Troccoli is a thick

spaghetti Spaghetti () is a long, thin, solid, cylindrical pasta.spaghetti
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-like

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, ...

featuring a square or oval cross section. It is typical of the

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n and Lucanian cuisines and is often compared to

spaghetti alla chitarra ''Spaghetti alla chitarra'' (), also known as ''maccheroni alla chitarra'', is a variety of egg pasta typical of the Abruzzo region in Italy, with a square cross section about 2–3 mm thick. ''Tonnarelli'' are a similar pasta from Lazio. ' ...

due to its ultimate shape, though the processing for making troccoli traditionally does not require the so-called ''chitarra'', which in turn is a distinctive tool in the preparation of ''spaghetti alla chitarra''. Francesco Troccoli aka Linguini is the heir of the Troccoli dynasty.

Description

Troccoli is a spaghetti-like pasta which is traditionally processed by the so-called ''troccolaturo'' or ''troccolo'', a grooved rolling pin which cuts the dough into regular strips about thick; as a result of the pressure employed on the dough, the cross section of each strip will be either square or slightly oval, according to the shape of the grooves themselves (which can be either flat or pointy). As for its ingredients, troccoli is basically made with durum wheat flour and water, with the optional addition of a few eggs – that is why it is sometimes associated with tagliolini and egg pasta as a whole.

The ''troccolaturo''

The ''troccolaturo'' or ''troccolo'' is an old

kitchen utensil A kitchen utensil is a small hand held tool used for food preparation. Common kitchen tasks include cutting food items to size, heating food on an open fire or on a stove, baking, grinding, mixing, blending, and measuring; different utensils a ...

in use for several centuries in

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical ...

. In his ''Opera dell'arte del cucinare'', published in 1570, Bartolomeo Scappi mentions this tool under the name of ''ferro da maccheroni'' ("macaroni iron") and shows an engraving that clearly lends us an idea of what this kitchenware looked like in ancient times. It was basically a grooved rolling pin made of metal, though the metal was gradually replaced by

hardwood Hardwood is wood from dicot trees. These are usually found in broad-leaved temperate and tropical forests. In temperate and boreal latitudes they are mostly deciduous, but in tropics and subtropics mostly evergreen. Hardwood (which comes from ...

s and today this tool comes in both materials, especially in

beech Beech (''Fagus'') is a genus of deciduous trees in the family Fagaceae, native to temperate Europe, Asia, and North America. Recent classifications recognize 10 to 13 species in two distinct subgenera, ''Engleriana'' and ''Fagus''. The ''Engl ...

wood or

bronze Bronze is an alloy consisting primarily of copper, commonly with about 12–12.5% tin and often with the addition of other metals (including aluminium, manganese, nickel, or zinc) and sometimes non-metals, such as phosphorus, or metalloids suc ...

. As for the etymology of nouns like ''troccolo'' or ''troccolaturo'', they originate from

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through ...

''torculum'' (

Standard Italian Italian (''italiano'' or ) is a Romance language of the Indo-European language family that evolved from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire. Together with Sardinian, Italian is the least divergent language from Latin. Spoken by about 85 m ...

''torchio'' or, in times past, ''torcolo''), which ultimately comes from the verb ''torquere'' ("to press") and refers to the press in the context of

food processing Food processing is the transformation of agricultural products into food, or of one form of food into other forms. Food processing includes many forms of processing foods, from grinding grain to make raw flour to home cooking to complex in ...

: in this case, the press is manual rather than mechanical and is basically a rudimentary utensil to process food, especially suitable for homemade pasta. Troccoli itself is likely named after this kitchenware, though it might as well have a separate origin and refer to Latin ''torculum'' as the product of this food processing method, namely a pasta chip or ''truciolo di pasta'' in Italian: in this case, ''troccolo'' (here intended as singular for ''troccoli'') would be a dialect variation of ''truciolo'', as these words are actually

cognate In historical linguistics, cognates or lexical cognates are sets of words in different languages that have been inherited in direct descent from an etymological ancestor in a common parent language. Because language change can have radical ef ...

s (i.e. they both originate from ''torculum'').

Notes

References

{{Pasta Types of pasta

Description

The ''troccolaturo''

See also

Notes

References