Corzetti

Corzetti date to the Middle Ages in Liguria. Food historians most often derive the name from the crozetto, a 14th-century Genoese coin, which — like the early pasta discs — bore a cross on one face; both words are traced to the Latin crux, «cross». By the Renaissance the discs had become a dish of the Genoese nobility, who had the wooden stamps carved with their family coats of arms, turning each plate into a small display of lineage. The stamps were handed down through families and traditionally given by a father-in-law to his daughter-in-law at her wedding; a handful of artisan turners still carve them by hand today.

Each disc is thin but firm, with a clean, smooth bite that is more taut than a soft filled pasta. The embossed pattern leaves the surface faintly ridged, so it feels textured on the tongue and carries little pools of sauce in its grooves. With the classic dressing the flavour is delicate: nutty browned butter and pine nuts, the warm, slightly resinous, oregano-like scent of marjoram, and a salty edge of grated cheese; with a meat sauce it turns richer and more robust. The white wine gives the dough a faint tang and helps keep it from being heavy.

The dough is rolled firm and fairly thin — egg and the gluten of the soft-wheat flour give it the structure to take a crisp impression and to hold it through boiling. The wooden stamp works by pressure: the disc is laid on the engraved base and the carved top pressed down with a firm press-and-twist, so the relief is mirrored cleanly onto both faces. That embossing is functional as well as ornamental, the ridges and hollows increasing the surface that grips a thin, fat-based sauce. The classic dressing is built on browned butter — heating butter past melting toasts its milk solids to a nutty aroma — into which marjoram and pine nuts infuse off direct high heat so their delicate, volatile aromas are not scorched.