Updated April 7, 2024
(July 6, 2019) Each year on July 7th, pasta lovers across the nation dig into one of their favorite noodles on National Macaroni Day.
- 2000 – 10000 BC – The Greeks establish a colony in Naples and appropriate a local dish called ‘makaria,’ which might have been the inspiration for the word ‘macaroni’.
- 5000 BC – Some food historians believe pasta originated in this period, in China.
- 1465 – Author and epicure Maestro Martino publishes a landmark cookbook, “Libro de Arte Coquinaria,” which contains several pasta dishes, some paired with cheese.
- 1789 – Thomas Jefferson brings a ‘macaroni’ maker to the U.S. after he visits Europe as the ambassador to France.
- 1872 – Author and food historian Paul Imhof believes the world’s first commercial production of macaroni as we know it today — short, hollow, and elbow-shaped — was not in Italy but in Switzerland.
- 1904 – The predecessor to today’s National Pasta Association — the National Association of Macaroni and Noodle Manufacturers of America — is formed.
- Made with durum wheat, macaroni is a large variety of dry pasta which typically does not contain eggs. While many people think the shape gives macaroni its name, its the kind of dough from which the noodles are made. However, elbow macaroni is the most common form found in the United States. The noodle is formed into shells, spirals, straight and many other shapes, too.
- Makaroneia is the origin of the word, and it’s from the Medieval Greek. Makaroneia means “dirge”, or specifically in the case of the pasta “funeral meal”?
- Macaroni is a corruption of the Italian maccheroni, which comes from the Latin macerare. The word means to bruise or crush; crushing wheat is how pasta is made.
- Kraft sells about a million boxes of macaroni and cheese per day. All-time bestselling non-elbow shape: SpongeBob SquarePants.
- Why did Yankee Doodle stick a feather in his cap and call it macaroni? In the 1700s, fashionable men who wore expensive Italian clothes were called macaroni, another word for “dandies.” The patriotic song is a jab at Americans who were so boorish that they thought a feather would make them fashionable.
- The macaroni penguin, with black and yellow plumes on its head, is named after those very same dandies from “Yankee Doodle.”
- The average American eats 19.8 pounds of pasta each year. The average Italian eats 62 pounds.
- In Hong Kong, macaroni is traditionally a breakfast food, cooked with mushrooms, peas, ham, eggs, and chicken stock.
- Thomas Jefferson introduced macaroni to the United States in 1789. He brought back a macaroni shaping machine after eating the dish in Naples, Italy.
- There are about 350 different “authentic” shapes of pasta—meaning ones that originated in Italy.
- In the fourteenth century, a cheese and pasta casserole known as makerouns was recorded in the famous medieval English cookbook, the Forme of Cury. It was made with fresh, hand-cut pasta which was sandwiched between a mixture of melted butter and cheese.
- Kraft Macaroni and Cheese was introduced in 1937 with the slogan “Make a meal for four in nine minutes.” It was an immediate success in the U.S. and Canada during the Great Depression.
- During WWII, food rationing led to increased popularity for Kraft Mac and Cheese. Americans could obtain two boxes for one food rationing stamp.
- It is considered the national dish and boxed Kraft Mac and Cheese is the most-purchased grocery item in the country.
- Kraft Sells One Million Boxes Of Mac And Cheese A Day.
- The Popular Way To Eat Mac And Cheese In Canada Is With Ketchup.
- James Lewis Kraft Is Not The Inventor Of Mac And Cheese. The true story is that Kraft saw a salesman in St. Louis selling boxes of pasta with grated cheese attached by a rubber band and had an “aha!” moment. As the first to patent the idea of mass produced cheesy pasta,
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