Each year on July 7th, pasta lovers across the nation dig into one of their favorite noodles on National Macaroni Day.
- 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, the kind of dough used to make the noodles gives it the name. The noodle is formed into shells, spirals, straight and many other shapes, too.
- In fact, elbow macaroni is the most common form found in the United States.
- Makaroneia is the origin of the word, and it’s from the Medieval Greek. The word Makaroneia means “dirge”, or specifically in the case of the pasta “funeral meal”?
- Macaroni is used as the foundation of an American variety of goulash where it serves as the starch component of a heavily meat-laden dish.
- 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.
- According to a study by the Animal Behavior Society, the favorite food of city-dwelling rats is macaroni and cheese. It’s also the most requested food in college dorm cafeterias.
- The first reference to pasta, in a book, was in 1154.
- There are over 600 types of pasta, and some have over 1300 names.
- The three most popular pastas’ are: penne, spaghetti and macaroni.
- The traditional Italian way of cooking pasta is known as ‘al dente’.
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