Macaroni

What is Macaroni?

Macaroni is a hollow, slender pasta made from milled durum wheat dough. In English-speaking regions, the name usually refers to short, semicircular pieces known as elbow macaroni. In Italy, the term maccheroni describes straight, square-cut short tubes or even certain long pasta styles. Dried macaroni is pale, firm, and neutral in flavour, which allows it to absorb savoury sauces or light broths. Its hollow center easily holds melted cheese, gravies, and soup liquid.

Where does Macaroni come from?

Scholars trace the name to the Greek word makaria, linked to funerary meals or barley gruel, while linguist G. Alessio connects it to medieval dirges. Food historian John Dickie offers an alternate root in the Italian verb maccare, meaning to crush or pound. The pasta has a long recorded history in Britain, appearing under the spelling makerouns in the fourteenth-century cookbook The Forme of Cury, which holds an early recipe combining it with cheese.

How is Macaroni made?

Commercial factories mix durum wheat flour with water into a dense dough, then force it through metal extrusion dies. To create the iconic curved elbow, the machine pushes the dough out faster on one side than the other as it exits the opening. Rotating blades trim the hollow strands into short sections before they are dried. Home cooks can also press the shapes through domestic pasta attachments before boiling the pieces in water.

How and when is Macaroni eaten?

Across North America and Britain, boiled macaroni is baked or tossed with melted cheese. In Scotland, bakers enclose this cheesy mixture inside savoury pastry pies sold at football matches. In Hong Kong tea restaurants and Southeast Asian coffee shops, cooks rinse boiled macaroni and serve it in mild broth alongside sliced ham, frankfurters, peas, or eggs for morning meals. In Malaysia, cooks stir-fry it with chili paste, oyster sauce, and shallots.

Kinds of Macaroni

Shapes related to elbow macaroni include ridged rigatoni, coiled tortiglioni, and shell-like pipe. In nineteenth-century Switzerland, mountain cooks paired macaroni with cream and cheese to create Älplermagronen. Victorian Britons cooked a sweet version with milk and sugar like rice pudding. Long ago in seventh-century Crete, islanders prepared a similar early pasta named makarogia, which they seasoned with saffron.

What Macaroni means

Under United States food standards, macaroni serves as a formal legal classification that covers several dried pasta forms, including vermicelli and spaghetti. In Italian culinary tradition, maccheroni alla chitarra refers not to tubular pieces but to long, square-edged strands cut across wire strings. The curved elbow variety remains deeply rooted in everyday family cooking across several continents.

Questions people ask about Macaroni

Good reading and sources

• Encyclopaedia BritannicaArticle
• Macaroni cheeseBBC, Recipe

• Macaroni on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• More photos on Wikimedia CommonsPhotos
• Wikidata recordOpen data