Cascatelli
Measured to scale. The illustrated portrait is in production.
Specifications
a curved half-tube central channel flanked by two parallel ruffled frills, each projecting at roughly a right angle
What it is
Cascatelli is the rare modern pasta shape with a documented birthday. Dan Pashman, host of the food podcast The Sporkful, designed it over three years with the New York maker Sfoglini and released it in 2021. He set out to optimize three qualities he called sauceability, forkability, and toothsinkability, borrowing the ruffled edges from mafalda and the half tube body from bucatini. The result is a flat strip flanked by a pair of ruffles, each standing out at a right angle, with a central channel that acts as a sauce trough.
From Italian cascate, meaning waterfalls, and the diminutive cascatelle, little waterfalls. The inventor chose the masculine ending elli over the grammatically correct elle because, in his words, it sounds more like a pasta name.
What sauce it wants, and why
The geometry is built around catching sauce. The curved central channel forms a trough that pools thick, chunky sauces, while the two ruffled edges add surface area and grip that hold onto meat and vegetables. The substantial wall thickness, which also lengthens the cook time, gives it the toothsink the designer engineered for, so it stands up to heavy ragu rather than collapsing under it.
No cascatelli? Use these
Closest swaps by sauce behavior, not by looks. The ones most easily confused with cascatelli, and how they read.
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From the Almanac
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