PASTA SHAPES AND THEIR SAUCES

From left to right, a thick fettucine with a meat ragù; a twisted pasta shape called vesuviotti (“little Vesuvios”); and a linguine done up cacio e pepe, each sauce aligned with its best shaped pasta.

We may eat pasta shapes such as fusilli or farfalle for their novelty, or strands such as spaghetti or linguine because they are nostalgic—and eat them with whatever saucing or in whatever preparation we dang well decide on—but there is real rhyme and reason for pairing certain pasta shapes with certain sauces.

And the Italians, as usual and of course, show the way.

In Italy, pasta, both fresh and dried, comes in many dozens of shapes, sizes and configurations. (Estimates suggest that Italy makes more than 350 pasta shapes.) You’re excused for imagining that there is no way that each shape has its particular sauce.

No, it’s more that the general shape of a pasta pairs with a certain type of sauce or preparation. And this is due mainly to the function of the pasta, what the pasta does with its sauce. Or, looked at another way, what a sauce does with its pasta.

Long, thin pastas such as spaghetti, linguine, and bucatini are designed to pull the sauce up along their length as the pasta is wound on a fork at the edge of the plate, and then brought to what we here at Marczyk’s often call “the devourment chamber” (a.k.a., the mouth).

That’s why well-made pastas of this sort actually have rough-ish sides, made so by the sometimes ancient bronze dies through which they are extruded. The rough sides help “pull” the sauce along as it’s wound on the fork.

Sauces for long thin pastas include cream- or oil-based sauces such as aglio e olio, or the typical “marinara” (if not too chunky), or sauces that might use a good splash of the pasta cooking water in the finishing, such as “cacio e pepe.”

For examples of such pastas, in addition to spaghetti, linguine and bucatini, are tonnarelli and spaghetti chitarra.

Ribbon-like pastas such as pappardelle or tagliatelle, because of their wide flat surfaces, carry up along their length long-cooked meaty sauces such as the classic Bolognese or any such meat ragù.

Wider versions of fettucine do much the same, although they are particularly adept at carrying thick cream sauces such as the popular Alfredo.

For more examples: tagliatelle rigate and scialatielli.

Pasta shapes with lots of twists or turns—fusilli, gemelli, farfalle, orecchiette—“cup” or trap the small bits of meat or vegetables in the sauces meant for them. Because of both the nature of the sauce and the pasta here, these bits and pieces adhere or cling to each other felicitously.

These pasta shapes are the most varied—certainly the most creatively designed—of pasta shapes from Italy. Some are shaped like old-fashioned home heating radiators; others, as snails. Even more: like little hats, or chef’s caps or small baskets, or bell flowers or lilies or butterflies or corkscrews or wagon wheels or candy in its wrapper or, even, the esophagus of a chicken (garganelli). That’s right. Cluck on that one.

For additional examples of such “twisted” pastas: tortiglioni, sposini, and vesuviotti (little “volcanoes”), sagne a pezzi, gnocchette, and fusilli col buco (which also is a long, thin pasta).

Tubed pastas such as penne or rigatoni, ziti and “elbow”—are also great with such sauces, but they really shine in dishes where the sauce will find itself inside, as well as outside, the tube. That’s their design.

Such are baked pasta dishes of many sorts such as the Tuscan dish penne straccicate or our ol’ standard mac ‘n’ cheese. Tubed or hollow pastas also work well as the basis for pasta salads.

These pasta shapes come in small, medium and large. Stuffing “shells” is a popular pasta on the American East Coast.

For more examples of such pastas: paccheri, pennette, maccheroni, conchiglioni, and most so-called “macaroni.”

Finally, two pasta shapes that are commonly misused.

I refer to mini-pasta shapes (what the Italians call “pastine”) such as orzo or stelline (“little stars”), such as La Molisana’s orzo or small elbow, that we use in pasta salad instead of where they belong, in wet—very wet—dishes such as soup. And for children, by and large, because they devourment chambers are small, too.

You’ll find that orzo makes for gloppy pasta salad but a fine counterpoint to chicken broth.

The other commonly misused pasta shapes are the filled pastas such as tortellini or ravioli. They are not substitutes for long thin or twisty-turn-y pastas, there for carrying sauces to the mouth. When treated as such, the cook makes a three-act play when a two-act will do and is better.

Filled pastas are mini pillows of pleasure with most of their deliciousness all right there. A simple glistening of really top-notch olive oil, or unsalted brown butter with sage leaves, or merely some grated black pepper and Parmigiano-Reggiano with a bit of pasta cooking water to whip it together into a sheen—that’s all they need for their minimal adornment.

Watch here a video on Pasta Shapes and Their Sauces Explained.