Who wrongly wrote in 1559 that Marco Polo brought pasta from China to Italy?

Giovanni Battista Ramusio wrongly wrote in 1559 that Marco Polo brought pasta from China to Italy.

Ramusio was a Venetian geographer and editor who helped popularize accounts of travel and exploration. While preparing a later edition of Marco Polo’s writings, he misunderstood a passage about food in Sumatra. Polo had compared a local preparation made from sago flour with pasta and lasagna familiar to Italian readers, rather than claiming that he had discovered pasta in China.

Ramusio’s interpretation helped create the enduring story that Marco Polo introduced pasta to Italy after returning from Asia. That story is historically misleading. Pasta-like foods were already present in Italy and the Mediterranean before Polo’s travels, and dried, string-like pasta had older connections with Arab and Sicilian food traditions.

The legend was later amplified in modern popular writing and food advertising, especially in the United States. Marco Polo did describe unfamiliar foods by comparing them with things his readers knew, but that act of comparison was transformed into a claim about invention and importation.