (overall material)
label: Physical Description
content: rubber (overall material)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 6 in x 8 in x 7 1/2 in; 15.24 cm x 20.32 cm x 19.05 cm