Cavatappi
kah-vah-TAH-pee
Also known as cellentani, double elbows, scoobi doo, amori, serpentini.
What it is
The twist may have begun as a factory mistake. As the story is told, a set of Barilla dies was cut with spiral grooves instead of straight ones, and the tubes came out of the extruder coiled like springs. Accounts differ on the date, with both the 1960s and the 1970s reported. Barilla sold the new shape as cellentani, a reported tribute to pop singer Adriano Celentano, nicknamed il Molleggiato, the springy one, for his bouncing stage moves. Barilla held the trademark on that name, so rival producers needed a generic word. Cavatappi, Italian for corkscrew, stuck. The shape now travels under many labels. Rummo sells it as riccioli, Pasta Montana as scoobi doo, and parts of North America call it double elbows. Whatever the label, this is a modern industrial design, born from extrusion dies rather than any regional hand tradition.
Italian cavatappi means corkscrew, a verb-object compound of cavare, to pull out, and tappi, corks, per Wiktionary and Treccani. The pasta borrowed the bar tool's name for its helical twist.
What sauce it wants, and why
Cavatappi grips sauce three ways at once. The hollow center pulls sauce inside the tube. The helix bends that tube through two or three turns, so liquid pools in the curves. Ridges along the outside give cheese and cream something to cling to. That triple hold is why American cooks reach for it when upgrading mac and cheese. A thick cheddar sauce coats the ridges, fills the bore, and sits in the coil instead of sliding off. The same logic carries chunky tomato sauces, meat ragu, pesto, and dressed pasta salads.
Classic plates: mac and cheese, cavatappi all'amatriciana, pasta salad.
No cavatappi? Use these
Closest swaps by sauce behavior, not by looks. The ones most easily confused with cavatappi, and how they read.
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From the Almanac
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