During the early 20th century, a group of Italian Futurist artists and architects decreed there was to be “no more spaghetti for Italians.” Because pasta making called for speed and scientific precision, Futurist cuisine could not tolerate the slow, assured process of kneading dough and forming it into ancestral shapes perfectly attuned to regional sauces. Nor could it countenance the quaintly colloquial names carried by each pasta shape—“little tongues” (linguini), “knuckles” (gnocchi), “little ears” (orecchiette). The Futurist Cookbook, published in 1932, contained a recipe for ice cream on the moon—but no noodles.  

Any loyal Futurist would be dismayed by more recent events. In the later 20th century, artists, designers and architects came to view pasta as a fasc...