How many pasta shapes in your pantry right now?

[Robin Garr]

Barilla does make that shape

At the risk of beating the dead horse ("See Answer No. 2" ), I was in Lotsa Pasta today and checked out the inventory. Curiously enough, they currently are stocking only short pasta from Barilla (except for spaghetti), but they did have three brands of bucatini: Divella ("bucatini No. 6"), De Cecchi ("perciatelli") and an artisanal Italian brand, Rustichella d'Abruzzo Pasta Abruzzese di Semola di Grano Duro ("bucatini").

I have some of the Rustichella at home, being a hopeless sucker for serious artisan stuff that comes in brown paper bags and has Italian written all over it. It's good, though.

So why are there so many different shapes anyway?

I always thought it was just part of the Italian approach to food and life -- after all, I've learned there are dozens of ways to make tomato sauce, and it might not even be "sauce" at all -- just gravy. And of course, every little town in Italy seems to have it's own variety of grape. So I figured just enjoy it.

Now I have a glimmer of an idea that there is some underlying order to what I've considered joyful chaos: an email from America's Test Kitchen claims there's an art to matching pasta and sauces/gravies:

our recently published Complete Book of Pasta and Noodles (Clarkson Potter, 2000) we offer our position on this issue. In Italy there is a fine art to matching pasta shapes and sauces. In fact, some would rather forgo a dish than make it with something other than the traditional pasta shape. Here at Cook’s, we are more loose in our matching of pasta shapes and sauces, following just one general rule--you should be able to eat the pasta and sauce easily in each mouthful. This means that the texture and consistency of the sauce should work with the pasta shape.

Long strands are best with smooth sauces or pestos, or sauces with very small chunks such as oil and garlic. In general, wider long noodles, such as fettuccine, can more easily support slightly chunkier sauces than can very thin noodles like spaghetti. Cook’s Senior Writer and author of Pasta e Vedura (Harper Collins, 1996) Jack Bishop adds that wide pasta such as fettuccine or tagliatelle are also well suited with creamy sauces like Alfredo.

Short tubular or molded pasta shapes do an excellent job of trapping chunkier sauces. Sauces with very large chunks are best with shells, rigatoni, or other large tubes. Sauces with small to medium chunks make more sense with fusilli or penne.

Can they be right?

Or is this just another of their scientific approaches to a joyful experience?

Seems crazy to me -- why do you folks think there are so many types of pasta?

Regards, a bemused Bob