The oldest known written reference to lasagna appears in 1282. It occurs in a vernacular ballad copied by a Bolognese notary and preserved within the Memoriali Bolognesi, a collection of medieval notarial records from Bologna.
The passage is important because it provides an early documentary use of the word lasagne, not because it gives the complete modern recipe. The poem mentions lasagne among foods eaten at a feast, showing that the term was already recognizable in late-thirteenth-century northern Italy.
This date is often confused with later culinary milestones. Salimbene di Adam’s Cronica contains another early reference, from 1284, to lagana cum caseo, or lasagna with cheese. The first surviving written recipe associated with lasagna is generally placed later, in the early fourteenth-century Liber de Coquina.
The medieval dish also differed from today’s layered casserole. Historical references may describe boiled pasta sheets or strips served with cheese and other ingredients, without the tomato, béchamel, or meat layers familiar in many modern versions. Thus, 1282 identifies the earliest known written reference, not the invention of the contemporary recipe.