A variety of pasta dishes are based on it and it is frequently served with tomato sauce, meat or vegetables.

Spaghetti is the plural form of the Italian word spaghetto, which is a diminutive of spago, meaning 'thin string' or 'twine'.

[3] Pasta can be made at home, cutting sheets of flattened dough with a knife into ribbons,[8] rather than spaghetti with circular cross-section.

[9] Spaghetti can be made by hand by manually rolling a ball of dough on a surface to make a long sausage shape.

Drying of the newly formed spaghetti has to be carefully controlled to prevent strands sticking together, and to leave it with sufficient moisture so that it is not too brittle.

[12] Fresh or dry spaghetti is cooked in a large pot of salted, boiling water and then drained in a colander (Italian: scolapasta).

An emblem of Italian cuisine, spaghetti is frequently served with tomato sauce, which may contain various herbs (especially oregano and basil), olive oil, meat, or vegetables.

It typically uses a large amount of giniling (ground meat), sliced hot dogs, and cheese.

During the American Commonwealth Period, a shortage of tomato supplies in the Second World War forced the development of the banana ketchup.

[20] Sapaketti phat khi mao (spaghetti fried drunken noodle style) is a popular dish in Thai cuisine.

[30] In the 1955 animated movie Lady and the Tramp, the sequence of the title characters sharing a plate of spaghetti—climaxed by an accidental kiss as they swallow opposite ends of the same strand of spaghetti—is considered an iconic scene in American film history.