Details

Legendre [1] describes pasta types through ranges , and equations , , .

For the Gramigna shape, the equations are:

with running from 0 to 25 and from 0 to 150.

The triple describes the 3D surface, the pair the cross section, and the pair the profile.

There is a checkbox to switch the axes on/off in all three plots. The units are in millimeters (mm).

Alexander classifies Italian pastas in eight families in his morphological taxonomy [2]:

Families of Italian pasta: (1) spaghetti, (2) tubular, (3) shell, (4) ribbon, (5) short, (6) micro pasta, (7) ravioli, (8) dumpling.

Furthermore, he lists examples for each class of pasta shape, including their geographical origin. For example, tortellini are grouped within family 7, the filled pasta, and they originated in Bologna (Romagna).

For each example shape in this Demonstration, the province of its geographical origin is displayed in orange on a map of Italy. The names of the provinces are displayed while the mouse pointer is in the area of the corresponding province.

For the nutritional calculations, one serving (2 oz/57 g) of pasta was used. In Wolfram|Alpha, for several pasta shapes the nutrition facts were not available. For some of these cases, similar shapes were substituted (e.g. Rotini was used for Fusili).

References

[1] G. L. Legendre, Pasta by Design, London: Thames & Hudson, 2011.

[2] D. Alexander, "The Geography of Italian Pasta," Professional Geographer, 52(3), 2000 pp. 553–566. doi:10.1111/0033-0124.00246.