Yes, You Love Pasta. But Do You Know the Difference Between Anolini and Pansoti?

T’s May 19 Travel issue is dedicated to pasta in Italy, diving deep into the culinary traditions, regional variations and complicated history of the country’s national symbol. Here, to complement Dawn Davis’s essay on Piedmont’s agnolotti del plin, is a list of seven other stuffed pastas — and where to find them.

1. ANOLINI

Round or crescent shaped, filled with slow-cooked meat, Parmesan and bread crumbs

Provenance: Emilia-Romagna

While anolini are closely associated with Parma — where they’re mentioned in local court documents from the middle of the 17th century — they’re also typical in Piacenza, 40 miles northwest. Although the name is widely believed to derive from anello, which means “ring,” anolini can be half-moons, too. Whatever the shape, they’re defined by their filling of stracotto: beef braised in wine until surrounded by a gravy-like sauce called a fondo. At Osteria del Trentino, near the old armory in Piacenza, several hundred anolini are prepared every other day in the restaurant’s small kitchen. The minced stracotto is mixed with bread crumbs, Parmesan and some of the fondo, then enclosed in fresh egg pasta. Each anolino is the size of a bottle cap, with a similarly serrated edge, and is cooked in what’s called brodo di terza (“broth of thirds”), the name referencing the three types of meat — beef, veal and chicken — that are simmered in water to produce a golden, flavorful broth.

2. CAPPELLACCI

Hat shaped, filled with pumpkin and Parmesan

Provenance: Emilia-Romagna

“Potbellies,” “donkey ears,” “pants,” “shoes,” “cockscombs,” “slaps” — English translations of filled pasta names are often entertaining but not entirely accurate. Translating gets even clumsier when suffixes are involved: “tortellini” (“little filled things”); “tortelloni” (“big filled things”); “cappelletti” (“little hats”). And then there is “cappellacci,” which is difficult to translate because “accio” is a pejorative suffix. “Ragazzo,” or “boy,” for example, becomes “ragazzaccio” (“bad boy”), while “cappello” (“hat”) is degraded to “cappellaccio” (“scruffy hat”), in line with the folk theory that the round, folded form of a cappellaccio is like a farmer’s straw hat.

In reality, cappellacci, with their filling of pumpkin, formaggio grana and nutmeg, have courtly origins, first mentioned in 1584 in a recipe book by a steward to the Duke of Ferrara in Emilia-Romagna. Five centuries later, cappellacci di zucca are a pillar of Ferraresi gastronomy, made at home or bought from fresh pasta shops and a fixture on every osteria menu. Of note are those made and served with butter and sage at Hostaria Savonarola in the middle of the city.

3. CJARSONS

Trouser shaped, with various fillings

Provenance: Friuli-Venezia Giulia

Depending on where you are in the northeastern Friuli-Venezia Giulia region, cjarsons are also known as cjalsons or cjalzòns. The word “cjarsons” shares etymology with the term “calzoni,” or “pants.” Angelo Negrini, who runs the restaurant Al Castello in the region’s village of Fagagna with his brother, Stefano, uses flour, potatoes and water to make dough, which he rolls thinly before cutting it into three-inch rounds. The filling depends on the season but always reflects the landscape and woodland beyond the kitchen door. In autumn, it might be prunes and pumpkin; in winter, fermented cheese; in spring, it’s invariably a mixture of cheese and wild herbs. Negrini puts a spoonful of filling at the center of each round before folding one half over the other and sealing the edges. To finish, he twists the corners away from the curve, giving them tapered ends.

4. CULURGIONES

Fig-like parcels filled with potato, two sorts of cheese and mint

Provenance: Sardinia

Homesick Sardinians will cross Rome to visit a shop called Pane e Vino Di Antonio Marchione. At first glance it seems like an ordinary, slightly spartan grocery store selling pasta, cereal and tubes of mayonnaise, with wine at the back. But then un-Roman things come into focus: the seven types of pebble-shaped fregula pasta, the stack of crackerlike pane carasau, the jars of bitter honey and bottles of myrtle liqueur. And then there’s the Sardinian owner taking orders for fresh-made culurgiones.

While all pasta shapes are edible sculptures, the description is particularly appropriate for Sardinian culurgiones. Especially culurgiones ogliastrini, from the province of Ogliastra on the island’s east coast, which are filled with potato, two kinds of cheese (pecorino and the soft, acidic casu axedu), mint and maybe garlic. They’re closed with a series of pleats and pinches that make the culurgiones look like plump figs with seams like wheat sheaves.

Traditionally made for feast days, culurgiones are surprisingly delicate and need only a few minutes in rapidly boiling water before they puff. Once plated, they’re topped with a spoonful of tomato sauce.

5. PANSOTI

Belly shaped, filled with greens, Parmesan and ricotta

Provenance: Liguria

“Pansoti,” also written as “pansotti,” means “potbellied” in Ligurian dialect. Because they don’t contain meat, they were most likely made for Lent and are mentioned in a 1931 travel guide as hailing from a city called Rapallo, just east of Genoa. It appears that at some point they were forgotten, only to be introduced as new at a 1961 gastronomic festival held in a Ligurian fishing village called Nervi.

Pansoti are now a fixture on osteria menus in and around Genoa and on the Ligurian coast. Each is stuffed with ricotta, Parmesan and greens, including a blend of local herbs, both wild and cultivated. Traditional recipes call for a mix of foraged plants — notably borage, dandelion and poppy — called preboggion. (These days, spinach or chard are often added, as well.) At Il Genovese, an informal osteria in the center of Genoa, pansoti are typically served in walnut sauce, in which the nut is blended with bread, milk, garlic and Parmesan cheese for a pesto.

6. SCARPINOCC

Shoe shaped, filled with cheese, dry bread crumbs, garlic and spices

Provenance: Lombardy

In the filled-pasta galaxy, there are constellations of related shapes, often from the same region, sometimes with similar names. There’s one such cluster in the province of Bergamo, in northern Italy’s Lombardy region: Casonsei, bertù and scarpinocc all share a half-moon shape, but each has its own idiosyncratic trait.

In the case of scarpinocc, which is a form specific to a town called Parre in the Alpine Seriana Valley, that distinction is a deep indent on the flat side that makes the scarpinocc look like a canoe or squashed sweet, although it’s meant to recall the scarpa (or “shoe”) historically worn by the town’s inhabitants. The filling of cheese and bread crumbs also reflects an area in which sheep rearing was the main form of subsistence for centuries. These days, scarpinocc di parre are largely made in local pasta factories and sold at small grocers, including Alimentari Scainelli, which supplies pasta for the Scarpinocc Festival held every August.

7. TORTELLI MAREMMANI

Large squares filled with chard, ricotta, Parmesan and nutmeg

Provenance: Tuscany and Lazio

In Maremma, a region straddling Tuscany’s southwest and northern Lazio, tortelli are often filled with greens and ricotta — a pairing born of the rural poverty that persisted in the area until just a few decades ago.

The term “tortello” derives from the word “torta,” used since antiquity to describe both cakes and things (usually pies) enclosed by two crusts. According to the historian Massimo Montanari, during the late medieval period (1300-1500), when the arts of torta and pasta making were developing side by side, there was a kind of synthesis of the two skills. A cook familiar with pies might have applied the same principle to a sheet of lasagna, folding small pieces around a spoonful of filling, deciding to seal it and wondering what would happen if it was boiled.

Tortelli can come in all sizes, ranging from that of a small stamp to that of a postcard, but the tortelli maremmani at the family-run restaurant Gli Attortellati in the Tuscan town of Grosseto are “grandi come un pugno” (or “large like a fist”), as the owner says. Each one is a four-inch square, with an impressive dome of filling, its edges sealed with a fork. Once boiled, two tortelli per person are topped with a small mound of slowly cooked pork-and-veal ragù.