From Sardinian culurgiones to Friulian cjarsons, from Bolognese tortellini to Romagnolo cappelletti, the first phylogenetic tree of Italian stuffed pasta is ready, obtained by applying a scientific method typical of biology for the first time to one of the most iconic elements of Italian tradition. The result is due to the study led by the Department of Biology at the University of Padua and conducted in collaboration with the Universities of Bari, University of Gastronomic Sciences of Pollenzo (Cuneo), and University of Federico II in Naples. The analysis, published in the Discover Food journal, indicates that stuffed pasta, originated in Eurasia, first arrived in Northern Italy and spread from there to the rest of the peninsula.
“This work presents the first interdisciplinary approach in which a methodology commonly used in the biological sciences has been applied to shed light on issues within the field of food sciences: where does this incredible diversity of Italian stuffed pasta come from, and how are these varieties related to each other?” observes the first author of the research, Vazrick Nazari.
“Where there is a lot of biological diversity, there is usually also a lot of cultural diversity: it’s called biocultural diversity, and Italy is rich in it,” notes Telmo Pievani, who coordinated the study. “Food arises from the intersection of biology and culture. With this study – Pievani adds – we show that the evolutionary approach can reconstruct not only the genealogical tree of species – Pievani contends – but sometimes also that of cultural artifacts. Even stuffed pasta.”
Researchers reconstructed a true phylogenetic tree of stuffed pasta using both data from the scientific literature on the subject and some reference texts of Italian cuisine, such as Pellegrino Artusi’s 1891 book, “Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well.”
In this way, they selected 28 representative formats from across the country and, analyzing characteristics such as ingredients, size, and folding, they obtained a phylogenetic tree that reconstructs the probable origin and diffusion of stuffed pasta in Italy and the relationships between different formats.
This revealed a primary distinction between two major families: tortellini, more three-dimensional, and ravioli, flatter. Both groups appear to originate from Northern Italy. The only outsiders to these two families are the Sardinian culurgiones, suggesting that in Sardinia, the tradition of stuffed pasta may have originated independently.
The first phylogenetic tree of stuffed pasta (source: Nazari et al., Discover Food, 2024)
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