Interesting. So the "macca" of macaroni is related to the Greek "mache"
-- "battle, lethal force," Greek "dagger" ("Makheri"), and thus to old
Egyptian "makh" -- to kill something -- "makh-heru" means "dead and
departed" and by extension, via Arabic, "Machete?"
Perhaps (tho I can see the "force" connection) it might have to do with
being sliced up?
P.J. Nebergall
On Thu, 25 May 2006 14:19:43 -0700 todd belcher <todd_belcher@xxxxxxxxx>
writes:
> Just responding, Marc, by paraphrasing your own quaint parlance :
>
> On 23-May-06, at 10:21 PM, Marc James Small wrote:
> >
> > There is much BS with Pizza.
>
> Have a look around the net as well as the profusion of evidence in
> many books.
>
> It is well documented that pasta in Italy did not originate with
> Marco Polo. In fact marco Polo in his own book, "I Millioni" says
> that the Chinese make a "lasagna similar to that which we prepare
> with wheat flour.
>
> The romantic myth that Marco Polo brought pasta on his return from
> China has long been debunked. Marco returned in 1295 after
> twenty-odd
> years of travel away from Italy. In 1279, however, a Genoese soldier
>
> listed in the inventory of his estate a basket of dried pasta ('una
>
> bariscella plena de macaronis'). The Sicilian word "maccaruni" which
>
> translates as "made into a dough by force" is the origin of the
> word,
> macaroni. Anyone who has kneaded durum wheat knows that force is
> necessary. In the ancient methods of making pasta, force meant
> kneading the dough with the feet, often a process that took a full
> day.
>
> Additionally, most scholars believe that pasta was imported to Italy
>
> via the Arabs who documented long ago, the making dried pasta. The
> facts are that strips of dried pasta were included in the staples
> that seafarers and caravans used to carry with them even before the
>
> year 1000 A.D. Which makes a lot of sense due to the fact that on
> these long journeys non-perishable food stuffs were in high demand.
>
> The Arab geographer Abu Abdallah Muhammed Al Idrisi in his book,
> written around the year 1150 A.D. and destined for the Norman King
> of
> Sicily, Roger II, gave a particular account of how to dry, and thus
>
> preserve, fresh pasta.
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On 25-May-06, at 1:30 PM, Marc James Small wrote:
>
> > At 01:10 PM 5/24/06 -0700, todd belcher wrote:
> >> There is much BS with pasta and Marco Polo. The Italians had
> pasta
> >> before Marco Polo.
> >>
> >
> >
> > Thank you, Todd, for your cautious and polite dissent. And you
> > source is?
> >
> > Marc
> >
> > msmall@xxxxxxxxxxxx
> > Cha robh bàs fir gun ghràs fir!
> >
> >
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