Macaroni

Close-up photo of a handfull of macaroni noodles.

Macaroni is typically machine-made dry commercial pasta, used in contrast to fresh pasta made at home or in small local businesses. Macaroni technically must not contain eggs. Although usually commercially made, some more advanced home machines do allow for the fresh creation of macaroni pasta.

Macaroni is a corruption of the Italian word maccherone and its plural maccheroni. Its etymology is debatable. Some scholars think it's related to Greek makaria, a kind of barley-broth. Others think it comes from Italian maccare, "to bruise or crush" (referring to the crushing of the wheat to make the pasta) which comes in turn from Latin macerare.

Thomas Jefferson is credited with bringing the first macaroni machine to the United States (US) in 1789, when he returned home after serving as ambassador to France. Jefferson credits Mr. Daniel Paese with teaching him all he learned about this machine.

In the US and Canada, the name macaroni is customarily given to a specific shape of pasta: small pasta tubes cut into short pieces. Macaroni is also sometimes labelled as elbow macaroni, or more simply elbows, due to the slight bend in the shape of the pasta noodle. In the US and UK, this pasta is usually prepared by baking it with cheddar cheese or American cheese; the resulting dish is called "macaroni and cheese" (or "macaroni cheese" in Britain). In some parts of the US, a more narrow type of macaroni is sold as elbow spaghetti.

Among some Italian-Americans in the mid-Atlantic region (particularly in New York City, Philadelphia, and New Jersey), macaroni is used as a generic term for any type of pasta. However, those Italian-Americans who are educated in the Italian language are careful to use the word properly, to refer only to small pasta tubes cut into short pieces.

External links

• The Cook's Thesaurus Pictures and descriptions of pasta shapes