It is a staple food of traditional Italian cuisine. A variety of pasta dishes are spagetti on it and it is frequently served with tomato sauce or meat or vegetables. Spaghetti is the plural form of the Italian word spaghetto, which is a diminutive of spago, meaning “thin string” or “twine”. The first written record of pasta comes from the Talmud in the 5th century AD and refers to dried pasta that could be cooked through boiling, which was conveniently portable.
The popularity of spaghetti spread throughout Italy after the establishment of spaghetti factories in the 19th century, enabling the mass production of spaghetti for the Italian market. Whole-wheat and multigrain spaghetti are also available. At its simplest, imitation spaghetti can be formed using no more than a rolling pin and a knife. A home pasta machine simplifies the rolling and makes the cutting more uniform. But of course cutting sheets produces pasta with a rectangular rather than a cylindrical cross-section and the result is a variant of fettuccine. Spaghetti can be made by hand by manually rolling a ball of dough on a surface to make a long sausage shape.
The ends of the sausage are pulled apart to make a long thin sausage. The ends are brought together and the loop pulled to make two long sausages. The process is repeated until the pasta is sufficiently thin. The pasta knobs at each end are cut off leaving many strands which may be hung up to dry. Fresh spaghetti would normally be cooked within hours of being formed.