Why so many pasta types?

A few reasons. One is that Italy is a relatively young country, that was put together from regions that used to be small countries in their own right. Each region has its own specialties, its own favourite ways to cook.

Up north, for instance, they are famous for their wide sheets of lasagna which are perfect for rich, meaty sauces; down south, for thin spaghetti which work well with seafood.

The shapes aren't just fun – they serve a purpose. 

Penne, for instance, are perfect for catching chunky tomato sauce, and conchiglioni (the massive shells) can be stuffed with spinach and ricotta cheese. 

But it’s not just the shape: the texture is also very important, which is why many pasta types come in two versions: liscia (which means “smooth”) and rigata (which means “ridged”). 

As a rule of thumb, smooth pasta goes with thick, creamy sauces, and ridged pasta with thin, liquid sauces. 

It's not about some grand tradition. It's about harmony, about finding the perfect match for every flavour. Basically, shape and texture become an ingredient.

For instance, creamy sauces need a partner who can hold them without becoming too heavy. That's where farfalle (which means “butterflies”) come in, because they are both flat and - normally - smooth. I mean those shaped like a bow tie!

But, of course, Italians couldn’t simply have farfalle! We also have farfalline (the tiny ones that we often give to toddlers) and farfallone (the big ones!).  

The same is true for the many types of pasta shaped like a tube or like a ribbon. Tubes go from bucatini (long and very thin) all the way to cannelloni, thicker than a hosepipe.

But there are also bucatoni, ziti and zitoni! And, if you cut them in pieces you get the little tubes that everybody knows!

Zito means “fiancé” in most of the Italian South. They are called that because they are made as a joined up pair and hung to dry together. Sometimes they even make it to the packet in couples! 

By the way, spaghetti used to be dried in the same way and, back in 1957, the BBC made a mock documentary for April fool’s day, showing spaghetti hung on trees, claiming the that’s how they are grown!

Back then many people believed it, and I can see why. It was coming from the BBC, after all. The documentary was very convincing, and most people didn’t travel as much as we do today. And there was no internet, of course!

Talking about spaghetti… There are at least five types: capelli d’angelo (which means “angel hair”), capellini (which means “thin hair”) spaghettini (thin spaghetti), spaghetti and spaghettoni (thick spaghetti). 

People think of linguine like a sort of flat spaghetti, but actually they are the narrowest of the ribbon family. The broadest are the famous lasagne.

In between there are tagliatelle, fettuccine e pappardelle, in growing order. These are the smooth ones, but there are also ribbons with rippled edges, such as mafaldine, mafalde and the massive lasagne festonate. Like the ridges, the ripples help to catch more sauce.

In addition to ribbons, tubes and farfalle, there is the “shell family”, which includes conchigliette, conchiglie and conchiglioni, and also the twisted shapes such as bisiate, fusilli, fusilli lunghi and fusilloni.

And if that wasn’t enough, each Italian region has dozens of specialty pasta types, like casarecce, orecchiette, ruote, gigli ed anelli, which don’t fit either here or there…

“Anelli”. It means “rings”, by the way. They come from Sicily, and are perfect to make a sort of pasta cake that we call timballo. In the UK, they are known as "spaghetti hoops"!

Timballi and soups need small pasta shapes like risoni and ditalini; broths need even smaller ones, like the stelline: cute little stars that you often had as a toddler.

All this sounds extremely complicated, and that’s without counting that pasta can be fresh or dry, and made of different things.

To make sense of all this, I simply start from the sauce.

Is it thin or creamy? Is it clear or chunky? And if it’s chunky, how big are the chunks?

So next time you see another weird pasta shape, ask yourself which sauce would go well with it!