Lasagne alla Bolognese

Lasagne alla Bolognese is the layered baked pasta of Emilia-Romagna: sheets of egg pasta — traditionally the green, spinach-tinted pasta verde — interleaved with a slow-simmered meat ragù, silky béchamel and a generous dusting of Parmigiano-Reggiano. Assembled in a deep dish and baked until the top sets into burnished, crisp-edged ridges, it is cut into neat squares that hold their shape on the plate.

Unlike the looser, tomato-heavy lasagnas found abroad, the Bolognese version leans on the richness of the ragù and the creaminess of the béchamel rather than a flood of sauce or melted mozzarella. It is Sunday-lunch food, a dish built for family tables and long afternoons. For more of Italy's table, see Spaghetti Carbonara and the northern classic Risotto alla Milanese.

The word lasagne is ancient — it descends from the Greek laganon, a flat sheet of dough, by way of the Roman lasanum — but the layered ragù-and-béchamel dish recognised today took shape in Emilia-Romagna, and above all in Bologna, over the 19th and early 20th centuries. Baked pasta casseroles appear in Italian cooking well before then, yet the marriage of green egg pasta, meat ragù and béchamel is the signature of the Bolognese kitchen.

In 2003 the Bologna chamber of commerce lodged an official recipe for ragù alla bolognese with the local notary, an attempt to fix the proportions of a sauce endlessly argued over in home kitchens. The dish is a fixture of festive meals across the region, and its worldwide fame has made "lasagna" a shorthand for Italian comfort cooking — even as the authentic Emilian version remains distinct from its many international descendants.