''Troccoli'' () is a thick
spaghetti
Spaghetti () is a long, thin, solid, cylindrical pasta.[spaghetti](_blank)
Dictionary.com. Dictionary.com Una ...
-like
pasta
Pasta (, ; ) is a type of food typically made from an Leavening agent, unleavened dough of wheat flour mixed with water or Eggs as food, eggs, and formed into sheets or other shapes, then cooked by boiling or baking. Pasta was originally on ...
, featuring a square or oval cross section. It is typical of the
Apulia
Apulia ( ), also known by its Italian language, Italian name Puglia (), is a Regions of Italy, region of Italy, located in the Southern Italy, southern peninsular section of the country, bordering the Adriatic Sea to the east, the Strait of Ot ...
n and
Lucanian
The Lucanians () were an Italic tribe living in Lucania, in what is now southern Italy, who spoke the Oscan language, a member of the Italic languages. Today, the inhabitants of the Basilicata region are still called Lucani, and so is their dial ...
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 of 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''.
]
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
Durum wheat (), also called pasta wheat or macaroni wheat (''Triticum durum'' or ''Triticum turgidum'' subsp. ''durum''), is a tetraploid species of wheat. It is the second most cultivated species of wheat after common wheat, although it repres ...
flour and water, with the optional addition of a few eggs – that is why it is sometimes associated with ''tagliolini
''Tagliolini'' () or taglioni is a type of ribbon pasta, long like spaghetti, roughly wide, cut from a sheet of dough similar to tagliatelle, but thin like capellini. It is a traditional recipe in the Molise and Piedmont regions of Italy. In Pi ...
'' 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 ar ...
in use for several centuries in Italy
Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe, Western Europe. It consists of Italian Peninsula, a peninsula that extends into the Mediterranean Sea, with the Alps on its northern land b ...
. In his ''Opera dell'arte del cucinare'', published in 1570, Bartolomeo Scappi
Bartolomeo Scappi ( – 13 April 1577) was a famous Italian Renaissance chef and food writer, best known for his high profile clients, including being the personal chef of Pope Pius IV.
Biography
Scappi came from Dumenza in Lombardy, Italy, ...
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.hardwood
Hardwood is wood from Flowering plant, angiosperm trees. These are usually found in broad-leaved temperate and tropical forests. In temperate and boreal ecosystem, boreal latitudes they are mostly deciduous, but in tropics and subtropics mostl ...
s and today this tool comes in both materials, especially in beech
Beech (genus ''Fagus'') is a genus of deciduous trees in the family Fagaceae, native to subtropical (accessory forest element) and temperate (as dominant element of Mesophyte, mesophytic forests) Eurasia and North America. There are 14 accepted ...
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 metalloid ...
.[
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 spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...
''torculum'' (standard Italian
Italian(s) may refer to:
* Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries
** Italians, a Romance ethnic group related to or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom
** Italian language, a Romance languag ...
: ''torchio'' or, in times past, ''torcolo''),press
Press may refer to:
Media
* Publisher
* News media
* Printing press, commonly called "the press"
* Press TV, an Iranian television network
Newspapers United States
* ''The Press'', a former name of ''The Press-Enterprise'', Riverside, California
...
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 takes many forms, from grinding grain into raw flour, home cooking, and complex industrial methods used in the mak ...
: 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 that have been inherited in direct descent from an etymological ancestor in a common parent language.
Because language change can have radical effects on both the s ...
s (i.e. they both originate from ''torculum'').
See also
* List of pasta
There are many different varieties of pasta. They are usually sorted by size, being long (), short (), stuffed (), cooked in broth (), stretched () or in dumpling-like form (). Yet, due to the variety of shapes and regional variants, "one man's ...
Notes
References
{{Pasta
Types of pasta