pappardelle

Pappardelle is from Tuscan dialect pappare (to eat greedily, to gobble), probably onomatopoeic — imitating the sound of enthusiastic eating. The suffix -elle is a diminutive plural. The pasta is broad, flat ribbons, typically 2-3 centimeters wide, cut with a fluted pastry wheel that gives them wavy edges. They are the widest of the common flat pastas, broader than tagliatelle and much broader than fettuccine.

Pappardelle are Tuscan. Their width makes them the natural partner for heavy, chunky sauces — ragù di cinghiale (wild boar ragù), ragù di lepre (hare ragù), and mushroom sauces. The broad surface catches and holds thick sauce. Narrow pasta would let these sauces slide off. The pasta was designed for the food of the Tuscan countryside: game meats and wild mushrooms.

The word appears in Italian texts from the fourteenth century, making pappardelle one of the oldest named pasta shapes. Boccaccio mentioned a related form. The persistence of the name is notable — unlike many Italian pastas, which were renamed as they traveled between regions, pappardelle has kept its original Tuscan name.

Pappardelle have traveled globally along with Italian cuisine. They are available dried in supermarkets and fresh in pasta shops. But the dried versions are often too thin — real pappardelle are thick egg pasta, rolled by hand to an imperfect, varied thickness. The imperfection is the point. Machine-rolled pasta is uniform. Hand-rolled pappardelle have thick spots and thin spots, and the sauce interacts differently with each.