So its one am and I was about to cook up a pot of Roland ramen, when I see the most appetizing description ever!
Can you see it?
The product claims to be “Japanese style quick-cooking alimentary paste” umm umm um just like mom used to extrude!
Ok now I admit I want to explore the idea of alimentary paste.
Alimentary paste is just a noodle that doesn’t have egg in it.
Actually the definitions I see say it can sometimes contain egg as well, and it can apply to any sort of noodle. Which makes me wonder if the FDA won’t let them call them noodles for some reason? Which is odd since I have plenty of other egg free noodles in my kitchen in packaging that says noodle.
Anyway my last line was kind of a play on words, as the term got me thinking about futuristic food pastes you know like how on the Jetsons they had food pills?
I got to thinking you know thats not a bad idea, food in a tube, we always have threads around here for bachelor chow.
Apparently the rules were changed recently.
This is quite interesting. I had no idea “noodles” used to have an egg solids requirement. After all, in the US, we often refer specifically to “egg noodles,” implying (at least to me) that “noodles” on its own don’t need to have eggs. There is also the colloquial “noodle” to refer to any type of pasta-type food. For example, some people will refer to spaghetti and its ilk as “noodles,” even though they typically are not made with eggs.
I also wonder why the marketing went for a term like “alimentary paste,” which sounds like some creepy lab-created monstrosity, vs the simple “pasta.” Would it have been against the old rules to refer to it as “Japanese-style pasta”? Or does the term “pasta” require some sort of specific semolina or durum wheat component or something like that?
And what about “rice noodles”? I don’t remember ever seeing those sold as “rice alimentary paste” or anything like that, and they don’t have eggs.
I’d like another cite besides that web page. How recent is “recently changed”? The 1970s?
I was under the impression pasta dough did typically contain eggs. I recall recipes where you make a volcano shape with the flour and add the eggs in the crater part. Is that not the typical way?
Fresh pasta dough will. But the stuff that is dried usually does not. Look at some boxes of Italian (or Italian-style) pasta and you should see that it’s just durum wheat semolina and water, usually. Fresh pasta, on the other hand, is usually just flour and eggs.