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 the regions of Liguria, Italy, and Provence, France. It was abundant in this part of Italy, though only when in season, which is why marjoram and parsley are suggested as alternatives when basil is lacking. Ratto mentions Dutch cheese (""formaggio olandese"") instead of pecorino sardo since Northern European cheeses were actually common in Genoa at the time, thanks to the centuries-long commercial trades of the maritime republic. This recipe for "pesto alla genovese" was often revised in the following years (a noted revision by Emanuele Rossi occurred in 1865, only a couple of years after Ratto's "Cuciniera"), and it shortly