General knowledge · Food & drink

Pasta shapes

Italian industrial production from the 17th century; hundreds of named forms

Food and drink — the Italian names and what they literally mean

Italy recognises several hundred named forms, and almost every name is a plain description in Italian with a diminutive or augmentative ending tacked on: little ears, little worms, little tongues, priest-stranglers. Quiz questions almost always ask for the literal translation. The dough is either dried durum semolina and water, the southern industrial tradition, or fresh soft-wheat dough enriched with egg, the northern domestic one; extrusion through bronze rather than Teflon dies gives the rough surface that sauce clings to. The suffixes matter: -ini and -etti make things smaller, -oni makes them bigger.

How to spot them

▸Names that are literal descriptions plus a diminutive: -ini, -elli, -etti, or the augmentative -oni
▸Durum wheat semolina and water for the dried southern kind; soft wheat and egg for the fresh northern kind
▸Bronze dies give a rough surface; Teflon dies give a slippery one
▸The rule that the shape chooses the sauce, not the other way round

Key facts

Butterflies or bow ties, pinched in the middle

Farfalle — farfalla is Italian for butterfly.

Little ears, thumbed into a dome, the signature shape of Puglia

Orecchiette, from orecchio, ear.

Little worms — a name that has meant different things in Britain and Italy

Vermicelli, from verme, worm. In Italy it is slightly thicker than spaghetti.

Quills or pens, cut on the diagonal; the ridged version takes the adjective rigate

Penne, from penna, a quill pen — hence the diagonal nib-like cut.

Priest-stranglers, hand-rolled and twisted, from Romagna and Tuscany

Strozzapreti — strozzare, to strangle, plus prete, priest.

Little tongues, flat in section where the more famous string is round

Linguine, from lingua, tongue.

Little thimbles, a soup shape barely bigger than a grain of rice

Ditalini, from ditale, thimble; dito is finger.

Named for a domestic radiator, with deep ruffled ridges designed to trap sauce

Radiatori.

Key ideas

Italian grammar does most of the work: spaghetto is a little string (spago), spaghettini smaller still, and spaghettoni thicker. Learn the root and the suffix and you can decode a shape you have never seen.
Shapes are matched to sauces by physics. Tubes and ridges hold chunky ragù; long strands suit oil and clinging sauces; tiny shapes go in broth.

Quick-fire facts

•Farfalle means butterflies; orecchiette, little ears; vermicelli, little worms; linguine, little tongues; conchiglie, shells
•Penne means quills or pens, and the diagonal cut imitates a nib; penne rigate are ridged, penne lisce smooth
•Fusilli are named from fuso, a spindle; bucatini from buco, a hole; rigatoni from rigato, ridged
•Strozzapreti translates as 'priest-stranglers'; campanelle are 'little bells' and cappelletti 'little hats'
•Orzo means barley, which the shape resembles; capelli d'angelo means angel hair
•Tagliatelle comes from tagliare, to cut; the Bologna chamber of commerce lodged a specified width for the cooked strand in 1972
•Dried pasta is made from durum wheat semolina and water; fresh egg pasta from softer wheat, and is a northern Italian tradition
•Bronze dies (trafilata al bronzo) produce a rough, porous surface that holds sauce; Teflon dies give a smooth one
•Naples and Gragnano were the centres of the industrial dried trade; Gragnano pasta holds a protected geographical indication
•Carbonara contains no cream in the Roman original: egg, guanciale, pecorino and black pepper

Drill it — 9 cards

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Sources

Oretta Zanini De Vita — Encyclopedia of Pasta
Alan Davidson — The Oxford Companion to Food