Alphabet pasta, also referred to as alfabeto and alphabetti spaghetti in the UK, is a

pasta Pasta (, ; ) is a type of food typically made from an unleavened dough of wheat flour mixed with water or eggs, and formed into sheets or other shapes, then cooked by boiling or baking. Rice flour, or legumes such as beans or lentils, are som ...

that has been mechanically cut or pressed into the letters of the

alphabet An alphabet is a standardized set of basic written graphemes (called letters) that represent the phonemes of certain spoken languages. Not all writing systems represent language in this way; in a syllabary, each character represents a syll ...

. It is often served in an alphabet soup, sold in a can of condensed broth. Another variation, Alphagetti, consists of letter-shaped pasta in a marinara or

spaghetti sauce Tomato sauce (also known as ''salsa roja'' in Spanish or ''salsa di pomodoro'' in Italian) can refer to many different sauces made primarily from tomatoes, usually to be served as part of a dish, rather than as a condiment. Tomato sauces are c ...

. It is not clear who invented alphabet soup, or when. As early as 1877, Paris grocers sold "...small bits of macaroni, for use in soup, which are stamped with... the letters of the alphabet." and Paris restaurants served "...delicious soups made of macaroni or vermicelli cut up into the shape of letters of the alphabet..." In 1883, The Chicago Herald Cooking School cookbook provide a recipe for soup calling for a small pasta such as "alphabet pastes of the same material as macaroni stamped in letters". In January 1900 it was on the menu at New York City's Au Lion d'Or. In 1908, Wilbur Wright was served alphabet soup in

Le Mans Le Mans (, ) is a city in northwestern France on the Sarthe River where it meets the Huisne. Traditionally the capital of the province of Maine, it is now the capital of the Sarthe department and the seat of the Roman Catholic diocese of Le Man ...

, France. Also unclear is whether the soup or the linguistic term for an overabundance of acronyms or abbreviations came first; food historian Janet Clarkson notes that "the first reference I have found so far to the metaphorical alphabet soup also occurs in 1883, in a quotation by the originator of Life magazine, John Ames Mitchell, referring to teaching his son the alphabet soup (the ABCs) of business." One common American brand of condensed-style alphabet soup is the

Campbell's Campbell Soup Company, doing business as Campbell's, is an American processed food and snack company. The company is most closely associated with its flagship canned soup products; however, through mergers and acquisitions, it has grown to become ...

brand. This soup, like its competitors, is marketed towards parents for its educational value. A similar product, Alphabetti Spaghetti, was sold by the

H. J. Heinz Company The H. J. Heinz Company is an American food processing company headquartered at One PPG Place in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The company was founded by Henry J. Heinz in 1869. Heinz manufactures thousands of food products in plants on six contine ...

for 60 years before being discontinued in 1990. Like Campbell's alphabet soup, it contains alphabet pasta canned in

tomato sauce Tomato sauce (also known as ''salsa roja'' in Spanish or ''salsa di pomodoro'' in Italian) can refer to many different sauces made primarily from tomatoes, usually to be served as part of a dish, rather than as a condiment. Tomato sauces are c ...

. It was later reintroduced by Heinz in 2005.

References

External links

Pasta-shapes
- an illustrated guide at Food-Info.net
Alphabet Soup is 150 Years Old - This Is How We Started Spelling With Our Food
at Trivia Happy Types of pasta {{ingredient-stub

See also

References

External links