tradition

Su filindeu, or "threads of God," is the rarest pasta in the world. For a century, it was made by a single family in the Sardinian city of Nuoro for religious celebrations. Today, there are fewer than 10 people there who know the secret to making the pasta as thin as a strand of hair.

Rosalía Chay is one of the few chefs in Mexico who still cooks using an underground oven called a pib to make cochinita pibil. Maya people in the Yucatán Peninsula have prepared it this way since at least 400 AD.

The Gozenshu Brewery is one of the few in Japan using bodaimoto, a 600-year-old fermentation method, to make sake. They use it to make junmai, or pure rice sake that has no added alcohol or sugar. But mass-produced sake made with cheap additives is threatening the business.

Indonesia's mie lethek noodles, or "ugly" noodles, have a distinctive dull grayish color when cooked. We visited a factory that still makes them using 2,000-year-old methods — one of only two such factories left in the country.