Spaghetti is a popular type of Italian pasta. Pasta is a food made chiefly from wheat products and water. Spaghetti comes in long strips. The word spaghetti comes from the Italian word spago, meaning string or twine. Spaghetti is often served with cheese, meat, tomato sauce, and vegetables. 
Italian pasta is generally a mixture of semolina (coarsely ground durum wheat) and water. Manufacturers mix the semolina or other flours with water to form a stiff dough. Spaghetti can be shaped by hand, by rolling and stretching the pasta into long, thin cords. Manufacturers generally make spaghetti by pressing pasta dough through holes in a metal form called a die. The pasta may then be dried with forced air until it is hard and brittle. Or, it may be packaged as a fresh, refrigerated product. Either way, spaghetti is generally boiled in water before serving. Pasta is often served with sauce. In Italy, spaghetti is served al dente, soft but slightly chewy.
The origins of spaghetti can be traced back to Ancient Rome, China, the Middle East, and North Africa. A North African meal called itriyya or itriyah consisted of long, thin strands of dough. The dough was made from semolina flour and was dried before boiling. Arab countries used the same word to refer to vermicelli, an extremely thin spaghetti. Vermicelli is an Italian word that translates to little worms.
Arab traders or military conquest in the A.D. 800’s likely brought itriyya and the hard grain of durum wheat to Sicily. Italians then used locally-grown durum wheat to make a version that closely resembles modern spaghetti. The food spread throughout southern Italy and into other countries on the Mediterranean Sea. Spaghetti was common in Sicily by the 1100’s and the rest of Italy in the 1500’s. Pasta is easily dried and stored, which made it a popular choice for sea voyages. The invention of the hydraulic press sped up widespread production of pasta products beyond the Mediterranean.
Ketchup became a key topping of spaghetti dishes in the 1700’s. Tomato sauce became a popular pasta sauce for spaghetti around the 1800’s. Many Italian people emigrated to the United States, helping to popularize spaghetti and other pastas in the late 1800’s. In the late 1880’s, Italian Americans began preparing spaghetti with meatballs, which became a popular dish. Spaghetti later spread around the world.
Today, spaghetti is sold at restaurants and grocery stores. People can also make it at home.
