Pairing Pasta Shapes And Sauces

This is bound to be a contentious topic. But I’m not here to gate-keep on tradition. I’m here to summarize collective culinary knowledge about pasta shape pairings and give rule of thumbs. We will learn why traditional dishes are paired as such and we can extend this knowledge, to liberate ourselves if we want to go off-script.

Sauce

Given a sauce, we want to pair it to a pasta shape that will play a good supporting role.

Oil-based Sauces

Oil-based sauces tend to be light and lack texture. We want a pasta that will give good texture for chewing. It needs to have enough surface area to catch a nd distribute the thin sauce. The surface area is helpful in the emulsification step.

These tend to work well with thinner string noodles, such as spaghetti, spaghettini, or vermicelli.

Cream-based Sauces

Cream sauces are much heavier than their oil counterparts. We want to balance the surface area here.

You tend to see thicker string noodles here, such as fettuccine.

Tomato/Meat sauce

Meat sauces tend to be chunky and heavier. You want a pasta that will be able to catch and hold on to bits. Such a shape will tend to have heft, providing the pasta bulk to balance the dish.

Consider rotini, rigatoni. Also pastas that have scoops or ridges that can trap chunks.

Soup

Soup is very thin. You also eat it with a spoon.

Prefer using orzo and other small bits of pasta.

Seafood sauce

Seafood sauces tend to be very light, almost broth-like. These sauces focus on seafood ingredients. Unlike actual soups, they’re more like stews. So you still want string noodles. Thinner pasta will be delicate, like the sauce, and will absorb the broth into each bite.

Consider thin vermicelli or angel hair pasta.

Baked Dishes

The same rules for cream or tomato sauces applies but we do not desire string noodles. In a baked dish, we want shorter pasta pieces.

Consider penne, ziti, macaroni.

Pasta Shapes

String

Example of string noodles are: spaghetti, linguine, and bucatini.

Their length makes poor choices for soups or in baked dishes.

They have high surface area, which works well with thinner sauces. It also aids in the emulsion step of finishing a sauce.

Tubes

Example are: rigatoni, penne, ziti.

These have large openings that trap sauce and chunks.

They are good candidates for almost all situation, if your need is to have chunks caught in the tube opening.

Ridges

Examples are rotini.

They have high surface area. They can catch chunks. They are good forkable.

Use these if you want more toothsome element to your dish. And if you’re baking.

Small shapes

Shapes such as shells and macaroni can be treated like very short versions of their longer cousins: fettuccine and bucatini respectively. Their small size makes them work well in casserole situation, such as mac and cheese.

Other small shape can be like orzo. These are meant to be eaten with a spoon. A soup is a great place to use it.

Conclusion

These are just some guidelines for how to pair pasta shapes to their sauce. If you don’t follow these, it’s not guaranteed failure. But you might find out that tradition has converged to these common configurations for a reason.

When faced with pairing, you’re asking a few questions of the sauce:

• is it heavy?
• is it chunky?
• brothy?
• how is this intended to be eaten, with fork and a plate?
• is it baked in a casserole or stir-fried?

Note that this knowledge is equally applicable to all cuisines. There are many different types of rice in the world and some pairings to dishes make sense, while others do not. Sometimes, the answer is simply “no one has tried yet” and you should give it a shot.