Cappelletti

What it is

Pellegrino Artusi printed a cappelletti recipe in his 1891 cookbook, and it carried capon meat, veal, ham, and Parmigiano. The shape is the giveaway. Cooks lay filling on a small dough square, fold it to a triangle, then wrap it around a fingertip so the points meet into a little peaked hat. That fold sets it apart from tortellini, which close into a ring. The split is regional too. Around Bologna and Modena cooks lean to tortellini and meat. In Romagna and Ravenna the parcel becomes cappelletti, often with a lighter cheese and ricotta filling spiced with nutmeg and lemon zest. Emilia and Ferrara keep richer meat versions. The canonical service is in brodo. Families simmer a fatty broth of capon or chicken and float the parcels in it as a Christmas first course.

From Italian cappelletto, the diminutive of cappello (hat), formed with the suffix -etto, so the word reads as little hat. Cappello descends from Early Medieval Latin cappellus, itself a diminutive of Late Latin cappa, a head covering. The plural cappelletti means little hats and points to the pinched parcel shape said to recall a small medieval cap.