Types of Pasta: 25 Shapes and What Each One Suits

There are hundreds of named types of pasta, and almost all of them fall into four groups: long strands and ribbons, short tubes, twisted or folded shapes, and the tiny shapes made for soup. Once you can place a shape in its group, what to do with it follows, because the group is really a description of how much sauce the surface can hold.

Twenty-five shapes are below, each one photographed, with the family it belongs to and the sauce it is built for. Cooking times run from four minutes for angel hair to thirteen for rigatoni, a wider spread than most people expect, and the full table is at the end.

Long Pasta: Strands, Ribbons and Sheets

Long shapes are judged by thickness and by whether the cross-section is round or flat. A round strand sheds a heavy sauce; a flat ribbon carries it. The thinner the strand, the lighter the sauce should be.

Spaghetti

The round strand everything else is measured against, named from the Italian spaghi, meaning lengths of cord. It takes almost any sauce, from plain tomato to carbonara, and cooks in 9 to 10 minutes.

Capellini

Angel hair, the thinnest strand on the shelf. It cooks in 4 to 5 minutes and goes soft fast, so it belongs with light, loose sauces rather than anything with weight to it.

Bucatini

Spaghetti with a hole bored down the middle, so a thin sauce travels inside the strand as well as around it. Thicker than spaghetti and noticeably chewier.

Linguine

Flattened into a narrow oval, which gives it just enough extra surface for sauces that would slide off a round strand. Traditionally the shape for pesto, and a standard for seafood.

Fettuccine

A flat ribbon roughly a quarter of an inch wide, broad enough for butter and cream to stay put. The shape most people associate with alfredo sauce.

Tagliatelle

Slightly narrower than fettuccine and the classic northern Italian partner for a long-cooked meat ragu. Often sold coiled into nests rather than straight.

Pappardelle

The widest ribbon made, built for sauces with large pieces in them. Game, mushroom and slow-braised meat are the usual partners.

Lasagne

Flat sheets, layered with the sauce rather than tossed through it. Sold flat or with a wavy edge, and in oven-ready versions that skip the boiling step.

Tube Pasta: Shapes With a Hole

Tubes trap sauce inside as well as outside, which doubles the surface in contact with it. Ridges, marked rigate on an Italian packet, add more grip again.

Penne

Cut on the diagonal and usually ridged. The large diameter and the ridges together are what let it hold sauce across the whole surface. Cooks in 11 to 12 minutes.

Rigatoni

Wider than penne, cut straight, always ridged. The shape for the heaviest meat sauces, and the slowest on the shelf at 12 to 13 minutes.

Tortiglioni

Rigatoni with the ridges twisted into a spiral down the tube. The spiral gives a thick sauce more to catch on than straight ridges do.

Ziti

Smooth and straight, traditionally snapped before cooking. Light tomato and olive oil suit it, and it is the backbone of baked ziti, which fits a countertop toaster oven as easily as a full oven.

Elbow macaroni

The short curved tube behind macaroni cheese and most pasta salad. At 7 to 8 minutes it is among the faster shapes, and the bend holds a cheese sauce well.

Ditalini

Tiny thimbles, used in the bean soup pasta e fagioli rather than sauced. Small enough to eat with a spoon but larger than true soup pasta.

Twists, Spirals and Shells

This family exists for one reason: folds and spirals physically hold onto sauce that a smooth surface would shed. They are the most forgiving shapes to cook, because a slightly soft twist still looks right.

Fusilli

A tight corkscrew, sold in the United States as rotini. The version with a hollow centre is fusilli bucati. Thick sauces lodge in the spiral and stay there.

Cavatappi

A wide hollow corkscrew, sold under the trade name Cellentani. The hollow plus the spiral makes it one of the best shapes on the shelf for a thick cheese sauce.

Gemelli

Two short strands twisted around each other, the name meaning twins. It reads as a single rope until you look closely, and it suits both light and heavy sauces.

Campanelle

A cone with a ruffled edge, named for a bell. The frill is the point: it traps cheese and bechamel sauces that would run straight off a tube.

Farfalle

Pinched in the centre into a bow. The pinch stays firm while the wings go soft, which gives the shape two textures at once and makes it popular in cold salads.

Conchiglie

Shells, which work as scoops. The medium size goes into salads and bakes; the large ones are stuffed and baked under sauce.

Radiatori

Short ruffled shapes with a comb of ridges along one side, designed specifically to hold thick sauce. Little else does the job as well at this size.

Rotelle

Wheels with spokes, mostly used cold where the shape stays visible on the plate. The spokes catch small pieces of vegetable in a salad.

Orecchiette

Little ears, pressed with a thumb so the centre is thinner than the rim. A southern Italian shape, traditionally served with broccoli rabe and sausage.

Small Pasta for Soup

Soup pasta, pastina in Italian, is any shape small enough to be eaten with a spoon. It is cooked in the broth rather than drained, which thickens the soup slightly as the starch comes out.

Orzo

Shaped like a large grain of rice. It goes into soup and cold salad, and works in place of arborio rice in a risotto. Cooks in 9 to 10 minutes, slower than its size suggests.

Pastina

The catch-all name for the smallest shapes, including the stelline stars pictured. Ready in 6 to 7 minutes and traditionally the first solid food Italian children are given.

Cooking Times From Four Minutes to Thirteen

Shape decides cooking time far more than brand does, and the spread is wide enough to ruin a dish if you swap one shape for another and keep the timer. These are the times Barilla prints for each shape in its standard range, ordered fastest to slowest.

Shape	Family	Minutes	What it suits
Angel hair	Long	4 to 5	Light, delicate sauces
Pastina	Soup	6 to 7	Broth and childrens soup
Thin spaghetti	Long	6 to 7	Oil and tomato sauces
Elbow macaroni	Tube	7 to 8	Macaroni cheese and pasta salad
Mini farfalle	Shape	7 to 8	Light vegetable sauces
Rotini	Shape	7 to 8	Refined and simple sauces alike
Medium shells	Shape	8 to 9	Pasta salad and baked dishes
Pipette	Shape	8 to 9	Macaroni cheese and salads
Linguine	Long	9 to 10	Pesto, then seafood
Orzo	Soup	9 to 10	Soup, salad or in place of risotto rice
Spaghetti	Long	9 to 10	Almost anything, including carbonara
Campanelle	Shape	10 to 11	Cheese and bechamel sauces
Ditalini	Tube	10 to 11	Pasta e fagioli and other bean soups
Mezzi rigatoni	Tube	10 to 11	Chunky meat and vegetable sauces
Mostaccioli	Tube	10 to 11	Olive oil and fresh tomato
Cavatappi	Shape	11 to 12	Thick sauces that catch in the spiral
Penne	Tube	11 to 12	Sauces that cling to a ridged surface
Ziti	Tube	11 to 12	Light tomato, and baked dishes
Gemelli	Shape	12 to 13	Refined and simple sauces alike
Rigatoni	Tube	12 to 13	The heaviest meat ragus

Two practical consequences. Soup shapes and angel hair are finished before a sauce reheats, so start the sauce first. Rigatoni and gemelli need thirteen minutes, which is long enough to make a sauce from scratch while they boil.

Matching a Shape to a Sauce

1. Thin oil sauces want thin long shapes: spaghetti, capellini, bucatini.
2. Pesto and other thick coatings want flat or twisted shapes: linguine, fusilli, gemelli.
3. Cream and cheese want ridges and hollows: cavatappi, penne rigate, campanelle, shells.
4. Chunky meat ragu wants wide tubes or wide ribbons: rigatoni, tortiglioni, pappardelle.
5. Soup wants anything you can eat with a spoon: orzo, ditalini, pastina.
6. Cold salad wants shapes that keep their outline: farfalle, rotelle, elbows.

The underlying principle is surface area against sauce weight. A heavy sauce needs somewhere to sit, and a light one needs a shape that will not swamp it.

What Dried Pasta Is Made Of

Standard Italian dried pasta is semolina and water. Semolina is milled from durum wheat, which is harder than the wheat used for bread flour, and that hardness is what lets a shape hold its edges through boiling.

Fresh pasta is a different product rather than a better one. It usually contains egg, cooks in two to four minutes, and suits delicate butter and cream sauces. Dried semolina pasta holds up to heavier sauces and is the correct choice for most of the shapes above.

Bronze-drawn pasta, sold as trafilata al bronzo, is extruded through bronze dies rather than teflon. The rougher surface grips sauce noticeably better, which matters most on smooth shapes like ziti where there are no ridges doing that job.

Boiling, Salting and Draining

1. Use enough water. Roughly four quarts per pound. Too little and the starch concentration rises, the water stops boiling when the pasta goes in, and the shapes stick.
2. Salt the water, not the pasta. It is the only point at which the pasta itself gets seasoned, and a sauce cannot put salt back inside a cooked tube.
3. Start from a hard boil. Bringing four quarts up on a hob is slow, so pouring in water already boiled in an electric kettle saves several minutes.
4. Set the timer short. Take a minute off the packet time and taste. Pasta finished in the sauce keeps cooking after it leaves the water.
5. Keep a cup of the water. The starch in it is what binds a sauce to the shape, and it is gone the moment you drain into the sink.

Oil in the water is the one piece of common advice worth ignoring. It floats on the surface, does nothing to stop sticking, and coats the shapes on the way out so the sauce slides off whatever grip the ridges were supposed to give.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many types of pasta are there?

Several hundred named shapes exist, with regional names for near-identical ones. The 25 above cover what is sold in most supermarkets, and every one belongs to one of four families: long, tube, shaped or soup.

What is the difference between penne and ziti?

Penne is cut on the diagonal and usually ridged. Ziti is cut straight across and smooth. Penne holds more sauce on its surface; ziti is better in baked dishes where the sauce surrounds it anyway.

Which pasta shape is best for thick sauce?

A wide ridged tube or a hollow spiral. Rigatoni and cavatappi both hold thick sauce inside and outside at once, which is why they are used for ragu and for cheese sauces.

What does rigate mean on a pasta packet?

Ridged. Penne rigate is ridged penne, and penne lisce is the smooth version. The ridges exist to hold sauce, so rigate is the safer choice with anything thicker than olive oil.

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