Everyone knows pizza, but what do you really know about Italian cuisine…?
For example, have you ever wondered “why is spaghetti called spaghetti”?
We’ve all splashed ourselves with spaghetti sauce at least once, haven’t we…?
Not too surprising given the fact that those long, slippery noodles aren’t that easy to eat.
If you wrap too much of them around your fork, they quickly clump into a ball of wool-sized dumpling that no one can stuff in their mouth without collateral damage.
If you take too few, they slide onto the plate in a split second.
If you sip them folded deeply on your plate (not very elegant but acceptable) you can be sure that the last end spills the sauce all over the table with a slight deflection before it ends up in your mouth.
However, the real fun begins when there are children at the table…
Of course, nowadays everyone who knows a bit about Italian cooking also knows that spaghetti (and all other Italian pasta, too) should be cooked “al dente” (with one bite), which means they shouldn’t have the porridge consistency when served.
So far we can say that we already know a lot about spaghetti.
But do you also know why spaghetti is called spaghetti?
If you don’t know the answer, you can find it by taking a look at an Italian dictionary.
Spaghetto is the diminutive of the Italian word spago (bundle, string, string) which is derived from the Latin spacus.
That means spaghetti is just string noodles.
PS But here is an additional question. Why do Italians write spaghetti with h?
And what about you? Do you know this…?