The academic consensus supports the position that the word is derived from the Greek μακαρία (makaría),[6] a kind of barley broth which was served to commemorate the dead.

[16][17] The many varieties sometimes differ from each other because of the texture of each pasta: rigatoni and tortiglioni, for example, have ridges down their lengths, while chifferi, lumache, lumaconi, pipe, pipette, etc.

The Epic History of Italians and their Food (2007), John Dickie instead says that the word macaroni, and its earlier variants such as maccheroni, "comes from maccare, meaning to pound or crush".

[20] The word later came to be applied to overdressed dandies and was associated with foppish Italian fashions of dress and periwigs, as in the eighteenth-century British song "Yankee Doodle".

[21][22] In Great Britain, particularly Scotland, macaroni cheese is a popular filling for pies, often consumed as a takeaway food or at football grounds.

In Hong Kong's cha chaan teng ('tea restaurants') and Southeast Asia's kopi tiam ('coffee shops'), macaroni is cooked in water and then rinsed to remove starch, and served in clear broth with ham or frankfurter sausages, peas, black mushrooms, and optionally eggs, reminiscent of noodle soup dishes.

[26] Macaroni has also been incorporated into Malay Malaysian cuisine, where it is stir-fried akin to mee goreng using Asian seasoning similar to said noodle dish (i.e. shallots, oyster sauce and chili paste).