Ravioli has been a staple of the Italian working man’s meal, ever since the techniques trickled down from the Nobels’ cooks. it allowed families to stretch a scrap of cheese, or a palm of pork, so, modern-day pests like dandelions or wild herbs were used as a filler. Excess dough could have been used for desserts too, sweet ravioli, in places like Mantua, pumpkin was used with crushed nuts or biscuits to create a creamy and sweet pocket.

It was not just a crutch for civilian life; the Italians served mass produced, canned ravioli to troops. This paired with the change of many vegetarian peasants to being able to access meat, boosted morale.

Not only was the 150-gram daily pasta ration enticing, but the fact soldiers were also promised 375 grams of beef was too good to be true, and so it was, it was usually cut to 200 grams. On top of that, service men had access to real coffee (15grams of ground coffee beans), 20 grams of sugar (increased to 30 during the last year of the war), wine (250 millilitres) and 15 grams of tobacco. None of these served the same type of morale boost as pasta, though. Pasta gave a sense of home and normalcy in the chaos of the front, a boost that any of those items could only dream of.

Italians loved pasta so much, that Italian immigrants in Rhode Island, America, carried out a chain of physically riots that led to a shopkeeper formally lowering their prices!