A famous Sicilian street food made with rice and seasoned in a variety of ways. Savory par excellence, with a few sweet variations, but not widely appreciated. We're talking about arancina. In fact, we've already discussed the golden, crispy, and delicious supplì in "Saint Lucia and Her Feast," in Palermo. arancina dayin Symphony for an Arancini and Saint Lucia's Day in Palermo: A Little Legend and a Lot of FoodToday we tackle the heated debate over its name. Arancina in Palermo, arancino in Catania. Female in western Sicily, male in eastern Sicily. It's one of the most debated topics in the gastronomic world. ArancinA or ArancinO? That is the question.
The Origins of Arancina or Arancino
It all seems to start with the Arabs. Between the 9th and 12th centuries, they introduced the Sicilians to the practice of rolling rice into balls. saffron in the palm of the hand, to be stuffed with lamb. However, literature, chronicles, dictionaries, ethnographic texts, and cookbooks only mention this preparation in the second half of the 19th century. It appears to have originated in that century as a rice cake, almost immediately transformed into a savory specialty. The name of the supplì, according to Salvatore C. Found in About arancino/arancina, could derive from the shape of the orange but also from its color.
In fact, in Sicilian the words that indicate names of colours are formed from a nominal base plus the suffix –inu: orange 'orange in color'. In the Sicilian dialect the fruit of theorange è orange and becomes orange in regional Italian. In dialect orange ('arancia') correspond to the diminutive orange for 'little orange', arancino in regional Italian. Hence the masculine noun used to refer to rice supplì. The gender distinction in standard Italian—feminine for the names of fruits and masculine for those of trees—only emerged in the second half of the twentieth century.
Supporters of arancino vs. arancina
The English have no doubts: street food is male. Posted inOxford English Dictionary, one of the most prestigious dictionaries in the world, as arancino, plural arancini, is defined “rice balls with a savory filling, coated in breadcrumbs and fried, typically served as an appetizer or snack". The Ministry of Agricultural, Food and Forestry Policies uses the term in the list of Traditional Italian Agri-food Products rice balls. The famous writer Andrea Camilleri is added with his Inspector Montalbano (- Montalbano's arancini, 1999) makes “arancino” the familiar name for this delicacy for most Italians.
The only certification for arancina It is found in the literature of the late nineteenth century in Viceroy (1894) by Federico De Roberto from Catania: the “arancine of rice each as big as a melon”. The term rice ball it was recorded in the Zingarelli dictionary of 1917 (“rice and minced meat pie, in Sicily”) and by Panzini in the 1927 edition. Subsequently the name arancino prevailed.
The celebration of the arancinA
Davide Enia, a playwright, actor, and novelist from Palermo, perfectly expresses the feeling of a Palermitan when faced with an arancini:
Baptizing with correctness is a gesture of humility in the face of the exceptionality of the dish,
because we who eat arancini, no,
we don't (only) love the arancini, a self-sufficient ball of a sphere.
No.
We CELEBRATE the arancini
we venerate her,
she and her solar roundness, sphere of flesh or butter, ball, little orange, female. The rest, the rest does not exist in front of the arancinA.
Even comedians have their say
Even Palermo comedians wanted to give their contribution to the cause. Robert Lipari in 2015 it was inspired by Star Wars and after a fight with arancini and arancine In the end, he agrees with his opponent that the people of Palermo and Catania can sit at the same table and eat the delicious supplì. In 2018, as a guest on a radio show, he explains that the name arancina derives from the shape of the fruit and is therefore pronounced "arancina." The inhabitants of western Sicily pronounce it "arancino" because they are inspired by the fruit tree, the orange.
In a joking tone, taking inspiration from Alberto Angela's documentaries, in 2019 The loose change they want to spread, as a moral obligation, the word arancina more and more. They use dialect and Italian dictionaries and interview a historian of the Italian language. The investigation, worth reading, explains that those who use the masculine form Italianize the dialectal model (arancinu becomes arancino), while those who say arancina use the Italian model (arancia, small orange, then arancina). And to clarify, they head to the headquarters of the Accademia della Crusca. While the Zingarelli dictionary lists the word arancina in 1917, the term arancino appears in 1942 and has remained in dictionaries ever since, likely because it is the most common form.
Conclusions
Summarizing the research in the linguistic sector, one could conclude that whoever says arancino Italianizes the dialectal morphological model, while whoever says arancina It re-proposes the standard Italian model. The two variants orange e orange coexist, with a prevalence of the feminine in written use and a greater diffusion of the masculine in the regional varieties spoken in much of the peninsula.Bran Academy has decreed that both forms are correct. We can only continue to eat and discuss it without finding solutions. Long live the arancin-!!
