I have learned over the years that different pastas are more than just different shapes and sizes. Each pasta has different texture, and the patterns are more than just pretty decorations. Most people are familiar with the spaghetti, fettucine, linguine and macaroni, and their related specialties. 

 

Spaghetti is best suited for tomato based sauces, fettucine holds on to creamy sauces, linguine sops up more liquidy sauces and macaroni is a star when paired with a cheesy sauce. Take a closer look at why certain pastas work with some sauces better than others and you will see that most of the reasons have to do with how well the “shape”  - round, thin, flat, hollow, textured - holds onto the sauce it is paired with.  

These are by no means the rules of pasta and sauces, per se, no more than white meat and white wine, or red meat and red wine. They make great guidelines for experimentation, the more we learn each “rule” the more we can expand outwards and eventually, much like English grammar, you have gotten to the point where you comprehend the rules, so now you get to break them. And goodness, do I love breaking the rules.