Pesto (see pine mouth). Many online recipes in English for pesto will also list black pepper among the ingredients, which the traditional Genoese recipe omits. Pesto Pesto (; ), sometimes spelled as pasto or to refer to the original dish pesto alla genovese (), is a sauce originating in Genoa, the capital city of Liguria, Italy. It traditionally consists of crushed garlic, European pine nuts, coarse salt, basil leaves, Parmigiano-Reggiano (Parmesan cheese) and pecorino sardo (cheese made from sheep's milk), all blended with olive oil. The name is the past participle of the Genoese verb "pestâ" (Italian: "pestare"), which means "to
Pesto through a circular motion of a wooden pestle. This same Latin root, through Old French, also gave rise to the English noun "pestle". Strictly speaking, "pesto" is a generic term for anything that is made by pounding; that is why the word is used for several pestos in Italy. Nonetheless, "pesto alla genovese" ("Genoese pesto") remains the most popular pesto in Italy and the rest of the world. Pesto is thought to have two predecessors in ancient times, going back as far as the Roman age. The ancient Romans used to eat a similar paste called moretum, which was made