What’s the best pasta in history? Let’s talk about that. Good Mythical Morning. Okay, before we begin, we would like to congratulate you on making it through five days of celibacy week. Yes. We know it’s been hard. Yep. And we know you haven’t done anything about how hard it’s been. That’s right. Uh, you’ve only got two more days to go. So for the sake of your future children who will not have a birthday between Christmas and New Year’s, the worst time to be born. Yep. Keep on not doing it. And since you won’t have us by your side to get you over that final hump this weekend, we have put together a little something for you to keep in mind. The next time you have the urge for a little animal style, In and out, am I right? Ooh, roll that anti horny footage. Don’t look away. Don’t look away. Yep. Yep. Straight up the nostrils. Yep. She’s contagious. That is turds. I hope not. Or something. It threw up. Uh, I think it’s care ball. Oh, okay. This is, that is very sad. Gosh. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. Uh huh. Okay, rats. Yep. Yep, yep, yep. Rats going around. AHH, Rhett! It’s you. Okay. It looks like it’s been AI airbrush. What? Hold on, hold on. I mean, I look cool. That’s cool former me, I’m sure there was somebody who would’ve liked to have, um, you know, rattled them bones. I don’t, you guys may have, I don’t even, may have sent people in the wrong direction there. Those two guys were very much, very virgin. Hey, listen, if you could have seen– That’s true. I had a, a gold chain with a basketball hoop on it underneath that collar. Stay strong. If you had seen that. Let’s talk about pasta. Okay. Uh, it’s origins trace back thousands, a years, but when did pasta peak? Or, has it even peaked yet? That is an excellent question and one we intend to answer. It’s time for a taste as old as time pasta edition. Even though we’re of course experts on all things culinary, it would be nice to have another brain around. Some sort of say historical tour guide to explain all of this to us. Gentlemen, I shall be piloting our proverbial DeLorean through this historical journey I’ve never seen back to the future, but I, I understand that’s the car they drove in it. Yes, I’ve heard it too. It’s missed. Let’s talk about later. So these are actually the first ever noodles in history, or at least one Chinese archeological dig team believes they found 4,000 year old evidence inside an overturned clay pot. In, uh, Laja, that’s in northwest China. These are really plain millet noodles. So rice and wheat were not cultivated in China till about 2,500 years ago, so these are over a thousand years before that. Now millet doesn’t have any gluten, so using primitive tools to create these noodles would’ve been incredibly labor intensive. Wow. And they might actually be tough. They’re known as iron wire noodles in modern day China. Iron wire noodles? Enjoy. Millet. Millet, he says, are we supposed to be following you? Tour guide over there? Yeah. Come on of the flag. Yeah. The Algerians are after me. What happens in that movie? Libyans. They’re Libyans. Yeah. Libyans Libyan. Yeah. I know the writers. We, we should watch it later. There’s, you know, there’s multiple ones. Big Cristin Glover guy. So how did you, so we have acquired Millet and this has been made. Where does one get Millet? Internet. Um, it tastes good. It’s kind of interesting like all on its own and you typically just don’t eat pasta but nothing on it. Right, it, it could use something. But it’s kind of a pleasing texture. You know what it reminds me of, Christie started like getting that like protein noodle stuff, I don’t know, made out of peas or something. I don’t know. It’s a huge bummer. Is it? Yeah. Oh, sorry. Yeah. That’s okay. No, I’m sad if you have to eat it. Oh yeah, it’s, they’re not nearly– It just tastes different. And I’m like, I know it tastes different, but I’m not gonna say anything. Maybe you should. I’ll text her. Can you talk to his wife for him? I do all the time about, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Feel free. Um, uh, I can imagine it’s gonna get better from here. Josh. That’s all I’m gonna say. So, so the top is number one. Mm-hmm. It’s definitely the best we’ve had so far. But let’s, I mean, I think it’s, I think it’s gonna probably go down like four or five. I think it’s gonna be the worst. Well, that’s my guess, put it at five. But imagine you’re a 4,000 year old peasant. Oh, I would be so into it. See? Uh, just put it at the bottom, put at five, put it, put it at the bottom. It’s gonna get better than technology, man, you know? Mm-hmm. You know, at the time that this pasta was being made, the world population was, it had doubled from seven to 4 million people over that thousand year period. That’s like just as many people as there are in Los Angeles. That was just the world population. The way you said it made it sound like it decreased from seven to four, but I understand you. 14. Oh, doubled. Oh yeah. Wow. Yeah, the Trader Joe’s parking lots probably weren’t as crowded as they are in la. Not at all. Although this might look familiar like lasagna. It does. This is an early prototype. It’s called Patina Apana. We’re taking this. From the cookbook, dere Coria, written by Marcus Gaius in the fourth century BC a lot of people consider it to be history’s first cookbook. Uh, but obviously the tomato was not in yeah, the Roman area until about. I’m good with that. 1500 years later. And so you’ll love the sauce better. It’s made with uh, sos belly. Boiled raisin wine in the breast of a fig pecker or a thrush, as they say. A fig pecker. A fig pecker. It’s got the breast of a fig pecker in it. It’s probably got a couple fig pecker breasts ’cause they’re real small. We have acquired fig Packers. Yep. You wanna know where you get it. Internet. The internet, man. It’s done good and bad in the world. Egg crackers, brown lasagna. Please enjoy that thing that you said about the belly. That scared me. Mm-hmm. Well, it just pork belly. It is a saus belly. It’s hot. It’s not bad. Not bad. You know, during this time, children played with balls made from tied up rags or blown up pig splatters. Don’t, don’t talk more about pigs and their bladders. But they were just playing games with them. Okay? This makes me feel Roman. This was also the time of the invention of the donkey powered mill. You don’t say I was. I was always wondering, wishing someone would tell me when the donkey powered mill came about. Yeah. Some people might call it the ass powered mill. You know, I’m going back in so. It’s, it’s good. What is it? What is the pancake pasta made from? It’s hardy, so it is just made with wheat and water. Sometimes eggs were also used, but throughout history you do see people grinding grains into flour and then mixing with water in various ways. So it almost brings up the question of like, what exactly is a noodle? And what is pasta? You know what I mean? Yeah, I do. Yeah. Blurred lines. I don’t like it. But I like it more than this plain pasta. Like if I, I’m just thinking about if I had to like make a meal or something, you know? Yeah. It’s definitely not bad. Well, let’s put this, let’s put this one up, one up from there. Yeah. I don’t think, I don’t think we’re gonna need to shuffle those around. Okay. But where, you know, slowly improving with time, that’s the assumption, what’s gonna come along and be worse? All right, so we’re gonna go ahead and jump to the Renaissance period in Italy right now, specifically Sicily. So Sicily was under. Uh, like Muslim Arab occupation for a very, very long time, and you see a lot of those influences in specifically Sicilian cuisine. That’s why we have an early prototype of ravioli here, which likely came from an Arabic world dish called Sambusa. If you’ve heard of Samosas all coming from the same root word. Samosas? Yeah. Or like samosas, samosa. Yes, yes. Like they all have somewhat the same. Some, some, yeah. It’s just a nice little filled pastry dish. Uh, and so here we have like an early version of tortellini, which kind of gave rise to a lot of different filled pastas. The recipe specifically we’re using is from a 1570 cookbook called Opera. This has a bone marrow and raisins sitting in a lovely broth. Oh yeah. That’s what’s on the inside is bone marrow and raisins. Uh, also just filled with, uh, with meat as well. Oh, yeah. Okay. That is rich and aromatic. Hmm. Yeah. You see a lot of warm spices used specifically in Sicilian cuisine in Sweet. You’re gonna get a little bit of cinnamon in there. Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. I could, this is the first one that I’m like– Interesting. I could imagine this being at some restaurant somewhere. It’s a little bit different. It’s a little bit unexpected the way it would be like. Um, um. Let me tell you about that one. You know what I’m saying? Before you order it, you order he’s, let me tell you about that one. Yeah. That’s a riff on a Renaissance dish. Josh, as we’ve said this right here, is modern day restaurant quality with caveats. Yep. Yep. Which makes me start to think you wanna skip a space? I think we need to skip a space, but here’s the thing that’s gonna happen. Link, I believe. At some point we’re gonna get tomato sauce, and I know you don’t like tomato, but you like tomato sauce. And I think that that tomato sauce, if that’s what’s coming, I think it’s gonna be really good, but we can always switch it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That’ll give Josh something to do. Yeah. Put it up higher, Josh. Yeah. Don’t put it all the way. Yes. 16th century. Skipping a space. Oh, look what we did. You see these awesome mythical shirts we’re wearing. Check out these sick designs. We partner with our friends over at Zoomies to bring all these exclusive tees from the mythical merch archive. Go to mythical.com/zoomies for more information and to find a store near you. We are fast forwarding all the way to the early 19 hundreds in America. This is a spaghetti and meatballs. This is a dish that flat out does not exist. In Italy, and the reasons it does exist in America is because we were simply the land of beef throughout the 18 hundreds. And so Italian American communities, specifically in New York mm-hmm. Started feeding their children a lot more beef. And so their families could make bigger meatballs. Meatballs exist in Italy, uh, pule, but they are significantly smaller. And so they started putting them on pasta in America and beef consumption was actually spurred by the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act, which as we all know, uh, was in, uh, incidental of, uh, Upton Sinclair’s 1906 Opus the Jungle. Okay. I, all of us know. Yeah. Yeah. So was that like, what was the slogan? Just say no to pure drugs and food? No, they wanted the food to be more pure, uh, up in Sinclair 1906 in the drugs, the Chicago Stockyards, and how a point the meat raising conditions were. Of course. And so then the Roosevelt administration was like, we need to actually inspect the meat to make sure. And it was point is Americans ate a lot more beef after that, especially. And so this dish only continued to become more popular because they had confidence. They really did. They really did. Oh God. I also have confidence that this is amazing. Oh gosh. This is like so many steps up the meat and the tomato sauce. Good gracious. Good gracious. And the nature of the pasta. Yeah. Canning tomatoes also became a lot more popular ’cause canned foods really weren’t around until the late 18 hundreds. Uh, and so this made it really easy for all Americans to cook in their home as well. Now, something to consider about this around the time that this was being introduced. We had put the children back to work in the factories. Mm-hmm. But we let the women vote. There you go. Tip for tat. And when I say we, I don’t mean we, I mean we didn’t have anything to do with it. Yeah, we weren’t. No. Wasn’t there, we weren’t there for it. I’m just saying, you know, we as humans, which one did we, but we would’ve been right for it. Which one didn’t you want to happen? Well, why I’m, I wanted both of them to happen. Okay. Right. Well, you know what? We let the women vote and then the women were like, they decided to put the children work. They, they decided to get the children out of the workforce. Right? So we want to do whatever the women want. Mm-hmm. Kids have a right to work, man. That’s all I’m saying. Mm-hmm. I made a mess. I’m sorry. Well, we’ll get the kids to pick that up. Is this the pinnacle in the same century as the Titanic? The NFL, the Great Gatsby. I mean, this is the best pasta that I’ve had today and the best pasta that I’ve had in weeks. I think number one, baby, put it at the top, Josh. Number one, put it at the top. Mm-hmm. Could anything topple that? Well, we’re gonna find out in just a second for this final round, we have asked Josh in the mythical kitchen to. Go into the future to prognosticate. Oh, good word. Great word. What the future of pasta will be. Great pronunciation on pasta as well. What I have for you today, gentlemen, this is Lor cha ala vodka Panal. Vodka invented in either the 1970s or 1980s, depending on who you ask, I believe is the apotheosis. Of pasta. I think that is the most popular a pasta dish will ever become. One of the hardest reservations to get right now in Los Angeles is a place called Puget Palace. Their main dish is been there and do you have the ma rigatoni? The Indian, the Indian flavored, uh, rigatoni. A vodka. I did. ’cause that was a specialty. That is the specialty. That’s what people go there for. So I think we are going to start searching the rest of the globe to find out which country we can now add to. Penne vodka, which is how we end up in Cambodia, which has some of the world’s best spices. So there’s compu peppercorn in here, one of the world’s most prized peppercorns, one of my favorite ingredients on the planet. These are Lor cha noodles. They’re called rice pin noodles. So you see they’re kinda like thinner at one end and thicker on the other. Yes. Let’s, let’s pull one in the, they’re stir fried with sauce short. I thought. I thought it was like pieces of onion. No, no, no. So those are the actual noodles. Then we have barta with high Birdseye chilis on top. A little bit of Maru lime leaf tamarind, shallot, cinnamon. Uh, and Gaal, which is like Ginger’s funkier cousin. Please enjoy. Okay, this one was just for me. This one was for me. I wanted, I wanted this to happen and I’m very glad that we did Kevin Bite. Mm-hmm. Thanks, man. I guess I’m doing this now. Oh man. Oh man. Double fork in it. Get a lot right over where I’m making a fork. I ate three rice pin noodles without chewing. They just went right down scoop. Oh dude, they’re slidey. And that the, the spice. Mmm, those peppercorns and the barara. Just Tim Tebow in here real quick. Those peppercorns are really nice. Combo pepper done you, Cambodian food is one of my favorite things in the entire world. Okay. There’s a couple other things to consider about 2026. Okay. This is just a year from now. But I wanna let you know Elvis will be found alive in Tampa and, and if that’s gonna happen, that might impact the way you think about it. It’s fresh, it’s different. I mean, alright, get over there because we’re about, hand it to you and you gotta be over there. Hold on one sec, buddy. Well, we’re gonna, we’re gonna hand it to you and you keep eating it, but the question is. Where does it go? I mean, 16th century, we know we’re moving that down. Move 16th century down. There’s no question. You might as well, it’s whether or not, what are you calling this Lor Cha Olive vodka. That Lor Cha Olive vodka. Is it the, is it the pasta of the future? Is it the best pasta in history? This is so much closer than the last time we did this than with the burger, if I remember correctly. Yeah, I really phoned it in on the burger. Did a much better job this time. Well, it’s just hard. It wasn’t that the smash, smash burger is just so hard to beat. I’m on the fence, but it’s meatless and I just love meatballs so much. I think if we’re prognosticating, as you like to say, into the future, I think meat is going to become a lot more scarce in a way. It’s already becoming a lot more expensive. That’s true. Uh, due to drought and climate change, which is why we gotta keep it at number one for now. It won’t be here for so we can remember. And I think there’s something beautiful about that. Remember, remember the meat days? Yeah. Yeah. Throw it at number two because we gotta enjoy it while it’s here. Like a full pound of meat on those, on the spaghetti. Yeah. That’s not normal, man. So there you have it. Spaghetti and meatballs. The, the pasta of the 20th century is officially history’s greatest pasta. Mm-hmm. Great work. Josh. Lily, thank you so much. Before we go, uh, we wanna announce that our spring break starts next week. So for the next three weeks. Yes. We won’t be releasing episodes on Tuesday, Thursday, but let me put that in a positive. Light. Yeah, you can just start for the next, next three weeks, we will have brand spanking new episodes on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Okay. Yeah, so be here on Monday for the start of that, and of course, I’ll be back here tomorrow for another new episode of Good Mythical Weekend. Thanks for commenting and sharing this video. You know what time it is. Hi, I am Mick. I’m Emily. I’m Cohen. And we did a macaroni and cheese case test. And now it’s time to spin in the Wheel of Mythicality. Woo. Raising ’em right! Go fam. Click the top link to see how many pastas we can name. And to find out where the Wheel of Mythicality’s gonna land. We’re IRL with exclusive gear and select Zumiez stores, for more info and to find extra near you, go to mythical.com/zumiez.