Mary Steenburgen has revealed she really did eat spaghetti with maple syrup in the 2003 movie Elf.

The star admitted the unusual meal was "not my dream food", as she reflected on shooting the iconic Christmas comedy.

Mary, 72, reminisced about working on the set of the feature with Will Ferrell in an interview on the Today Show on Tuesday - in particular, a scene in which her character had to eat a plateful of spaghetti topped with lashings of maple syrup prepared for her by Will's character, Buddy.

"That first scene of the dinner, that's the very first scene in the movie," Mary told the show's host Craig Melvin. "And I wasn't yet used to anything of the way he was dressed."

She confessed to laughing so much she repeatedly broke character during their attempts to complete the scene.

"I broke up so many times during that scene," Mary recalled. "Plus, while eating spaghetti with maple syrup!"

While movie props are often different in real life from their on-screen appearance, Mary shared that the spaghetti really was covered in sweet, sticky maple syrup, and she really did eat it.

"I actually did eat it," she laughed. "I've had worse, but it's not my dream food."

Mary also admitted she had been initially taken aback by the sight of comedian Will, now 58, in his elf costume.

"I had not seen even a design or anything about what Will was going to look like," she said. "And then he comes in... And I'm tall, but he towers over me, and he comes in in this elf outfit, and then I'm having to eat the spaghetti with maple syrup.

"I just spent the whole day trying to get my lines out without laughing."