Near the end of the 19th century, Italian-America cuisine was invented by housewives from regions like Campania, Apulia, and Sicily who arrived in America to find many of the ingredients they were accustomed to cooking with simply not available.

Cured pig products, fresh herbs like rosemary and sage, capers, foraged mushrooms, canned Italian tomatoes, familiar cheeses, vegetables like broccoli rabe and escarole, and myriad fresh and dried pastas were missing in New York City markets of the time. The deficiency would gradually be remedied with imported products and ones newly manufactured here. (The first American dried spaghetti was made in a Staten Island factory in the late 1890s.)

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Source: http://ny.eater.com