The best shapes for besciamella
Milk thickened with a roux of butter and flour, seasoned with nutmeg. It behaves less like a dressing than like mortar: in a baked dish it binds the layers to each other and keeps the upper sheets from drying out in the oven. Judged as a bowl sauce it is bland, which is the wrong test for it.
The white sauce of baked pasta. It is a binder more than a dressing, holding lasagna strata and blanketing cannelloni so the oven cannot dry them.
Canonical: lasagna, cannelloni.
Caccavelle work as a single giant cup, parboiled and then stuffed and finished in the oven.
A cannelloni does not catch sauce, it contains the meal.
Conchiglioni are built to be stuffed and baked rather than tossed.
A fazzoletto is a wide, very thin sheet, so it presents a large flat face to its dressing rather than a groove or a twist to trap it.
A lasagna sheet is less a noodle than a building material.
Manicotti works as a container first and a noodle second.
The wide bore is the working feature.
Ziti is a smooth, even-walled tube, so it slips past thin sauces and asks for ones with real body.
What we would not put it on
Anything served straight from the pot. Besciamella is built for the oven, and without baking it sets heavy and flat over the pasta.
Want it the other way around? Start from a shape in the Pairing Finder.
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From the Almanac
Updates from Pasta Almanac, when there is something worth sharing.