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 by crushing garlic, salt, cheese, herbs, olive oil and vinegar together. The use of this paste in the Roman cuisine is mentioned in the "Appendix Vergiliana", an ancient collection of poems where the author dwells on the details about the preparation of "moretum". During the Middle Ages, a popular sauce in the Genoan cuisine was "agliata", which was basically a mash of garlic and walnuts, as garlic was a staple in the nutrition of Ligurians, especially for the seafarers. The introduction of basil, the main ingredient of modern pesto, occurred in more recent times and is first documented only in