[Sca-cooks] Ibn Battula"s Meals

Terry Decker t.d.decker at att.net
Tue Oct 5 13:19:47 PDT 2010


> --------
> Aren't soba noodles made of buckwheat?
>

Soba noodles are made from a combiunation of wheat and buckwheat flours.  It 
is my understanding that those considered the finest are made from the 
earliest harvested buckwheat and are 25 percent wheat to 75 percent 
buckwheat.

As a point of confusion, any thin noodle can be generically referred to as 
"soba."

> ------------
>
> The term macaroni derives from the Italian "maccaroni" meaning "dumpling."
> In the original usage, the word can be used to refer to almost any form of
> pasta.  IIRC, the first reference to tubular pasta shows up in early 15th
> Century Italy (check for references before taking that as gospel), but I
> don't remember that usage being outside of Italy.  In my view, tubular 
> pasta
>
> is a remote possibility.  It is much more likely that the pasta would be
> flat noodles or dumplings.
>
> Bear
> ****************************************
> Maccaroni in fifteenth century Italian sources refers to at least two 
> shapes
> - something that resembles modern fettucine and something that resembles
> modern penne. There may be more that I haven't seen. But my understanding 
> is
> that macaroni was the name used for what we would call spaghetti until the
> 19th century.
>
> Angharad

As near as I can tell, maccaroni derives from one of the Italian dialects 
and in it's early usage was roughly a synonym for pasta.

Bear 




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