It is a good pasta for baking or for using in pasta salads.
The most popular use for Macaroni in English-speaking countries is in the baked dish called Macaroni and Cheese. In the UK, prior to this, the most popular use was in Macaroni Pudding for dessert.
Substitutes
Another shaped pasta.
Equivalents
1 cup uncooked macaroni = 4 oz (115g) uncooked macaroni in weight = 2 1/4 cups cooked macaroni
1/2 pound uncooked macaroni = 225g uncooked macaroni = 4 cups cooked macaroni
History Notes
Macaroni was originally made by wrapping rolled pasta dough around thin wooden rods, and leaving it to dry.
The shape of what was meant by the word “Macaroni” was only firmed established at the start of the 1400s.
Kraft introduced its Macaroni and Cheese in a box in 1937.
Literature & Lore
In the mid 1700s, “macaroni” was a disparaging word used to describe young, English dandies who had travelled the continent and returned aping Continental habits, such as eating pasta.
In the 1890s, a Boston Globe correspondent confided to readers the making of “authentic” macaroni: cut the pasta dough into squares and boil it for up to half an hour (!):
“MACARONI is composed of wheaten flour, flavoured with other articles, and worked up with water into a paste, to which, by a peculiar process, a tubular or pipe form is given, in order that it may cook more readily in hot water. That of smaller diameter than macaroni (which is about the thickness of a goose-quill) is called vermicelli; and when smaller still, fidelini. The finest is made from the flour of the hard-grained Black-Sea wheat. Macaroni is the principal article of food in many parts of Italy, particularly Naples, where the best is manufactured, and from whence, also, it is exported in considerable quantities. In this country, macaroni and vermicelli are frequently used in soups.” — Isabella Mary Beeton. The book of household management. London: Ward, Lock & Co. 1888 edition. Page 852.
Language Notes
“Macaroni” is an easy to spell, anglicized version of the actual Italian word, “Maccherone / Maccheroni”.
Some speculate that Maccherone might from a Greek word “makaria”, meaning “food of the blessed.” Others, that it might come from an old verb, “maccare”, meaning “to knead.”
Called “macrows” in the cookbook “Forme of Cury”, written circa 1390 AD.