The Spaghetti Laboratory

You know I love pasta shapes. Most people do, judging by the huge variety sold. But we could be taking our noodle technology so much farther. After all, m0st strains of pasta date back hundreds of years, to little Calabrian villages where the only technology was old woman hands. Pasta-extruding machines have helped us achieve angel-hair levels of thinness (I forget. Which is considered better? Coarse hair or fine hair? I could go either way.) but those machines are just glorified meat grinders.

We live in a modern society. We can do better. I don't believe that the composition of normal spaghetti-type pasta doesn't allow for more slimming. Capellini is pretty sturdy, all things considered. You can rattle a box in the store, and place it at the bottom of your shopping cart, and most of the noodles will remain intact. With gentle handling, even thinner pasta would survive. And if you used science, you could probably re-engineer the noodle recipe to allow for extra sturdiness. Carbon nanotubes? Yum.

But diameter is not all. It must be possible to make pasta in the shape of a Klein bottle. Boil them plain, or stuffed. For that matter, how about Moebius strip fettucini? I know we already have very long noodles, but I don't think anyone has tried curving the noodles back on themselves, to make them circular. They would have to have a smaller diameter than a large pot -- otherwise, you couldn't cook them -- but I think it would be a good effect.

Man realized a long time ago that pasta tastes boring. If he tried to circumvent that problem by inventing interesting shapes to please the mind, then why should we abandon that project? We live in a fast-paced society, and even the little bow-tie pastas are ashes in our mouths. If our malaise can't be cured with technological, scientific pasta... well we might as well give up the whole civilization project, because this is what we have been striving for, perhaps without even knowing it.