Macaroni
mak-uh-ROH-nee
Also known as maccheroni, elbows, elbow macaroni, gomiti.
What it is
English cooks were eating something called makerouns by 1390, when The Forme of Cury recorded the earliest known recipe pairing pasta with cheese. The word returned in the 1590s from southern Italy, where maccheroni named a whole category of pasta rather than one shape, and into the twentieth century it was the only pasta most English speakers knew. In 1760s London a macaroni was a young dandy with continental tastes, the joke buried in Yankee Doodle. Thomas Jefferson met macaroni in France, shipped a pasta machine home, and served a macaroni and cheese dish at an 1802 state dinner. The story that he invented the dish is folklore. The cooking came from James Hemings, his enslaved chef, who trained in Paris. The bent elbow itself is an industrial shape, curled by uneven extrusion speeds as the tube leaves the die. Kraft boxed elbows with powdered cheese in 1937, and the dish became a pantry default across North America.
English took macaroni in the 1590s from southern Italian dialect maccaroni, plural of maccarone, a word of disputed origin. Etymonline offers maccare, to crush, or late Greek makaria, a barley food, while Treccani leans toward Greek makar, blessed, from pasta served at funeral meals.
What sauce it wants, and why
Elbows are open at both ends, so sauce flows through the cavity instead of pooling against a closed seam. Manufacturers split on what that means. De Cecco points the shape at thin, liquid sauces that get captured inside the tube, while Ronzoni argues the hollow fills with thick, gooey cheese sauce and the curve scoops neatly onto a fork. Both are right at different viscosities. The small size matches spoon foods, which is why Italian kitchens drop elbows into brothy beans and vegetable soups, and the smooth exterior suits creamy dressings in cold macaroni salads.
Classic plates: macaroni and cheese, macaroni salad, pasta e fagioli.
No macaroni? Use these
Closest swaps by sauce behavior, not by looks. The ones most easily confused with macaroni, and how they read.
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From the Almanac
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