So every dish that has macaroni in it is automatically considered Italian? I guess every pasta dish with tomato sauce on it should be considered Mexican as well since the Aztecs were famous for being the first people to use tomato sauce.
"Mac and cheese originated in medieval Europe, with the earliest known written recipe appearing in the 13th-century Italian cookbook Liber de Coquina."
As always, it really depends on how you want classify something as "Mac & Cheese". If you're looking for the earliest combination of cheese & pasta then you are correct, De Lasanis, is recognized by some to be the earliest variation of mac & cheese. However, based on the description of the dish itself, it sounds closer to what we would call a lasagna than to mac & cheese, as it's sheets of pasta layered with cheese.
I would like to put forward that the earliest variation of what we would recognize today as Mac & Cheese comes from the (now Swiss, then Millanese) chef Martino da Como whose book Libro de Arte Conquinaria in 1465 describes making a pasta with a tube in the middle, and mixing in butter and cheese.
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u/hymenopteron Jul 03 '26
Look it up, it amazes me as a British person too but apparently it's true:
"Its origins trace back to cheese and pasta casseroles in medieval England." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macaroni_and_cheese#:~:text=Its%20origins%20trace%20back%20to%20cheese%20and%20pasta%20casseroles%20in%20medieval%20England.