Scialatelli (also known as scialatielli , sciliatielli and scivatieddi )
is a short, thick
pasta
Pasta (, ; ) is a type of food typically made from an unleavened dough of wheat flour mixed with water or eggs, and formed into sheets or other shapes, then cooked by boiling or baking. Rice flour, or legumes such as beans or lentils, are som ...
with a rectangular cross section and an almost straight but slightly irregular, slightly curvy shape. It is typical of modern
Campania
Campania (, also , , , ) is an administrative Regions of Italy, region of Italy; most of it is in the south-western portion of the Italian peninsula (with the Tyrrhenian Sea to its west), but it also includes the small Phlegraean Islands and the i ...
n cuisine, having originated on the
Amalfi coast
The Amalfi Coast ( it, Costiera amalfitana) is a stretch of coastline in southern Italy overlooking the Tyrrhenian Sea and the Gulf of Salerno. It is located south of the Sorrentine Peninsula and north of the Cilentan Coast.
Celebrated worldwide ...
as a chef's specialty,
but it has also spread in nearby regions such as
Calabria
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and
Basilicata
it, Lucano (man) it, Lucana (woman)
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(respectively, in the area of
Catanzaro and
Potenza
Potenza (, also , ; , Potentino dialect: ''Putenz'') is a ''comune'' in the Southern Italian region of Basilicata (former Lucania).
Capital of the Province of Potenza and the Basilicata region, the city is the highest regional capital and one ...
).
[
]
History
Scialatelli is a recent innovation, compared to many other Italian pasta shapes. The Italian chef Enrico Cosentino devised the shape in the late 1960s[ in his native ]Amalfi
Amalfi (, , ) is a town and ''comune'' in the province of Salerno, in the region of Campania, Italy, on the Gulf of Salerno. It lies at the mouth of a deep ravine, at the foot of Monte Cerreto (1,315 metres, 4,314 feet), surrounded by dramatic c ...
, while working in a local restaurant, and it gained recognition in 1978, when he won the '' Entremétier'' prize in an international culinary contest.
Etymology
''Scialatiello'' (singular for ''scialatielli'') may come from Neapolitan
Neapolitan means of or pertaining to Naples, a city in Italy; or to:
Geography and history
* Province of Naples, a province in the Campania region of southern Italy that includes the city
* Duchy of Naples, in existence during the Early and Hig ...
''scigliatiello'' or ''sciliatiello'', a derivative
In mathematics, the derivative of a function of a real variable measures the sensitivity to change of the function value (output value) with respect to a change in its argument (input value). Derivatives are a fundamental tool of calculus. F ...
of the verb ''sciglià'' ("to ruffle"),[ as each strip has a slightly irregular shape after being hand-made and plainly cut by a ]kitchen knife
A kitchen knife is any knife that is intended to be used in food preparation. While much of this work can be accomplished with a few general-purpose knives – notably a large chef's knife, a tough cleaver, a small paring knife and some sort of ...
. Another theory about this pasta name is that it comes from Neapolitan ''scialà'' ("to enjoy") and ''tiella'' ("pan"),[ though it rather sounds like a ]folk etymology
Folk etymology (also known as popular etymology, analogical reformation, reanalysis, morphological reanalysis or etymological reinterpretation) is a change in a word or phrase resulting from the replacement of an unfamiliar form by a more famili ...
resulted from a linguistic corruption
Language change is variation over time in a language's features. It is studied in several subfields of linguistics: historical linguistics, sociolinguistics, and evolutionary linguistics. Traditional theories of historical linguistics identify ...
of the original word.
Notes
References
Cuisine of Campania
Types of pasta
{{Italy-cuisine-stub