Maccheroni – Italian or Greek?
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This is a postscript to the article “Passionate about Pasta” in reply to a food writer we rate very highly. As much as we love to see passion in food writers, it is important that, at all times, food is seen in perspective. Food history can, all too often, be a cruel mistress and as much passion as one feels, one needs to put passion aside and concentrate on the facts. Science, DNA and archaelogy have done an inordinate amount of clearing up, but does it really all matter in the end? The most interesting cuisine comes from cultures that have been subjected to other cultures – or so we believe.
This word has caused much discussion over the centuries. Is it Greek? Is it Latin? We investigated and began with Larousse as many of us are wont to do. According to them the word comes from the Italian maccherone, meaning fine paste. Most of us know it as a dry, usually machine made pasta, shorter than rigatoni and hollow, containing no eggs. Some food history scholars have tried to relate it to the Greek word, makaria (a barley broth) and some to the Italian ammaccare, “to bruise or crush” as when wheat is crushed to make pasta, bread or flour – and which comes from the Latin macerare. Herewith an excerpt from the Etymonline website:
macaroni
1599, from southern It. dialect maccaroni (It. maccheroni), pl. of *maccarone, possibly from maccare “bruise, batter, crush,” of unknown origin, or from late Gk. makaria “food made from barley.” Used after c.1764 to mean “fop, dandy” (the “Yankee Doodle” reference) because it was an exotic dish at a time when certain young men who had traveled the continent were affecting Fr. and It. fashions and accents. There is said to have been a Macaroni Club in Britain, which was the immediate source of the term.
macaronic
1611, form of verse consisting of vernacular words in a Latin context with Latin endings; applied loosely to verse in which two or more languages are jumbled together; from Mod.L. macaronicus (coined 1517 by Teofilo Folengo), from It. dial. maccarone (see macaroni), in allusion to the mixture of words in the verse: “quoddam pulmentum farina, caseo, botiro compaginatum, grossum, rude, et rusticanum” [Folengo].
The only logical, unemotional conclusion one can draw is that the maccheroni we know today is a pasta that that originated in Italy. Sorry to the Greeks, I did give it a bash, but our beaten paste beats your soup.
