Most people think it’s patriotic gibberish when they hear the most well-known version
of Yankee Doodle Dandy: “Yankee Doodle went to town
a-riding on a pony stuck a feather in his cap
and called it macaroni.” We’ve all wondered why this guy is naming
his hat feathers after pasta. But what most people don’t realize is that
Yankee Doodle Dandy was originally a British song making fun of American doodles — that’s
a word for simpletons. And the macaroni wasn’t lunch.
This was a macaroni. Macaroni was a catchall term in England for
the scenesters of the time, who sat between the Restoration Era fop and the dandy on the
historical timeline of trendy looks. They were called macaronis because when they
left England (usually on mommy and daddy’s dime), they toured Europe and brought back
this totally amazing new pasta they discovered in Italy.
It was … yep, macaroni. So macaroni became the nickname for the pretentious
elites of the 18th century and their fancy style.
Macaronis didn’t have Mac Book Pros. But calling them hipsters of the time isn’t
far off the mark. The sad part is that the Americans wanted to be just like them.
Americans like to think of themselves blazing their own path.
But they still had a desire to import customs of elite society from England.
That included fashion, and yes, they even thought macaroni was cutting edge cuisine.
That’s the joke in Yankee Doodle Dandy — not that they were naming a feather, but
that they thought a lame feather in their hat made them high society macaronis, which
nobody should want to be in the first place.
During early Revolutionary War battles, the British used the song to mock Americans, but
Americans embraced a chance to throw it back at them.
So when the British surrendered at Yorktown, the Marquis de Lafayette taunted them by playing
Yankee Doodle as they walked away, and that secured its place as an unlikely anthem.
So you’re right to imagine something patriotic when you hear Yankee Doodle.
Just make sure you imagine this when you hear macaroni.
Some of these macaroni loving Americans like Thomas Jefferson were eating macaroni and cheese.
We know from a Reverend who ate with Jefferson what his recipe was.
We know from these papers that he did dine at the President's. And there he had a pie called macaroni,
which he thought was made of onions or shallots, but somebody explained to him that it was in fact an Italian dish.
And he still didn't like it that much.