Quadrucci
kwah-DROO-chee
Also known as quadretti, quadrettini.
Specifications
small flat square of egg pasta
What it is
Treccani defines quadrucci as small egg-pasta squares for broth, quadrucci all'uovo. The sticky detail: they began as thrift, cut like maltagliati from the leftover trimmings of the egg sheet rolled for the festival-day tagliatelle, so nothing of the sfoglia went to waste.
From Italian quadro, square, from Latin quadrum, plus the diminutive suffix -uccio, so literally little squares. The singular is quadruccio. Treccani and Wiktionary record the plural quadrucci as a small egg pasta cut for broth.
What sauce it wants, and why
Quadrucci are built for broth, not for a clinging sauce. The squares are small and thin, so they cook in a couple of minutes and stay suspended in the liquid, giving a spoonful that carries pasta and brodo together. Their flat faces hold just enough body to read as pasta without thickening the soup into a stew.
Classic plates: quadrucci in brodo.
No quadrucci? Use these
Closest swaps by sauce behavior, not by looks. The ones most easily confused with quadrucci, and how they read.
