A nourishing product made from wheat flour (semolina, durum, farina), and water or milk and eggs and dried into tubes.
The pasta called macaroni derives its name from the Italian word maccaroni, originally the name of a food made from a paste of groats, a coarsely ground grain. This Italian word developed from makaria, a Late Greek name for a broth made from barley groats, the Greeks in turn having formed this name from an older word meaning blessedness. Why the Greeks associated this food with blessedness is puzzling, but no doubt they would be equally mystified by some of our modern food names, such as angel food cake. The Italian maccaroni—or rather its singular form, maccarone—also gave the macaroon its name; like macaroni pasta, the macaroon—a small, crunchy cake—is made from a paste, albeit a paste of ground almonds, not groats. Both macaroni and macaroon appeared in English at the beginning of the seventeenth century, but even a hundred and fifty years later macaroni remained an uncommon food in England. Accordingly, when a troop of young men decided, around 1750, that they were too sophisticated to eat native English food, they founded the Macaroni Club to manifest their ardent preference for foreign foods and manners. The affected tendencies of the members of this club—exemplified by their penchant for wearing two watches on the same arm—were so renowned that macaroni soon became a term of contempt, a synonym for fop or affected behaviour. This sense of the word is immortalized in “Yankee Doodle,” a song in which a certain Mr. Doodle puts a feather in his cap and “calls it macaroni.”
A type of Italian pasta crafted using wheat flour and molded into cylinders measuring half an inch or less in diameter, frequently broken or cut into smaller segments for cooking.
Among the most renowned varieties of pasta, this particular kind takes the form of long, cylindrical tubes characterized by their hollow interior. Crafted from a blend of durum wheat flour and water, it serves as a foundation for countless culinary creations. Notably, this pasta can also be found in an assortment of shapes, including alphabet letters, shells, rings, stars, and an array of vibrant colors. As a cherished staple of Italian cuisine, it bears a name that is said to derive from the Greek term signifying “blessed bread.” This reference harkens back to an ancient tradition of consuming this pasta during commemorative feasts held in honor of the deceased.