Sauces
Pesto alla Genovese
Genoa’s raw basil sauce, made the traditional way in a mortar or carefully in a food processor: sweet basil, pine nuts, garlic and coarse salt, Parmigiano Reggiano and Pecorino stirred in by hand and loosened with mild olive oil, then tossed with trofie or linguine, potatoes and green beans as they do in Liguria.
- Serves 4
- Makes about 200 ml
- Hands-on 20 min
- Keeps 3 days chilled
- Freeze it without the cheese
- Italian (Liguria)
Method
Pick the basil (60 g) from the stalks. Wash it only if it is gritty and dry it thoroughly between tea towels: wet leaves make a dark, watery pesto.
By hand: put the garlic (1 clove), salt (pinch) and pine nuts (30 g) in a large mortar and pound them to a smooth cream. Add the basil a handful at a time and grind it against the sides with a circular movement of the pestle, rather than banging, until you have a bright green paste flecked with leaf.
In a food processor: blitz the garlic, salt and pine nuts with half of the olive oil to a smooth paste first. Roughly chop the basil, add it and pulse in short bursts, scraping down the bowl, only until it is finely chopped. Never let the motor run: the heat and the blade bruise the basil and turn it bitter.
Scrape the paste into a bowl. Stir in the Parmigiano (40 g) and Pecorino (20 g) by hand, then the olive oil (90 ml) (or what is left of it) in a thin stream, until the sauce is thick but spoonable. Stir in the soft butter (15 g) if you like a rounder, silkier sauce. Taste for salt.
Bring a large pan of well-salted water to the boil. Add the potato (1 potato) and the pasta (400 g) together; add the green beans (100 g) for the last 5–6 minutes, so that everything is tender at the same time.
Scoop out a mugful of the cooking water, then drain. Put the pesto in a warm serving bowl, loosen it with 2–3 tablespoons of the hot water, add the pasta, potato and beans and toss well, adding a splash more water if it looks dry. Serve straight away with extra Parmesan (20 g). Pesto is never cooked: heat turns it dull and dark.
Tip: tap a step to tick it off as you cook.
See also
Chef’s notes
- Pine nuts are the costliest ingredient. Walnuts or blanched almonds make a cheaper pesto that is still very good; it just will not be Genovese.
- To freeze, make the pesto without the cheese and butter, smooth it into a small tub, cover with a thin layer of oil and freeze for up to 3 months. Stir in the cheese and butter once it has thawed.
- For pesto that stays bright green in the fridge for several days, dip the basil leaves in boiling water for 5 seconds, then in iced water, and dry them well. You lose a little perfume but gain colour.
- Pesto is also lovely stirred into minestrone, spooned over gnocchi or new potatoes, or spread on toast.
A little history
Pesto takes its name from pestare, to pound, and in Genoa it is still made in a marble mortar with a wooden pestle. The earliest known printed recipe is in Giovanni Battista Ratto’s La Cuciniera Genovese of 1863: three or four garlic cloves and basil (or marjoram and parsley when there was no basil) pounded with grated Dutch cheese and Parmesan, loosened with plenty of olive oil and a little hot water, and used to dress lasagne, tagliolini and gnocchi (trofie).
Basil itself was a latecomer to Italian sauces. The Museo della Cucina in Rome traces its first appearance in a printed recipe to 1549, in a green sauce by Cristoforo da Messisbugo. Ratto’s pesto has no pine nuts; they, and the now-standard Pecorino Sardo, came later.
Sources: Museo della Cucina, Rome: the first printed pesto recipe (Ratto, 1863).
How this recipe was developed
We compared pesto from Marcella Hazan, Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street and Jamie Oliver with BBC Good Food’s basil pesto and the earliest printed Genoese recipe.
- Cheese stirred in by hand. Marcella Hazan blends the basil, oil, pine nuts and garlic but always stirs the Parmesan and Pecorino in by hand for a better texture; we do the same with both methods.
- Nuts and garlic first. Milk Street (Christopher Kimball) blitzes untoasted pine nuts, garlic and salt to a smooth paste before the basil goes in, and only pulses the basil. It is the best way we found to keep a processor pesto green and sweet.
- A little butter. Hazan softens her pesto with a spoonful of butter. We kept it optional; Genoese cooks use none.
- Pounded, not chopped. Jamie Oliver pounds the garlic with salt in a pestle and mortar first, then the nuts and basil, which is the traditional order we give for the by-hand method.
- Hot water, not heat. Both Ratto (1863) and Hazan loosen the pesto with hot pasta water rather than heating it. The potatoes and green beans are the Ligurian way of serving trofie or trenette.
Sources we compared (ratings as shown on each site on 31 October 2026):
- Marcella Hazan: Pesto Genovese (Essentials of Italian Cooking), The Washington Post adaptation
- Milk Street (Christopher Kimball): Pasta alla Genovese (Milk Street, Sept–Oct 2018), Kate Cooks the Books reproduction
- Jamie Oliver: The best basil pesto
- BBC Good Food: Basil pesto (4.7/5, 6 ratings)
This is an original Cookeryonline recipe written in our own words. Ingredient choices and techniques are credited above; no source text has been copied.