Everyone knows about pizza, but what do you really know about Italian cuisine …?
Have you ever wondered, for example, “why is spaghetti called spaghetti”?
We’ve all splashed ourselves at least once with spaghetti sauce, haven’t we …?
Not very surprising given that those long, slippery noodles aren’t that easy to eat.
If you wrap too much of them around your fork, they quickly pile up into a ball of dough the size of a ball of yarn that no one can put in their mouth without causing general damage.
If you take too few, they’ll slide back to the plate in a split second.
If you sip them deeply at an angle on your plate (not very fancy but acceptable) you can be sure that their last end will spill the sauce all over the table in a slight twist 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 little bit of Italian cuisine also knows that spaghetti (and all other Italian pastas as well) must be cooked “al dente” (with a bite), which means that they should not have the consistency of porridge 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 looking at an Italian dictionary.
Spaghetto is the diminutive of the Italian word spago (packthread, cord, 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 …?
