Noodle

Noodles are a type of food made from unleavened dough which is either rolled flat and cut, stretched, or extruded, into long strips or strings. Noodles are a staple food in many cultures and made into a variety of shapes. The most common noodles are those derived from either Chinese cuisine or Italian cuisine. Chinese noodles are known by a variety of different names, while Italian noodles are known as pasta.
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 as noodle soup. Noodles can be refrigerated for short-term storage or dried and stored for future use.
The word for noodles in English was borrowed in the 18th century from the German word Nudel (German: [ˈnuːdl̩] ). The German word likely came from Knodel or Nutel, and referred to any dumpling, though mostly of wheat.
Colloquial uses for noodle to refer to someone's head, or to a "dummy" are unrelated, and likely came from the older English word noddle.
The earliest written record of noodles is found in a book dated to the Eastern Han period (25–220 CE). Noodles made from wheat dough became a prominent food for the people of the Han dynasty. The oldest evidence of noodles was from 4,000 years ago in China. In 2005, a team of archaeologists reported finding an earthenware bowl that contained 4,000-year-old noodles at the Lajia archaeological site. These noodles were said to resemble lamian, a type of Chinese noodle. Analyzing the husk phytoliths and starch grains present in the sediment associated with the noodles, they were identified as millet belonging to Panicum miliaceum and Setaria italica. 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.
The general consensus among food historians is that pasta originated somewhere in the Mediterranean region: a homogenous mixture of flour and water called itrion was described by 2nd-century Greek physician Galen, among 3rd to 5th-century Jews itrium was described by the Jerusalem Talmud and itriyya (Arabic cognate of the Greek word), referred to string-like shapes made of semolina and dried before cooking - as defined by the 9th-century physician and lexicographer Isho bar Ali.
There are over 1,200 types of noodles commonly consumed in China today. 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 within Chinese cuisine.
In Standard 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. While fěn (粉) means "powder" but can be used to refer to noodles made from other starches, particularly rice flour and mung bean starch.
Wheat noodles in Japan (udon) were adapted from a Chinese recipe as early as the 9th century. Innovations continued, such as noodles made with buckwheat (naengmyeon) were developed in the Joseon Dynasty of Korea (1392–1897). Ramen noodles, based on southern Chinese noodle dishes from Guangzhou but named after the northern Chinese lamian, became common in Japan by 1900.
Kesme or erişte noodles were eaten by Turkic peoples by the 13th century.
Ash reshteh (noodles in thick soup with herbs) is one of the most popular dishes in some middle eastern countries such as Iran.
In the 1st century BCE, Horace wrote of fried sheets of dough called lagana. However, the cooking method does not correspond to the current definition of either a fresh or dry pasta product.
The first concrete information on pasta products in Italy dates back to the Etruscan civilization, the Testaroli. The first noodles will only appear much later, in the 10th or 11th centuries, and there is a popular legend about Marco 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 called rishta. Pasta has taken on a variety of shapes, often based on regional specializations.
In Germany, documents dating from 1725 mention Spätzle. Medieval illustrations are believed to place this noodle at an even earlier date.
Armenian variety of noodle, Arishta, is prepared from wheat, water and salt. It is thick and is usually eaten with matzoon, clarified butter and garlic.
The Latinized word itrium referred to a kind of boiled dough. Arabs adapted noodles for long journeys in the fifth century, the first written record of dry pasta. Muhammad al-Idrisi wrote in 1154 that itriyya was manufactured and exported from Norman Sicily. Itriyya was also known by the Persian Jews during early Persian rule (when they spoke Aramaic) and during Islamic rule. It referred to a small soup noodle, of Greek origin, prepared by twisting bits of kneaded dough into shape, resembling Italian orzo.
Zacierki is a type of noodle found in Polish Jewish cuisine. It was part of the rations distributed to Jewish victims in the Łódź Ghetto by the Nazis. (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 of zacierki taken from the family's meager supply of 200 grams a week.