Pasta,Paste, Spaghetti
 

I am learning italian on audio CD and the word for Pasta seems to perhaps also mean Pastry and sometimes I think its spaghetti, I hate to sound ignorant but what is the correct way to say pasta ie meaning spaghetti, pennine etc.

Macaroni :)

Pasta meaning pastry usually has some sort of description with it, such as "pasta sfoglia" (puff pastry).

The absolutely correct term for pasta (of any shape or form, including spaghetti, penne, rigatoni, etc., etc.) with a sauce is "pasta asciutta" (dry pasta) as opposed to "pasta in brodo" (pasta in broth, such as tortellini in beef or chicken broth).

If you simply say "pasta," everyone will understand that you mean a pasta in sauce.

The word "pasta" is literally dough. In Italian it's usually used to mean a pastry, but it is also used to mean "pasta" (also called "pastasciutta"). I think in Italy, it is more common for people to refer to the specific type of pasta instead of using the generic term. So you might see, e.g., spaghetti, linguine, penne, perciatelli, conchiglie, farfalline, ditalini, etc. rather than "pasta." By the way, I think "macaroni" is an American (and maybe British and maybe French spelling) of a type of pasta called "maccheroni" in Italian.

An Italian friend told me that pasta is made at home by hand, and that "maccheroni" is the commerically produced type - anyone else ever heard this?

I was taught also that macaroni was commercial and my mom's and grandmaa's was pasta.

Slight variation. I always thought that when they are listed separately, maccheroni is a dried pasta while "pasta" refers to the fresh stuff -- not dried. Of course that relates to the other answers as the dried stuff is usually produced commercially and is found in a box or a bag, but the fresh stuff can't be.

Hello!

Apparently Capt. Kirk is on a quest for spagetti as well - there was an absolutely hysterical article in the SF Chronicle this past Sunday (if you want to see it, go to www.sfchronicle.com and then find "Travel") about Celebrity Blogs. Apparently William Shatner has one and was relating his tale of woe about driving all along the coastline of Italy and not being able to find spagetti.

Melodie

Captain Kirk's shouldn't be so picky. The Canadian spaghetti I ate in my youth was just awful. I expect he ate the same.

And his cousin was our dentist.

Hi,
pasta is the generic name, both for those made at home and that you buy. Actually, macccheroni is just a type of pasta, which in the States has been generalized to indicate all apsta, maybe. But here it is just a type of pasta.

Essentially, pasta is dough in a sentence like "I prepared the dough for the pizza": "ho preparato la pasta per la pizza".
Pasta is the general term to indicate any type of pasta you eat as a first course: "I would like a plate of pasta" "Vorrei un piatto di pasta".

Pasta is also what you eat with your cappuccino in the morning: in that case it is countable, 1 pasta.

Both for the mass noun pasta and for the countable noun pasta there are specific types. So, if pasta is the typical Italian food, you can have spaghetti, penne, pennette, farfalle, conchiglie, maccheroni, linguine, pappardelle and much more.
If pasta is what you have in the morning you can have a cornetto, bigné, sfogliatella, treccina, and much more.

This was actual very enlightening. In my house growing up (with my second generation Italian mother) everything was macaroni - except spaghetti! To this day, I like them all - except spaghetti. And of course, it was all eaten with gravy.

And please instruct us how to properly pronounce the word "maccheroni" so we don't have to go through that whole "how do you properly pronounce bruschetta" business a second time.

maccheroni = mah-keh-roe-nee

though there will be arguments in favor of mah-kay-roe-nee also.

the vowel sound in the second syllable is somewhere between "keh" (as in keg) and kay (as in cake).

Best wishes,

Rex

Im thinking that casinadirosa has the most credible answer, so I,m going with it. And as far as Canadian Pasta goes my family have home made gnochi with bragiol italian sausage hard peperoni and even sometimes chicken wings in the sauce, thereès another distinction many American including Victoria Gotti call it gravy, for me Gravy is not sauce. Anyway can you tell Im on a diet, one month away from my trip to italy

E stato un vero piacere de imparare questo palabra (Pasta)

parola=Italian
palabra=Spanish

"Bragiol" isn't an Italian word. You might be thinking of braciole. My grandmother usually made it for holiday meals, but we never used to have gnocchi, which I think were not typical of her region.


Eloise, Casinadirosa, and I gave essentially the same answer.

Hi oneill-that would be "questA parola" vero? (sorriso)

So how many of you are old enough to remember when we Americans thought there were only two forms of "pasta" -- a word which we never even heard of at the time?

There was spaghetti and there was macaroni. Period.

For holiday dinners with grandparents there were usually manicotti. A routine alternative to spaghetti was always linguine. There was always pastina or other tiny stuff for soup when someone was sick.

Unless your parents were born in Italy like mine. My mother made the best PastaFagioli I have ever tasted.

>..many American including Victoria Gotti call it gravy, for me Gravy is not sauce.<

Of course. Gravy has meat in it. Sauce doesn't.

>There was spaghetti and there was macaroni. Period.<

There were also noodles.

((I))

I never heard anyone call tomato sauce "gravy" until I moved to NJ, so I thougt it was just some strange NJ expression. In Brooklyn, among the american-born, it was "sauce." (I think my grandmother called it "sugo" if it had meat in it, but our generic English word was just "sauce.") Gravy was the brown thing served with Thanksgiving turkey that never showed up again till the next November.

You are right Ira. Here's the definition of gravy:

Gravy is a sauce made from meat juices, usually combined with a liquid such as chicken or beef broth, wine or milk and thickened with flour, cornstarch, or some other thickening agent. A gravy may also be the simple juices left in the pan after the meat, poultry, or fish has been cooked.

An old boyfriend from Brooklyn called it gravy too.

Sorry my last three years were spent in Spain so, I get mixed up when Ièm not careful, even worse Im from Montreal so I speak french allday and my wife is italian otherwise anyone with ONeill as last name would not be making homemade gnochi - bragiole. We are so insane for italian food we went to visit Roccos from the TV show Restaurant Very disapointing, my wife makes the best meatballs also

New question my wifeès family is from Naples region and she wants to visit the ancestral paese her mother always used to refer to Galuche GAA LOO shhh.
I have a michilen itally atlas and the closest thing I find which is near naples is gallucio, any idea if these could be the same

Two Cs in Galluccio.

Hi all,

the "gravy" term is strictly an East Coast thing. Don't know where it came from, but every Sunday dinner I had growing up, visiting the Italian boyfriend's house...his mama was making "da gravy". YO Vinne! And I might add, his grampa was downstairs in the cellar making "dago red", but that's another whole thread I guess.

Here on the West Coast, it's a whole different story! As a former East Coast girl, with a dating experience of having Sunday dinners with various EYE TALIAN boyfriends (and most times,long after the relationship ended I was still invited for dinner) it's entirely different in California!

Story: when I first got to CA, I was working in a law firm with a girl who was Italian. Finding out I had no where to go at Christmas, she insisted I must come to her house for dinner. I was at her parents house, and things were very "civilized" compared to my East Coast experiences. Dishes being passed, everyone quiet, polite, and when I was passed a plate of squid, I said "I'm sorry, I make it a policy not to eat anything with SUCKERS on it". That broke the mood and suddenly I was at a table with REAL Italians that I'd grown up with! Everyone laughing and pointing! Very fun. And my first experience with calamari (but not my last by any means)!

Melodie

Gravy is not used for a substitute sauce with Italian born here on the east coast.

"Gravy" is not used ALL over the east coast. It's used in some families and some neighborhoods. I was from Brooklyn and never heard "gravy" for tomato sauce until I moved to NJ. Just for fun we did a survey a few years ago on another forum re whether people had grown up saying "gravy" or "sauce." Most of the respondents had grown up on the east coast, not in rural areas, but the gravy vs sauce answers didn't seem to fall into any obvious patterns.

Seems like there is an amusing posting here every once in a while about someone who goes to Italy and thinks that "Prego!" (the brand of spaghetti sauce sold in the US) is the correct word in Italian.

Maccaroni is short pasta and Spaghetti long thin pasta. We never used the word pasta at all growing up. It was either maccaroni or spaghetti. Sauce was marinara and gravy was sauce with meat in it. Family was born and raised in Brooklyn. Call it what you want it was all good.

<<home made gnochi with bragiol italian sausage hard peperoni and even sometimes chicken wings>>

because of the absence of commas, I can't tell if "bragiol" is something separate from "italian sausage", or a modifier...

Care to clarify?

I had a maccheroni pie in a restaurant in Ferrara a few years ago -- the maccheroni looked just like what we used to call "elbow macaroni" in the US.

I think the menu said this pie was a specialty of Ferrara. It was very good -- ah, happy memories!

The only thing I can clarify is that this thread is making my heart miss Italy and my tummy hungry!

((U)), Tiff

On bragiole or braciole Im talking about that delicious parsley minced garlic rolled in thin steak or veal or pork tied with a string and cooked in sauce, normally like homemade gnochi reserved for special meals because its too much work for everyday unless of course your grandmom lives with you.

mj, macaroni is elbow. I love farfalle, what we called bow ties and campanelle that looks like bells. The Nidi-nests, are angel hair. Match larger, heavier pasta with thick or chunky sauces and smaller, thinner pastas with light sauces or soups(stelline, orzo, ditalini) and always al dente

"Gravy was the brown thing served with Thanksgiving turkey that never showed up again till the next November."

Well it's clear you didn't grow up in the midwest where no meat could be cooked without making gravy for it or the mashed potatoes that accompanied it. Fried chicken gravy, roast pork gravy, Swiss steak gravy, chicken-fried stead gravy, calves liver gravy -- you name it.

By the way, any of you other midwesterners grow up putting home made thick noodles (usually cooked in chicken stock) on top of your mashed potatoes?

You're right. I definitely did NOT grow up in the midwest.

My BIL had a roommate in college from NYC who called EVERYTHING sauce...salad dressing, ketchup, mustard, mayo, etc. Always got a laugh out of that being a southernern transplanted to the midwest.

Do you call it soda or pop (sounds like paaaapp here).

Both - as in "soda pop". Soda is for baking (or for grandparents to brush their teeth with).