Talk:Macaroni

Crucial commonwealth macaroni distinctions?

 * In the United States and Canada, the name macaroni is customarily given to a specific shape of pasta: small pasta tubes cut into short pieces.

Only in the US and Canada? My experience tells me this is the case in the UK, for example, too. It's often sold branded as such, often under different trade names than are other, more self-consciously Italianified brands are. (Though the term "elbow macaroni" isn't widely used.) Is this an "English speaking world in general" phenom? Alai 23:12, 19 October 2005 (UTC)


 * 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).

I'm struck in this case by the sudden omission of Canada, it having been previously mentioned: is this purposeful, or just one of those accidents of successive editing? Alai 23:12, 19 October 2005 (UTC):)

I'm questioning the portrayal of the use of "macaroni"="pasta" as a mistake. My family always used "macaroni" and "pasta" as synonyms when I was growing up, and I am not from an Italian background (instead, [Ashkenazi] Jewish American). Some friends called me on my usage, and i pointed out to them that on many boxes of pasta you can find the small print an enriched macaroni product, whether the pasta is elbow macaroni, spaghetti, ziti, spirals, or whatnot. So at least the big pasta companies agree that macaroni=pasta. —Steg, no account.

-Actually the name macaroni comes from the Italian maccheroni, which is pretty much the same kind of pasta. Also, since Macaroni clearly originates from Italy, you could erase all that US and Canada distinction nonsense. Different pasta types are recognized universally by anyone who cares about real cuisine. Another point is the text below a picture of a plate of penne, which are another type of pasta and not a macaroni sub-species as you seem to think. It's like saying that a Toyota is a popular Chrysler, when in fact both are different car brands. July 16th 08 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.243.150.152 (talk) 01:25, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Macaroni
What kind of person, in the slang vernacular, is a "Macaroni"? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 8.10.176.114 (talk) 22:53, 19 March 2007 (UTC).


 * This isn't appropriate for the article talk page. Please ask at the language reference desk and I'll reply there :-) (At least I know the answer for Neapolitan, which is my dialect) &mdash; Gennaro Prota &#8226;Talk 18:07, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Why no info on various sizes of macaroni? It isn't all one size. Skimpy article. Not really informative.

vandalism?
the first paragraph talks about eggs in macaroni -- I'm not a macaroni expert, but isn't that just a joke? haha duh!

pasta maker photos
I was curious how the hollow shape gets made - this article could maybe have http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Elbow_macaroni_die_front.jpg and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Elbow_macaroni_die_back.jpg on it somewhere? Jaddle (talk) 22:10, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Kraft Dinner
I disagree that "Kraft Dinner" is Canadian for "Macaroni and Cheese". To me, "Kraft Dinner" refers to the specific product made by Kraft and is not a generic name for the dish. Gmarsden (talk) 04:38, 26 March 2008 (UTC) i love mac and cheese.. its very yummy.

Elbow macaroni
The article Elbow macaroni should probably be redirected to Macaroni, and merged if any of the information can be verified. — Snigbrook 14:08, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Arabic etymology.
Macaroni most likely comes from Arabic maqruna=juncted.

Humanbyrace (talk) 15:19, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

Macaroni in England
In the England of my youth at least.....
 * 1) Macaroni was mostly known as a milk pudding - along the lines of rice pudding, sago pudding, tapioca etc - still many references on Google eg http://recipes.lovetoknow.com/wiki/Macaroni_Pudding_Recipe
 * 2) Macaroni was often (normally?) a long pasta (ie like spaghettic, but tubes). Another reference for this style of macaroni can be found here http://www.bocuse.fr/recettes/resultatrecherche_us.asp?tri=m or on Page 71 of Paul Bocuse's Regional French Cooking ISBN 2-08013-517-1 (BTW this is, in my view, the best Macaroni Cheese recipe - it does, however, use Beaufort cheeses and a truffle!) 122.107.58.27 (talk) 01:29, 3 December 2010 (UTC)


 * There's a really questionable claim about macaroni pudding being "still the most common form of macaroni use" in the UK. Could probably just snip that. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.96.167.157 (talk) 00:30, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

Marked Incomplete
I felt that this article didn't give any deep encyclopedic information about macaroni, only an etymology and basic ingredients (and hardly that.) In a way, the article could be stub worthy since information is repeated (such as the lack of eggs, which is typical for pasta anyway, with the exception of egg noodle type noodles)

I'd like to see more information on the actual process of creating macaroni and even some more detailed history - I'll research it myself and if I can, post what I find out, but I still find it silly that this article is only a few paragraphs.

ThymeCypher 16:31, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

Italian Wikipedia page is better
If anyone here speaks Italian and English, http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maccheroni hosts a notable more amount of information.

ThymeCypher 16:41, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

Too superficial; how to translate the better Italian Wikipedia page
This article is poorly presented although apparently well researched with 13 references.

1) The first paragraph says that "macaroni" refers to the type of dough used which is durum wheat. But almost all pasta is made from durum wheat (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pasta), so "macaroni" doesn't differentiate this pasta from any other pasta if shape is not considered.  From this article one would deduce that rigatoni, fusilli and almost all other pasta are "macaroni" since almost all are made from durum wheat.

2) The shape DOES appear to differentiate "macaroni" from other pasta since the article speaks of "elbow macaroni" but doesn't mention any other shape for macaroni, even though paragraph 3 says it does not necessarily have an elbow shape. From this article one would deduce that _all_ pasta shapes are encompassed by the term "macaroni".

3) Paragraph 2 says macaroni comes from the term for "a kind of barley broth which was served to commemorate the dead" but doesn't address why macaroni is made from wheat rather than barley or how macaroni relates to death rituals, and does not address why academics feel the Greek barley-dead link is better than the Latin (->Italian, ->English) or Arabic possibilities.

4) The Italian Wikipedia link given in the 10 July 2011 post above (http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maccheroni) is a much better article; I used http://translate.google.com/ to read it.

- Peter, Los Angeles, 2011dec07, IP 71.106.222.207


 * Added G. Alessio's etymology from the Italian article. Macedonian (talk) 07:31, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

"moderately extended"
Quoting article: "Macaroni is a variety of moderately extended, dry pasta made with durum wheat."

What does "moderately extended" meant here? Thanks, Wanderer57 (talk) 17:47, 26 May 2012 (UTC)

Excessive references?
I feel that the statement "a kind of barley broth which was served to commemorate the dead,[2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10]" has perhaps too many references? What do you guys think? Bananasoldier (talk) 06:45, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Mostly nonsense
This article is mostly nonsense – something less than a stub because of many misconceptions, errors and the problems noted by others.

Although the word 'macaroni' is derived from 'maccheroni', it does not exist in Italy and does not sound the same to Italians. More importantly, macaroni and maccheroni have diverged in concept. An article specifically about macaroni does not describe anything Italian. Moreover, the meaning of macaroni is culture-dependent. In some parts (e.g., US) it has become the generic name for (short) pasta. In other parts (e.g., UK) it tends to be just short thick walled tubes.

In Italy maccheroni generally refers to medium length straight tubular square-ended 'pasta corta' that is greater in diameter than bucatini. The '-oni' suffix indicates that it is in some way large and this generally refers to its length rather than its diameter. The term therefore does not cover other shapes (e.g., elbow), short tubes or wide tubes – these all have their own well-established names.


 * In strong agreement with essentially all of this comment. As an Italian, this page sounds to me at least weird, possibly biased to (US? North American? Commonwealth?) context. For sure the opening sentence "Macaroni is a variety of dry pasta, originating from Italy" strongly implies that Italians invented/use this spelling of the word, which is not true, to refer to all the varieties of pasta mentioned in the following, which is also not true. If "macaroni" have diverged noticeably in meaning from the original Italian maccheroni (which I cannot confirm, but the previous poster claims), then the best solution could be to write two articles, referring to each other. If the two names are deemed to be still close enough in meaning to share a same page, one of them should redirect to the other. If the unified page is titled "macaroni" it should probably start with "Macaroni (English spelling) or Maccheroni (original Italian spelling) are...". If titled "maccheroni", it should contain somewhere in the first paragraphs a notice that the name has morphed into "macaroni" in English-speaking countries. By the way, as the article states, "maccheroni" in Italian is definitely plural, a single piece is called "maccherone"; is it correct in English to say "Macaroni is"? Feangio (talk) 21:42, 4 February 2015 (UTC)


 * In English, macaroni, spaghetti, taglietelli, pasta et al. are all treated as singular nouns. So "the spaghetti is ready", "macaroni is great with a cheese sauce", etc. Here in the UK, at least, we are not as enlightened about the subtle nuances of pasta terminology as Italians seem to be: although it's now a staple food, eaten often in the home as well as out in "Italian" restaurants (many of which you might also complain are not authentic), it's only a few decades ago that pasta was seen as an exotic import, the exception being macaroni which, as others have mentioned, was a common ingredient of British baked milk puddings, in much the same way as short-grain "pudding rice" is, and the savoury dish macaroni cheese. suggests that the word "macaroni" has been in use in English much longer than other pasta names, and its origins are more complex than a simple more-understandable respelling of "maccheroni" (which, like ciabatta, gnocchi and radicchio, could cause much confusion to non-Italian-speaking English speakers, even though they are now more common in British supermarkets at least). It would be interesting to know if the Italian commentators here recognise  (used as a reference in the article) as macaroni. Bazza (talk) 14:39, 5 February 2015 (UTC)


 * I'm Italian too and I totally agree with the first comment above, in particular with this statement: "In Italy maccheroni generally refers to medium length straight tubular square-ended 'pasta corta' that is greater in diameter than bucatini. The '-oni' suffix indicates that it is in some way large and this generally refers to its length rather than its diameter. The term therefore does not cover other shapes (e.g., elbow), short tubes or wide tubes – these all have their own well-established names."


 * If you ask me, maccheroni is only a "medium length straight tubular square-ended 'pasta corta'", basically like rigatoni or tortiglioni, that's it. I'd never call any other type of pasta maccheroni, I don't mean to sound fussy about it but it's just a different matter in Italian, I guess that maccheroni and macaroni just turned into false friends somewhere along the line.--Teno85 (talk) 03:15, 14 November 2015 (UTC)


 * It's a shame so much good stuff is languishing here in Talk that needs to be better expressed in the article itself. Talk is a wonderful addition to a wiki but please edit the article if you have authentic, verifiable knowledge—don't be shy; after all, far more readers use the article than its Talk offshoot. I could not see how the way British, American and oriental users of macaroni choose to serve it should monopolise a section entitled Culinary Use. I therefore reworded that section to Culinary use Outside Italy. Do you agree with this, everyone? Humboles (talk) 20:40, 1 September 2016 (UTC)

Incorrect statement about Russian terminology
While макаронные изделия (lit. macaroni products) is a collective term in Russian for most (all?) pasta products, there are other names for specific products: лапша (flat noodles), вермишель (thin, round noodles), рожки (elbow macaroni), etc. This is detailed on the Russian version of the page. SwiftSurge (talk) 14:47, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

Macaroni is not a specific shape
The term macaroni as used by Italian Americans refers to any shape of pasta made without eggs. See this link http://www.food.com/about/macaroni-158

You find this also in the book "Sunday Sauce" and regularly in episodes of "the Sopranos" such as when in season 4 Ralph is cooking spaghetti and announces "the macaroni is ready" So this article is misleading PointOfPresence (talk) 17:14, 14 July 2015 (UTC) PointOfPresence (talk) 17:14, 14 July 2015 (UTC)


 * That's probably true for Italian-Americans, not for Italians. You'll never hear anybody call spaghetti macaroni here in Italy, it would sound very odd because they're clearly different from each other. If you're searching for a word that summarizes both macaroni and spaghetti, it's just pasta: for example, if you're cooking spaghetti you'll just announce "la pasta è pronta" ("pasta is ready").--Teno85 (talk) 03:28, 14 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Much the same in British English, apart from not usually saying "la pasta è pronta" of course. Bazza (talk) 12:24, 14 November 2015 (UTC)

Sorry but why italians say "frittata di maccheroni" when refering to a recipe of fried spaghetti with eggs, or why they use interchargeably the terms "maccheroni alla chitarra" with "spaghetti alla chitarra", refering to the same long pasta? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 190.219.215.99 (talk) 01:15, 12 June 2016 (UTC)

This is correct, macaroni is a generic term for a type of pasta regardless of its shape. You can examine a package of any shaped pasta in America and you'll see it clearly labeled as macaroni. This is also true of the Italian maccheroni, as stated above and already expressed in the article. The term became conflated with 'elbow macaroni' through common use in the name "macaroni and cheese", although a keen observer might still raise the question... If that's elbow macaroni, what's non-elbow macaroni? Still, it's hard to argue that the Oxford definition is incorrect, it's just not the complete picture. Ideally the article should attempt to explain the confusion. 71.223.72.252 (talk) 06:31, 4 November 2020 (UTC)

Maybe add something like “This article is about the pasta. For the dish, see Macaroni and Cheese.”??
Or change the title to “Macaroni (pasta)”. Some people refer to Macaroni and Cheese as simply “Macaroni”. Adding something like that would help prevent confusion among some readers. GenZenny (talk) 01:36, 9 November 2022 (UTC)