Maccheroncini di Campofilone

Maccheroncini di Campofilone take their name from the hill borgo of Campofilone, above the Adriatic in the province of Fermo, where the thinnest of egg pastas has been made for centuries. Records from the local abbey note a very fine 'maccaroni' as early as the fifteenth century, likened to angel hair; the pasta is said to have been served at the Council of Trent around 1560, and the nineteenth-century poet Giacomo Leopardi listed the maccheroncini among his favourite dishes. The Touring Club's gastronomic guide recorded it in 1931. In 2013 it became the only Italian egg pasta to be granted an IGP, its production tied to the municipality of Campofilone and its recipe fixed at a minimum of one-third egg with no added water.

The bite is delicate and silky — the threads are so fine they melt together into a soft, golden tangle, tender through and through, carrying the deep savour of the meat ragù that has soaked into them.

With seven to ten eggs per kilo of flour and no water, egg is the only liquid: the lecithin in the yolks emulsifies fat through the dough for a smooth, tender crumb, the yolk carotenoids turn it deep gold, and the egg proteins coagulate on cooking to give the fine threads their silky set. Rolled to a fraction of a millimetre and cut to hair's-breadth strands, the pasta has an enormous surface-to-mass ratio, so water penetrates and the starch gelatinises almost at once — hence the sub-minute cooking. The dough's very low moisture and its slow drying at 28–40°C leave a dry, porous strand that rehydrates instantly and wicks up sauce by capillary action, absorbing close to twice its weight.