The invention of a new pasta shape (2021)

https://kottke.org/21/03/the-invention-of-a-new-pasta-shape

by throwup238 • 2 years ago

206 131 2 years ago

kottke.org

Traubenfuchs• 2 years ago

The most sauceable pasta was developed long ago. It‘s called couscous.

It‘s not forkeable at all and I‘d argue it‘s toothsinkability sucks though.

dotancohen• 2 years ago

I prefer to eat half a portion of couscous.

ideamotor• 2 years ago

Israeli couscous is larger and has slightly better mouthfeel than the standard couscous. And I agree, these are the most sauceable for sure. Very spoonable.

temp0826• 2 years ago

(2021)

I wish there were some data backing the claims and maybe a rubric comparing it to other pasta geometries. Optimizing my pasta experience keeps me up at night. Or maybe that's the indigestion.

Erratic65762• 2 years ago

What used to keep me up at night was skipping dinner. I would watch the ceiling for hours in anxiety. Until one day, late at night, I went out of bed for some fast food to take away

arketyp• 2 years ago

Are you guys tripping?

jsnell• 2 years ago

Discussion at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26521761

bagels3• 2 years ago

Yes, if we want to make claims about sauce holding capabilities, they should measure the weight of the cooked pasta before and after saucing and draining loose sauce.

pohl3• 2 years ago

He did a great job balancing the 3 constraints. I always keep some on hand these days. Trader Joe’s carries it.

astrospective• 2 years ago

By odd coincidence, I bought my first box of this today, looking forward to trying it out.

dxdm• 2 years ago

How was it?

addicted2• 2 years ago

The pasta is delicious. It’s substantial. The pasta is almost like eating a meatball in itself

lxe• 2 years ago

Would love to see the process of this pasta being made.

WoodenChair• 2 years ago

I think I bought this at Trader Joe's a couple months ago. If I'm remembering correctly then I guess this introduction has been pretty successful.

leonheld• 2 years ago

From my personal tests, the bronze die extruded pasta isn't much more "sauce-able" than the regular ones (for regular, usual sauces like beef ragu, al burro, alla romana...). I honestly believe this is one of the biggest culinary myths around pasta.

crazygringo• 2 years ago

Yeah, I don't generally have a problem with a puddle of extra sauce left over in my bowl after eating the pasta. Which means this is solving a non-problem.

If your sauce isn't sticking, add a little water from the pasta to it, after cooking the pasta. The starch in the water makes a big difference to make the sauce stickier. Every Italian restaurant does this, basically. And toss the pasta in the sauce before serving, don't just dump the sauce on top of naked noodles.

shagie• 2 years ago

America's Test Kitchen looks into that - bronze cut vs teflon cut and what happens if you take sandpaper to the dried pasta:

https://www.americastestkitchen.com/cooksillustrated/article...

stephenr5• 2 years ago

Americas test kitchen also says you can't make crispy pork belly without frying it, I don't know why people put so much trust in a group that can get something so easy, wrong.

jonatron• 2 years ago

Sauce-able is only one attribute, and bronze-die vs not is only one variable. I liked Alex's tier list in this video: https://youtu.be/v_XMTvAgpEw?si=X2QoNVbn3cl094fm Bronze die would make more of a difference for carbonara where you need starchy water

potatoman22• 2 years ago

I wonder if earlier shapes of pasta were created with a similar mindset. Was macaroni engineered for an optimal eating experience?

pacbard2• 2 years ago

Probably not. A pasta tube is the easiest shape to make by extrusion (and difficult to make by hand) and it was likely the first thing they tried after thinking of using extrusion to make pasta.

toyg3• 2 years ago

Ish. Yes, the basic shapes come from what was possible back then, but some varieties ended up being more popular because they do work better. Sadly I lack the English vocabulary to describe the difference between penne liscie and penne rigate...

Freak_NL• 2 years ago

I remember growing up in the eighties that pasta essentially meant macaroni or spaghetti in the Netherlands; occasionally lasagne. Most pasta dishes cooked were those bludgeoned into Dutch submission (i.e., sauces made from a packet, and invariably with meat) those days sucked; I'm glad my mother had a fairly decent pasta sauce recipe though.

Nowadays I'm partial to linguini or orecchiette (I suspect my parents still think that's fancy). Of course once you actually visit Italy or otherwise eat in a restaurant serving actual Italian pasta, your views on what pasta is all about tend to change.

zabzonk• 2 years ago

ah, the joys of dutch cuisine!

dunham2• 2 years ago

We've ordered this a few times and always keep a few boxes in the pantry.

It's a good substitute for deCecco "Galletti", which we used to get in San Francisco. But the corner store stopped carrying it, and I later learned it wasn't sold in the US. (They're supposed to be cockscombs, but we always called them sea monsters.)

If you're looking for a long pasta, fusilli bucati lunghi is fun. They're essentially old-school telephone cords.

[1] https://www.dececco.com/lv_en/product/galletti-n-44/

toyg3• 2 years ago

I've never seen those galletti anywhere in Italy. I guess they're just not very popular.

TMWNN• 2 years ago

If you're looking for a long pasta, fusilli bucati lunghi is fun. They're essentially old-school telephone cords.

I'll have to check that out. I have regular (short) fusilli, penne, and fettuccine on rotation when I make pasta. It's strange how the mouthfeel affects the experience when the food is otherwise exactly the same in terms of ingredients and maker.

drifkin• 2 years ago

I came here to the comments to mention the shape "Cresti di Gallo", which I had for the first time recently and really enjoyed. I suspect it might just be another name for the same shape you posted, so maybe you can find another brand you like

dunham2• 2 years ago

Yeah, that's the same shape. I believe it's the proper name, and I've tried searching for it in the past. It seems somewhat rare in the western US under either name.

The place that I originally got it from was a tiny market at 24th and Valencia in SF. I think they just happened into it via some distributor and ran out after I slowly bought all of it.

While I've kept an eye out, but I haven't put a lot of effort into finding it. I did see it once at pike place market in a bin of mixed pasta, but they said they didn't have that shape by itself.

tacone• 2 years ago

Fusilli Bucati is also a great favorite of mine. It's shaped like a spring, fun to play with and chew and also good at retaining sauce.

ericra• 2 years ago

The new pasta shape is pretty cool and all, but $45 for 6 1-lb. boxes of dry pasta is criminal!

Jtsummers• 2 years ago

$32.94, not $45, per the link in the article which is about $5.50/pound. The Trader Joe's version sells for $2.99/pound. I don't think I'd ever spend $5.50/pound on pasta though. I'd probably just learn to make my own if the prices got to that point.

https://www.sfoglini.com/products/sporkful

https://www.traderjoes.com/home/products/pdp/organic-italian...

FridgeSeal• 2 years ago

That’s nothing compared to their shipping prices!

$51AUD for the pasta.

$350AUD for the shipping lol.

Suffice to say, I didn’t buy any.

Cpoll• 2 years ago

$350AUD for the shipping lol.

Why is it this expensive for 6lbs (~3kg)?

joshjob42• 2 years ago

You can get it at Trader Joe's for a pretty reasonable price. It's my favorite!

zoklet-enjoyer• 2 years ago

I like it. Good texture and a fun origin story.

caesil• 2 years ago

It's a good shape. The "sauce trough" thing is a little questionable though; having eaten a couple boxes, I think it would make more sense to have it on the inside surface, more sauce retained that way.

pohl3• 2 years ago

The series of podcast episodes is worth a listen. The task is not just imagining an ideal shape balancing the 3 constraints, but to do one that will actually come out a pasta extruder die. Getting the trough inside the curl might not work within that implicit 4th constraint.

dharmab• 2 years ago

IIRC, Dan's original design had an an internal channel, but the pasta die manufacturer said it wasn't feasible to manufacture, so the design was adapted into the trough.

127361• 2 years ago

Does anyone know if this has been patented? When digestive biscuits first came out in 1890, they were patented.

pacbard2• 2 years ago

It looks like pasta shapes are patentable [1], but I wasn't able to find a patent for this specific pasta shape on Google Patents.

On the podcast, they talk more about the process of creating the cutting die and how much that costs, etc. Also, they had some trouble finding a pasta mill to make the exact shape they wanted. So, even if it's not patented, it might not be profitable to just copy it. After all, most other shapes are cheaper and no "real" pasta company is going to get into a PR fiasco just to sell a different shape out of the 100s they already have.

[1] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/sponsored/patents-behind-past...

izietto• 2 years ago

That's actually so cool. As Italian, I've just realized I take pasta shapes for granted. They're actually something that can be invented and that involves plenty of creativity and passion.

toyg3• 2 years ago

Us Italians, we are very conservative about food, sometimes irrationally so. Maybe because my favourite has always been the rotella/ruota, I tend to try exotic shapes pretty often - recently I had some radiatori and they can be pretty good with amatriciana or other "strong" sauces.

This said, I think the actual pasta quality will always be more important than any fancy shape. Cascatelli that overcook in an instant will always be worse than some old-fashioned penne that don't.

shermantanktop2• 2 years ago

Agree. The quality of the wheat and production methods are going to have a bigger impact than the specific details of the shape. But alas, the shape can be seen with the naked eye.

The idea of a special shape also suggests that the interaction between sauce and pasta is a mechanical process, which is appealing in the US, where pasta and sauce used to be (and may still be) served in separate bowls.

evrydayhustling• 2 years ago

I was thinking about radiatori going into this. Anybody know on which axes this shape is supposed to beat radiatori? Seems to me radiatori has max surface area per wheat, so it should dominate on sauceability.

Also thrilled to have an opportunity to say "radiatori" 3, nay 4 times in context.

nfw22• 2 years ago

I think radiatori has some additional advantages compared to this. Its shape is more symmetrical, so more consistent saucing, and it's easy to get the right size bite with a fork. Eating this pasta seems a bit awkward due to the asymmetric, oblong shape

noqc2• 2 years ago

The main problem with it is that it takes too long to cook, and the T-intersections of the pasta are still undercooked when the rest of the pasta is done. Further, the non-uniformaty of the joints of the pasta means that the ruffley bits had a tendency to shear off during the cooking process, or in the final step when you cook it with sauce.

When I tried to leave a 4-star review on their website, along with my commentary, it was rejected. In all honesty, my 4 stars was too generous though. The main "problem" that this pasta claims to solve is much more easily solved by cooking the pasta in your sauce for 30 seconds, after which your sauce will happily adhere to any shape of pasta you can imagine.

Ultimately this is a marketing gimmick rather than a genuine iteration, which should not be surprising.

hardwaregeek• 2 years ago

Agreed. It’s not a very good shape. Uniformity of thickness is important for pasta shapes. It’s why wheels or farfalle also suck. They have thicker and thinner points that cook unevenly

kbouck• 2 years ago

I may be in the minority here, but I appreciate pasta shapes which result in a gradient of aldentitude (made up that word).

bigxutah• 2 years ago

Unfortunately agree. Idk if the one they sell at Trader Joe's is the same from the article, seems like it is, and what you describe is exactly what happened to mine.

basch3• 2 years ago

If you click the article then click buy, the top of the page has a link to Americas Test Kitchen saying the Trader Joe’s variant is much worse and not recommended. https://www.americastestkitchen.com/articles/6189-trader-joe...

forrestthewoods• 2 years ago

The Trader Joe’s version isn’t very good. The main version is much better.

pohl3• 2 years ago

The texture differential at the T-intersections was a deliberate choice for the mouth feel component and is one that I appreciate. It gives an inner region of tooth resistance. The frills stay on if you time it right. If I want to cook it in the sauce I pull it out of the water earlier. NBD. I haven’t yet used what Trader Joe’s offers. I suppose it’s possible the two products are not identical.

RankingMember2• 2 years ago

I can tell you the Trader Joe's version was so bad with the frilly parts coming off that I hoped it was just their version being cheap, but apparently that's not the case based on parent's comments.

greggsy• 2 years ago

He used the term ‘toothfeel’ in the podcast, which is analogous to al-dente.

I’ve found that the amount of salt in the water, and how crowded the pot is will play a big part in how well it cooks.

D13Fd2• 2 years ago

I dunno, I tried it and greatly enjoyed it. I didn’t notice any uniformity problem but I’m also not that all that discerning when it comes to pasta.

noqc2• 2 years ago

If you aren't particularly discerning, why would you greatly enjoy spending so much more money for what you basically consider equal to cheaper pasta?

ajdude• 2 years ago

When I tried to leave a 4-star review on their website, along with my commentary, it was rejected

Whenever I see a website displaying their own reviews, I always assume they're at best cherry picking or at worst outright forging.

jader201• 2 years ago

I mean, sure if you’re comparing a 5-star first party review to a 4-star third party review.

But nobody should be doing that sort of comparison anyway — that is, cross-site review comparison.

If I’m looking at first party reviews, I’m comparing them to, at most, reviews on other products of the same site.

They for me, they still carry some relative (intra-site) weight, but definitely no absolute (cross-site) weight.

mtlmtlmtlmtl• 2 years ago

When you said your 4 star review was denied, I figured it must be out of 10. But no, it's out of 5, and the store does indeed show 138 reviews with an average of 5 stars.

That's wild. I know deleting 1 star reviews is common and I hate that as well but these people aren't even trying to make it look legit. Pathetic.

paulgb• 2 years ago

It’s also dangerous territory with the FTC, who have fined companies millions for doing exactly that. https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2022/01/...

emeril• 2 years ago

yeah, even target.com won't publish any 1 star reviews of their products - I bought a play kitchen years ago that was pretty terrible but sure enough they would never publish the review

pclmulqdq• 2 years ago

A lot of novice cooks I know will fully cook their pasta, strain it, and get it pretty dry before putting sauce on. The starchy pasta water is actually a "glue" that helps adhere the sauce to the pasta. If you leave your pasta a bit wet before saucing, you get better adhesion by a lot, and it's even better if you cook the pasta (and pasta water) into the sauce to release more starches into the sauce.

finaard• 2 years ago

Even worse - it's not uncommon to give the pasta a short rinse with cold water to make them "les sticky", and then complain the sauce isn't sticking.

djur2• 2 years ago

When you say it was "rejected", are you saying you received a message saying it was rejected, or it didn't appear on the site, or it was removed? I see a number of less-than-5-star reviews citing both of the flaws you mention.

kqr• 2 years ago

You are right, but it goes beyond 30 seconds of cooking. To any reader who does not know how to properly sauce pasta, this might change your life: https://www.seriouseats.com/the-right-way-to-sauce-pasta

alanbernstein• 2 years ago

I tried it, thought it was good, but not revolutionary.

Do you think every other shape of pasta beyond the first was a "marketing gimmick rather than a genuine iteration"? Can't it just be another option among many?

elzbardico• 2 years ago

Why do you cook pasta with the sauce?

p1mrx• 2 years ago

If the goal is to raise the sauce/carbs ratio, then I wonder if it's possible to make pasta with air bubbles to reduce its density. Gyroid infill would probably be delicious.

thfuran• 2 years ago

That doesn't sound very extrudable. I'm not sure how amenable pasta is to 3d printing, but that'd probably be the only option. I assume that means the cost would be at least an order of magnitude or two higher than more manufacturable shapes.

kmoser• 2 years ago

The simpler solution is to just eat your pasta with a spoon, which will allow you to scoop up more sauce per mouthful.

But if you want to over-engineer it, you could write software to create the optimal pasta shape which would maximize surface area and ensure even thickness for consistent al dente mouthfeel. I'm guessing the optimal shape will look fractal-like.

bruce3434342• 2 years ago

I am not situated anywhere near the US, so for a regular peasant like me Cavatappi is a pretty good pasta shape. It is a hollow tube that has been bent into a corkscrew shape, with ridges on the outside running lengthwise along the tube.

- Chunks get tangled in it

- Surface area to volume ratio is quite good (sauce)

- Tube means sauce goes inside

It is a better macaroni (which is my second favourite shape).

shermantanktop2• 2 years ago

Agree, cavatappi is great. Works well for baked mac and cheese - at least the kind I like, which is not swimming in cheese goo.

solardev3• 2 years ago

That looks delicious! Pasta noob here. Will have to look for it next time.

All these noodle names are so hard to remember for someone who doesn't speak the language (Italian?) Like if these were just called corkscrew noodles, they'd be easier to remember and find.

To this day I still don't really understand how linguini and fettucini are different, but I just like them because they're flat.

bruce3434342• 2 years ago

Funny enough, the Italian word for "corkscrew" is "cavatappi".

billiam• 2 years ago

I’ve tried them a couple of times—sorry to say they’re trash. The middle tube can be under cooked while the frilly part is falling off and over cooked. Design schools and product management should teach this as a textbook example of design thinking taken way too far. Ask and ask carefully: what problem does this product solve? Maybe there is no single pasta shape that is perfect for all sauces because there doesn’t need to be.

basch3• 2 years ago

Which brand did you try?

Iwan-Zotow• 2 years ago

I could like to make bifurcati pasta

wackget• 2 years ago

Their online store is pretty bad. The page just says "6 pack" without specifying any weights or bag sizes. The image carousel also didn't stop when I clicked on a thumbnail to read more.

Oh and the pasta is grotesquely overpriced.

bagels3• 2 years ago

Looks like the box shows 16oz., so probably 6 x 16oz.

mycologos2• 2 years ago

I've bought half a dozen boxes from this company -- mostly for the weird grains in weird shapes -- and will probably buy more. Yeah, it's expensive for a box of pasta, 2-3x the price of "normal" pasta. But that difference is 3 or 4 bucks a box, and each box is at least 4 meals. I am happy to pay $1 more per meal for a better experience (and that is a generous overestimate of the true additional cost). Grotesque feels like an overstatement.

dylan604• 2 years ago

If you're complaining about the price, then you're not the target audience. This seems like the same type of thinking that brought us the Juicero, K-cups, or any other trendy food things that people that want to feel special can spend their dollars on to keep up with the Jones/Kardash/FOMO whatever

mycologos2• 2 years ago

I'm not a fan of the specific new pasta shape, but I like the brand itself, because they offer something that is hard for me to find elsewhere, especially in a ~normal grocery store: unusual grains in unusual shapes. The comparison with Juicero seems wrong to me because, as far as I can tell, that product was a very old existing product (fresh juice) in a new wrapper. I don't know anything about coffee so I can't comment on the K-cup comparison.

I have tried other brands and failed to find anybody else that is as reliable at unusual grains in unusual shapes. The difference is real!

spike021• 2 years ago

You can buy a similar (not sure how similar) pasta at Trader Joe's. I believe it's a 12oz box like standard pasta boxes.

gs17• 2 years ago

I've only ever seen that size "standard" at Trader Joe's. Usually it's 16 oz or 500 g.

havaloc• 2 years ago

I heard about these and thought it a wonderful story a year or so ago and bought a 5 pack, but no matter how long you boil them, it doesn't seem to be enough and they seem tough yet chewy.

If you're reading, try again, but reinvent the wagon wheel (my personal favorite).

mongol2• 2 years ago

Reminds me about this hilarious article about a past Bucatini shortage. It was posted on HN when I read it the first time

https://www.grubstreet.com/2020/12/2020-bucatini-shortage-in...

m3kw9• 2 years ago

Penne is the best, it’s very similar, you scoop the sauce inside it

anticorporate• 2 years ago

We tried this when it first made the rounds just for the entertainment value. It was... okay?

I think the funny thing about it is, the "problem" it solves feels completely imaginary. Like, I don't think I was ever striving to max out the amount of sauce per piece of pasta before this thing came along, and after trying it, my conclusion was, well, I guess it holds more sauce, but so what?

It's a bit akin to those "scoop" style tortilla chips. Yeah, they hold more crap on them, but they're also worse tasting than the normal tortilla chips we buy or make at home.

lr4444lr• 2 years ago

Isn't this just creste di gallo pasta?

jghn3• 2 years ago

Not quite. When I first saw this, I had the same thought. It was at a spot that normally carries a local brand who makes creste di gallo. They weren't quite the same. This new shop has a concave spine with two frills instead of just the one. The claim is that groove can hold sauce.

neonnoodle• 2 years ago

My startup Nūdl is using AI to iterate trillions of pasta shapes for optimum twirlability, semolina coefficient, and hospitaliano. While it is still early days, we project that with our current runway and model capabilities, our pasta may become sentient in time for the 2026 Feast of St. Anthony.

mindcrime• 2 years ago

Username checks out.

1letterunixname• 2 years ago

We leveraged crowdsourcing of a private kindergarten school to organically design pasta shapes and used the throw it against the wall method, which was met with smashing approval. We're still optimizing cook time, uniformity, and packaging. And we hope to remain out of the Whole Foods bargain shelves by the seafood counter for at least 3 years to maximize ROI. We will also codesign a sauce that maximizes adhesion with a proprietary formulation that only adheres to our pasta.

zogrodea• 2 years ago

Disappointed new pasta innovations aren't open sauce (GPL/BSD/MIT/whatever).

Just kidding but I thought the pun was too good to pass up.

weinzierl• 2 years ago

The world of pasta shapes is utterly fascinating. Besides the links at the bottom of the article the book Geometry of Pasta [1] is a good reference.

[1] https://www.geometryofpasta.com/

causality0• 2 years ago

Frankly, cost is the only reason that cheese-filled tortellini isn't the right answer to literally every pasta question.

pezezin• 2 years ago

Oh God, your comment made me realize that I haven't eaten tortellini in way too many years. When I was living in Spain, tortellini where by far my favorite kind of pasta. I am currently living in Japan, where they are either extremely difficult to find, or really expensive. I guess I should bring back a kilo or two the next time I visit my family...

dang• 2 years ago

The Invention of a New Pasta Shape - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26521761 - March 2021 (181 comments)

RankingMember2• 2 years ago

I was disappointed in this shape at least in the Trader Joe's incarnation, as it basically just broke apart as it cooked.

If anyone's interested in a new pasta shape that holds together and is imho a stellar shape for holding sauce and keeping the texture interesting, check out shellbows if you can find them: https://www.delallo.com/delallo-shellbows-1-lb/

atleastoptimal• 2 years ago

AI can solve this

pama• 2 years ago

IMHO spaghetti and linguine optimized the shape for cooking to al dente perfection and if one handles them correctly they can hold as much sauce as the cook desires.

solatic• 2 years ago

Mostly agreed. There's sometimes usage as well for cylindrical shapes like rigatoni when making chunkier sauces, and smaller shapes like penne can be made in smaller pots with smaller amounts of water, thus concentrating the amount of starch in the pasta water and improving the sauce when the pasta water is added to the sauce at the end, while the smaller pot is also easier to clean for people without dishwashers. But most of the issues people mark up to spaghetti and linguini have more to do with people's cooking skills than they do with the pasta's shape.

this_steve_j• 2 years ago

This pasta is not for everyone. I liked the nerdy marketing and funky shape, and found it to compare favorably to other novelty pasta of which I am a fan. Slightly undercooked, it’s fun to pretend I’m eating a sea slug or some other exotic thing.

Just bought a box at Whole Foods for $5-6.

After Halloween also I buy the Cheetos brand mac and cheese in the shape of bones (for the pasta only) on clearance at Publix for $1/box. Haute cuisine? Nope!

SeanLuke• 2 years ago

My big problem with ruffled pasta and the like is that the ruffles often break off so you get strings of ruffles floating around in the sauce. It makes for pretty crummy pasta every time I've tried something in this vein. I suspect this is no different.

Pamar• 2 years ago

Here is a similar project from the past: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26529212 (it did not work well)

Will182• 2 years ago

One of my favourite conversation starters is: “if you were a pasta, what would you be and why?”

I wonder who will be the first person to say this shape!

water-data-dude• 2 years ago

I want to be able to buy pasta in the shape of little klein bottles.

solardev3• 2 years ago

Makes me wonder... can you 3d print pasta at home yet? Is there some sort of delicious flour extruder robot that I can hook up to the latest pasta GPTs to generate new shapes?

The invention of a new pasta shape (2021)

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