Talk:Pastitsio

First comment

Is the cheese mixed with the meat or the noodles to bind them together? --Gbleem 16:01, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

It is not really a cheese. It is bechamel. It is put on top. It holds the noodles together. UserTwoSix (talk) 23:05, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

Custard and béchamel?

A recent edit claims that pastitsio sometimes has custard and béchamel. I don't think I've ever encountered it, and it seems peculiar on its face: two white sauces, one on top of the other? Do you have any sources for this? Cookbooks? --Macrakis 21:56, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

The restaurant I go to has some kind of egg based yellow stuff on top. Someone else said bechamel is sometimes poored on top so I thought that meant the bechamel is poured on top of the yellow stuff. Maybe the yellow stuff is bechamel? --Gbleem 18:58, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

I looked at the edit. It seems Chowbok thinks the custard is always there but I found a recipe on the internet (lovely source that internet) that just had the sauce. The picture made it look like the sauce was like a custard. I'm so confused. --Gbleem 19:05, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

The white sauce used for pastitsio (and also moussaka etc.) varies anywhere from a pure Bechamel-type white sauce (just flour, butter, and milk) to a custard-type sauce (eggs, butter, milk), but is usually somewhere in between, with both flour and eggs. --Macrakis 20:17, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

NOOO! LOL! It's just the same cream used on the top layer of it. The cream you buy at your local store. I think it's light cream.(unsigned edit by User:71.172.62.151 2007-04-27T20:08:53)

Um, that wouldn't work. It has to be thickened with flour, eggs, or both. --Macrakis 20:18, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Macrakis is spot on, and the one thing never used would be cream. you need a really developed bovine dairy industry to traditionally cook with cream, especially in the quantities needed for a common dish like this!Hotspury (talk) 14:17, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

It is not custard - most probably the souce looks yellow because cheese, or spices or egg yolk might have been added to the sauce for the top layer. However I have looked up "custard" and you get savoury custards as well, so maybe you need to define custard. 12.39 11 Sept 2008 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.40.34.111 (talk) 11:41, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Well it is a custard because it is thickened with eggs, in my understanding thats the definition, and eggs in the bechamel are very very important to a good pastitsio!Hotspury (talk) 12:24, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Etymology

This says “Pastitsio takes its name from the Italian pasticcio”;
but Pastiche says “ pastiche is the French version of the greco-Roman dish pastitsio or pasticcio”.
So isn’t it the other way around? Moonraker12 (talk) 22:20, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

-Please excuse my hamhanded interruption, I'm not familiar with wiki etiquette but the Turkish name was written in the wrong order so I changed it. "Fırında" means "in the oven" and "makarna" means "macaroni" but because Turkish is a suffix only language with person-noun-verb syntax, the "fırında makarna" is the name of the dish while "makarna fırında" means "macaroni (is) in the oven"

Cinnamon?

I saw the article mentioning adding cinnamon as "typically Greek", but I don't remember ever having seen pastitsio with cinnamon. However, I do remember having eaten some foods with cinnamon in the Peloponnese, which is but a specific area of Greece.

To make sure I don't just remember wrong, I searched three very representative cookbooks:

1. Nik. Tselementes, "Ta Kathimerina A'", editions H. Maniatea

2. Chrysa Paradeisi, "Megali Mageiriki - Zaxaroplastiki", editions Foibos

3. Vefa Aleksiadou, "Elliniki Kouzina - Mageiriki", editions Vefa Aleksiadou

1 and 3 suggest nutmeg, but there is no mention of cinnamon anywhere.

Aiviv (talk) 12:11, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

This is ultra late, but I'll post nevertheless, cinnamon is sometimes added to Pastitsio by people influenced by what's known in Greece as Politiki cuisine, ie cuisine influenced by Asia Minor and Constantinople/Istanbul refugees. It's not "traditional" but it is acceptable, if not common. Marhenil (talk) 15:17, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

Merger proposal

Pastitsio and Pasticho derive from the same greek word (παστίτσιο). I don't see much difference between the two. --beefyt (talk) 05:07, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Just go ahead and merge to Pastitsio (the common English spelling). These are clearly redundant. --Macrakis (talk) 08:10, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

The spelling popularized by Waitrose in the UK is Pastichio, chosen perhaps to look more Italianate Xcrivener (talk) 16:26, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

References

Bucatini?

The article says bucatini, which are like thick long spaghetti with a small hole down the middle; but the picture shows some kind of pasta corta, maybe rigatoni, as would be more usual for any pasta al forno type of dish. Is there a good source for the use of bucatini in this dish?
Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 17:35, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

In Greece, I've always seen it made with long pasta with a hole. In fact, in the US, I buy bucatini specifically for pastitsio, and don't use it for anything else. --Macrakis (talk) 23:49, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

Not even for Amatriciana? :-) Alex2006 (talk) 16:57, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

Merge Fırında makarna back into pastitsio

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

The result was merge into Pastitsio. -- Whiteguru (talk) 05:52, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

---

Fırında makarna is the Turkish version of pastitsio. Like other variants mentioned in this article, it is very similar. Moreover, the name fırında makarna is not used in English. --Macrakis (talk) 16:02, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

• Merge Essentially the same dish. Name Fırında makarna not used in English. --Macrakis (talk) 16:02, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
• Merge Agree. Moreover, a question (not chauvinistic, I swear :-)) to the experts: since it is clear that these are derivations of the Italian 'pasticcio di maccheroni', a dish that has been attested for centuries, shouldn't the article be renamed accordingly, listing all the variations of the various nations? Thanks, Alex2006 (talk) 17:34, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

• Comment The Italian pasticcio, and for that matter the Greek pastitsio before Tselementes reworked it, are quite different actually, being cooked in some sort of pastry crust. See the article. --Macrakis (talk) 18:52, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

oven spaghetti=/=pastitsio

if a dish has to be added in this article, it should at least contain either the same ingredients (bechamel and pasta) or a similar name (like Albanian pastice). Random oven pasta dishes with no etymological similarity are no relevant to this article — Preceding unsigned comment added by Snachtbogen (talk • contribs) 20:31, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

oven spaghetti=/=pastitsio 2

if Firinda Makarna should be merged to a specific article, that should be either the one about Pasta al Forno, or the one about pasta in general. Pastitsio is something very specific, etymologically, or by ingredients

Firinda Makarna should have its own article, as there is nothing indicating that the specific dish is a "Turkish version of Pastitsio". it doesn't have Bechamel, etymologically it's irrelevant to Pastitsio, and no specific source presented here supports any common roots of these two dishes, so that Firinda Makarna can be considered a "Turkish version of Pastitsio" — Preceding unsigned comment added by Snachtbogen (talk • contribs) 20:57, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

Fırında makarna

There is no information and resources about fırında makarna. All deleted. For this reason, I re-added the article with the sources. Samizambak (talk) 15:27, 2 May 2022 (UTC)

Why are you adding it to this article? Oh, I see they were merged in an above discussion. I don't think the two dishes even resemble one another and should probably be split again. Anything about notability would have to go to AfD. It might not be notable. If it is deleted at AfD the content can be preserved at the Turkish cuisine article. Spudlace (talk) 21:20, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

Pastitsio in North Cyprus

Maybe my comment was not clear, so I repeat it: the same is valid for Turks, which are not only present in Turkey (Greece for example). Therefore, either one write "Turks and turkish cypriots", or "Turkey and north Cyprus". Feel free to use one of the two versions. Alex2006 (talk) 08:18, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

Info box corrected

I've just edited the infobox where, instead of the name of the creator of the modern and globally known version of this dish, misinformation about the type of cuisine had been entered. Additionally, the two references cited for this were irrelevant (one was a recipe from Ferrara (Italy), and the other was a recipe for a Venetian dish from Kythira, an Ionian island colonized by the Venetians for centuries). --Ekaterina Colclough (talk) Ekaterina Colclough (talk) 13:56, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

@Ekaterina Colclough: If you look through the article, you'll see that it covers more than just the "modern and globally known version of this dish". It speaks of Italian and Egyptian pastitsios/pasticchios/etc. going back to the 19th and 16th centuries, which were obviously not created by Tselementes. Largoplazo (talk) 17:10, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

Thanks. Regardless, the creator field in the infobox was incorrectly completed, and the two references cited did not support the incorrect entry. --Ekaterina Colclough (talk) Ekaterina Colclough (talk) 17:21, 18 November 2022 (UTC)