Pesto is a green sauce of crushed basil, nuts and cheese. Stir in the pesto, a jar of pesto, pesto pasta.
The proper Genoese version is basil, pine nuts, garlic, hard cheese and olive oil, crushed rather than blitzed — the name comes from the pounding. Heat dulls it, so it goes on at the end rather than being cooked.
1nounpestoA green sauce of crushed basil, nuts and cheese.
“She spread pesto on the bread and topped it with tomato and mozzarella.”
pesto is a sauce.
Italian pesto means pounded, from pestare, to crush, from Latin pinsere. Pestle is the same root.
Proto-Indo-European
*peys-
Latin
pistus — crushed, pounded
Italian
pesto
English, today
pesto
Appears 1850 in Cottage economy, attributed to William Cobbett (but not found in any editions published during his life). From Italian pesto, from Latin pistus (“crushed, pounded”), from Latin pīnsō (“to pound, beat, crush”). Cognate to pestle.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA