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Noodles are a type of food typically made fromunleavened dough which is rolled flat and cut, stretched, or extruded into long strips or strings. Noodles are astaple food in many cultures and made into a variety of shapes. The most common noodles are those derived from eitherChinese cuisine orItalian cuisine. Italian noodles are known aspasta, whileChinese noodles are known by a variety of different names as there is no single unifying concept or terminology for "noodles" within Chinese culture. Additionally, many Chinese foods labeled as "noodles" in the English language are not made from dough but are called "noodles" because they serve a similar culinary role to dough-based noodles.
While long, thin strips may be the most common, many varieties of noodles are cut into waves, helices, tubes, strings, or shells, or folded over, or cut into other shapes. Noodles are usually cooked in boiling water, sometimes with cooking oil or salt added. They can also be steamed, pan-fried, deep-fried, or baked. Noodles are often served with an accompanying sauce or in a soup, the latter being known asnoodle soup. Noodles can be refrigerated for short-term storage or dried and stored for future use.
Etymology
The word for noodles in English was borrowed in the 18th century from theGerman wordNudel (German:[ˈnuːdl̩]ⓘ).[2] The German word likely came fromKnodel orNutel, and referred to any dumpling, though mostly of wheat.[3]
Colloquial uses for noodle to refer to someone's head, or to a "dummy" are unrelated, and likely came from the older English wordnoddle.[3]
History
Origin
The earliest written record of noodles is found in a book dated to theEastern Han period (25–220 CE), and describes anoodle soup dish called "tang bing".[1] Noodles made from wheat dough became a prominent food for the people of theHan dynasty.[4] The oldest evidence of noodles was from 4,000 years ago in China.[1] In 2005, a team of archaeologists reported finding an earthenware bowl that contained 4,000-year-old noodles at theLajia archaeological site, made by theQijia culture.[5] These noodles were said to resemblelamian, a type of Chinese noodle.[5] Analyzing the huskphytoliths andstarch grains present in the sediment associated with the noodles, they were identified as millet belonging toPanicum miliaceum andSetaria italica.[5] However, other researchers cast doubt that Lajia's noodles were made from specifically millet: it is difficult to make pure millet noodles, it is unclear whether the analyzed residue were directly derived from Lajia's noodles themselves, starch morphology after cooking shows distinctive alterations that does not fit with Lajia's noodles, and it is uncertain whether the starch-like grains from Laijia's noodles are starch as they show some non-starch characteristics.[6]
The general consensus among food historians is that pasta originated somewhere in the Mediterranean region:[7] a homogenous mixture of flour and water calleditrion was described by 2nd-century Greek physicianGalen,[8] among 3rd to 5th-century Jewsitrium was described by theJerusalem Talmud[9] anditriyya (Arabic cognate of the Greek word), referred to string-like shapes made ofsemolina and dried before cooking - as defined by the 9th-century physician and lexicographerIsho bar Ali.[10]
There are over 1,200 types of noodles commonly consumed in China today.[11] They vary widely according to the region of production, ingredients, shape or width, and manner of preparation. Due to the vast diversity of Chinese noodles, there is no single Chinese word equivalent to the Western concept of "noodles," nor is the notion of "noodles" as a unified food category recognized withinChinese cuisine.
InStandard Mandarin,miàn (simplified Chinese: 面; traditional Chinese: 麵) means "dough" but can be used to refer to noodles made from wheat flour and grains such as millet, sorghum, and oats. Similarly,fěn (粉) means "powder" but can be used to refer to noodles made from other starches, particularly rice flour andmung bean starch.[12]
Wheat noodles in Japan (udon) were adapted from aChinese recipe as early as the 9th century. Innovations continued, such as noodles made withbuckwheat (naengmyeon) were developed in theJoseon Dynasty ofKorea (1392–1897).Ramen noodles, based on southern Chinese noodle dishes fromGuangzhou but named after the northern Chineselamian, became common in Japan afterWorld War II.[13][14][15][16]
Ash reshteh (noodles in thick soup with herbs) is one of the most popular dishes in some middle eastern countries such as Iran.
The Latinized worditrium referred to a kind of boiled dough.[8] Arabs adapted noodles for long journeys in the fifth century, the first written record of drypasta.Muhammad al-Idrisi wrote in 1154 thatitriyya was manufactured and exported fromNorman Sicily.Itriyya was also known by thePersian Jews during early Persian rule (when they spokeAramaic) and during Islamic rule. It referred to a small soup noodle, of Greek origin, prepared by twisting bits of kneaded dough into shape, resembling Italianorzo.[17]
In the 1st centuryBCE,Horace wrote of fried sheets of dough calledlagana.[18] However, the cooking method does not correspond to the current definition of either a fresh or drypasta product.[19]
Italy
The first concrete information onpasta products inItaly dates back to theEtruscan civilization, theTestaroli. The first noodles will only appear much later, in the 10th or 11th centuries,[20] and there is a popular legend aboutMarco Polo bringing the first pasta back from China. Modern historians do not give much credibility to the story and rather believe the first noodles were imported earlier from the Arabs, in a form calledrishta.[21] Pasta has taken on avariety of shapes, often based on regional specializations.
Germany
InGermany, documents dating from 1725 mentionSpätzle.Medieval illustrations are believed to place this noodle at an even earlier date.[22]
Armenia
An Armenian variety of noodle,Arishta, is prepared from wheat, water and salt. It is thick and is usually eaten withmatzoon, clarified butter and garlic.[23]
Polish Jews
Zacierki is a type of noodle found inPolish Jewish cuisine.[24]It was part of the rations distributed toJewish victims in theŁódź Ghetto by theNazis.(Out of the "major ghettos", Łódź was the most affected by hunger, starvation and malnutrition-related deaths.)The diary of a young Jewish girl from Łódź recounts a fight she had with her father over a spoonful ofzacierki taken from the family's meager supply of 200 grams a week.[25][26]
Arishta: Armenian thick noodles made from wheat, salt and water combined into stiff dough.
Bakmi: Indonesian Chinese yellow wheat noodles with egg and meat, usually pork. The Chinese word bak (肉), which means "meat" (or more specifically pork), is the vernacular pronunciation in Hokkien, but not in Teochew (which pronounced it as nek), suggesting an original Hokkien root. Mi derives from miàn. In Chinese, miàn (simplified Chinese: 面; traditional Chinese: 麵; often transliterated as "mien" or "mein") refers to noodles made from wheat.
Acorn noodles, also known asdotori guksu (도토리국수) in Korean, are made ofacorn meal, wheat flour,wheat germ, and salt.
Olchaeng-i guksu, meaningtadpole noodles, are made ofcorn soup put through a noodle maker right into cold water. It was named for its features. TheseKorean noodles are mostly eaten inGangwon-do.
Stir-frying noodles using wokSev mamra, an Indian snack
Baked noodles: Boiled and drained noodles are combined with other ingredients andbaked. Common examples include manycasseroles.
Basic noodles: These are cooked in water or broth, then drained. Other foods can be added or the noodles are added to other foods (seefried noodles) or the noodles can be served plain with a dipping sauce or oil to be added at the table. In general, noodles are soft and absorb flavors.
Chilled noodles: noodles that are served cold, sometimes in a salad. Examples includeThai glass noodle salad and coldudon.
Dickie, John (1 October 2010).Delizia! The Epic History of Italians and Their Food (Paper). New York: Atria Books.ISBN0743278070.
Errington, Frederick et al. eds.The Noodle Narratives: The Global Rise of an Industrial Food into the Twenty-First Century (U. of California Press; 2013) 216 pages; studies three markets for instant noodles: Japan, the United States, and Papua New Guinea.
Rodinson, Maxime; Perry, Charles; Arberry, Arthur J. (2001).Medieval Arab Cookery (Hardback). United Kingdom: Prospect Books. p. 253.ISBN0907325912.
Sinclair, Thomas R.; Sinclair, Carol Janas (2010).Bread, beer, and the seeds of change: Agriculture's imprint on world history. Wallingford: CABI. p. 91.ISBN978-1-84593-704-1.
