Date of Birth: Originally from the region around Genoa, recipes there go back for hundreds of years. In these islands, however, it really only became widely available in the 1980s. Its popularity was probably as much to do with the rise of Californian cuisine as with the vogue for Tuscan holidays.

Appearance: Green and sludgy in natural state, but then brown and sludgy, even red and sludgy in more recent times. Can turn solid in colder climbs, so that it begins to resemble moss frozen inside an milky ice lolly. When it meets pasta, it loses the run of itself entirely and dances all over in a hail of little greenspots, or red spots. Or brown spots.

It actually sounds quite terrible; more like a nasty disease than an enthralling culinary experience: Maybe I'm not describing it properly, but the fun is more to do with the taste than its appearance anyway. Because it is a mixture of pine nuts, basil, parmesan and olive oil, none of which has a particularly loud flavour (especially if you avoid garlic), it can be something quite delicate, which is why it must be made freshly, with the basil and nuts ground in a marble mortar. In recent years, people started to MagiMix the ingredients. Finally, supermarket versions appeared in glass jars and featured ingredients so denatured that the resemblance to pesto is in name only.

But what does it taste like? Well, you might say it is like having your tongue stroked with microscopic Christmas trees while simultaneously having it gently massaged with oil. If you are eating your pesto with pasta, that completes the experience by towelling off your palate with hot linen, ready for the next bite. Or something.

Sounds like a fairly mixed blessing to me: If you have never tried it, then you must have been in a coma for about a decade, or too busy archiving your back issues of Ireland's Own. And now, it may be just too late.

Oh, why's that? Well it seems that the death knell of pesto has been heard. "Italian" and "Mediterranean" are over. Balsamic vinegar is in extremis. The parents of pesto, basil and olive oil, are moribund.

I don't understand. Has some horticultural equivalent of BSE begun to make its stealthy way through the great herds of basil plants of the world? Interesting thought, but I'm afraid it's all a bit more mundane than that. The big problem is that pesto simply became too popular. Its name began to be taken in vain in restaurants from Milltown Malbay to Glasthule. It came to be used on menus as a synonym for "nice", or "posh" or "trendy" or all three. So that pasta with pesto, chicken sandwiches with pesto and even, in the final days of its decline, mashed potato with pesto, just meant uppity versions of these rather blah stuffs.

So what of the future? In the natural course of linguistic development, pesto will come to mean "yeuchy", "naff" or "old fashioned", while other more exotic, less available in supermarket own brand foodstuffs will take its place.

Any suggestions: Well, there is something called wasabi. I'm not sure if you eat it or use it as a pessary but apparently it has become very "now".