Penne Pasta: Italy's Quill-Cut Tube Shape, Explained

Penne is the diagonal-cut tube — about an inch long, 6-8mm across, with the cut creating two sharp points that gave the shape its name (penne, Italian for "quills"). The origin is contested between Liguria and Campania, with Liguria holding the patent paper trail. It's the shape that defines penne all'arrabbiata, penne alla vodka, and the entire American Italian-restaurant tube category — the default pasta you get when nobody asks what kind.

What Is Penne?

Penne is tubular wheat pasta cut on a diagonal, typically 1 inch long and 6-8mm in diameter. The diagonal slice — not a straight crosscut — is the whole point. It creates pointed ends that the Italians called penne (quills), after the trimmed feather pens that scribes used before the steel nib. The name fixed itself in the late 1800s. Before that, this shape went by regional names that no longer matter.

The standardization is recent. In 1865, a Ligurian pasta maker named Giovanni Battista Capurro filed a patent in San Martino d'Albaro (now part of Genoa) for the diagonal-cut tube — specifically the machine that produced it. That patent is the closest thing penne has to a birth certificate. Campania disputes the claim, arguing that the shape existed in Naples decades earlier and that Capurro merely industrialized it. Both regions are probably right: Naples ate it first, Liguria scaled it.

Penne splits into two shapes on US shelves. Penne rigate (rigate meaning "ridged" in Italian) is the dominant version — scored with parallel ridges that run the length of the tube. Penne lisce (lisce meaning "smooth") has a glossy unridged surface. Rigate is what 95% of US grocery stores stock by default; lisce shows up at Italian specialty grocers and a handful of imported lines. The shape requires extrusion through a die, which is why penne is never homemade.

Flavor Profile / Texture

Penne is neutral durum wheat with a firm al dente bite when cooked right. What you're really tasting in a finished plate is the sauce, multiplied by the geometry of the noodle. That geometry does three things at once.

The diagonal cut creates pointed ends that catch chunky sauce mid-bite — pancetta, sausage crumble, capers, olives all get speared on the cut edge. The ridged exterior (on penne rigate) grabs cream and emulsified sauces the way Velcro grabs fleece; a vodka sauce that would slip off smooth spaghetti clings to rigate ridges with no help. And the inner tube fills with the sauce itself — the hollow becomes a reservoir, so every bite carries an interior payload.

This is why penne dominates Italian-American baked pasta and why it loses to long shapes when the sauce is light. Olive oil and garlic slide right through the tube and pool at the bottom of the bowl. Penne wants something with body.

Penne Rigate vs Penne Lisce vs Mostaccioli

These three names cover most of what you'll see in US stores, and the distinctions are real:

• Penne rigate — Ridged exterior, the default. Holds cream and chunky sauces. This is what you want for vodka sauce, arrabbiata, sausage-and-pepper bake, and almost every recipe that says "penne."
• Penne lisce — Smooth exterior. Older Italian tradition, particularly in Sicily and parts of southern Italy, prefers lisce for delicate sauces and seafood applications. Harder to find in US grocery; check De Cecco's specialty line or an Italian deli.
• Mostaccioli — The American name. In the Midwest especially, mostaccioli shows up on church-supper menus and at Italian-American funerals as a synonym for penne — sometimes smooth, sometimes ridged, almost always for a baked casserole with red sauce and mozzarella. The word comes from southern Italian dialect for "little mustaches," referencing the same cut. If you see "mostaccioli" on a US menu, expect penne. The kitchen rule: if a recipe just says "penne," buy rigate. If it specifies lisce, the author had a reason.

Where to Find Penne in the US

Penne is mainstream-grocery default. Every Kroger, Safeway, Publix, Albertsons, and Whole Foods stocks it. The brand ladder is consistent nationwide:

• Barilla penne rigate — $1.79-$2.49 for a 1-lb box at Kroger, Safeway, Target. Teflon-die extrusion, smoother surface, fine for a Tuesday.
• De Cecco — $3.49-$3.99 at most chains, sometimes $2.99 on sale. Bronze-die extrusion (bronze-die = pasta pushed through a bronze mold rather than Teflon, leaving a rough, porous surface that grabs sauce). Noticeably better texture.
• Garofalo — $3.99-$4.99 at Whole Foods, Wegmans, and Italian markets. Bronze-die, Naples-region producer, IGP-certified durum.
• Rummo — $4.99-$5.99, the upgrade pick. Slow-dried at low temperature (their Lenta Lavorazione process), which gives a firmer al dente window — easier to nail the cook time. Whole Foods, Wegmans, and most upscale grocers.

De Cecco rigate is the value pick. The price-to-quality ratio beats both Barilla (cheaper, worse) and Rummo (better, more expensive). Amazon Subscribe & Save runs De Cecco 6-packs at around $19 — about $3.17 a box.

Making Penne at Home

You don't. Penne is an industrial shape — the diagonal cut and uniform tube diameter require a metal extrusion die and a mechanical cutter angled at the right pitch. No home pasta machine produces it. Even a $400 Marcato Atlas with the full attachment set can make tagliatelle, pappardelle, and lasagna sheets, but not penne. The shape belongs to the factory.

What home cooks control is the cook:

• Cook time: 11 minutes for De Cecco and Garofalo rigate, 12-13 minutes for Rummo (slow-dried, takes longer to hydrate), 10-11 minutes for Barilla. Pull pasta 1 minute before box time if you're finishing it in sauce.
• Water-to-pasta ratio: 4 quarts of water per 1 lb of pasta. Less than that and the starch concentrates, the temperature crashes when you add the pasta, and the noodles clump.
• Salt level: 1 to 1.5 tablespoons of kosher salt per 4 quarts. The water should taste like the sea. Unsalted water gives you flavorless pasta no sauce can rescue.
• Reserve pasta water. Half a cup before draining, every time. The starchy water emulsifies cream sauces and loosens tomato sauces that have tightened.
• Finish in the pan. Drain at one minute under al dente, transfer to the sauce pan with a splash of pasta water, and let the last minute happen in the sauce. This is the difference between Italian penne and American penne with sauce ladled on top.

What to Pair With Penne

The geometry steers the pairings:

• Penne all'arrabbiata (arrabbiata = Italian "angry"-style, meaning aggressively spicy with chili) — Tomato, garlic, dried chili, olive oil, finished with Pecorino. The Roman benchmark. If a restaurant's arrabbiata doesn't make you sweat, the kitchen is hedging.
• Penne alla vodka — Tomato, heavy cream, vodka, butter, Parmigiano. The pink sauce. Vodka releases tomato flavor compounds that water can't, and the alcohol cooks off in 3-4 minutes.
• Ragù alla bolognese — Controversial. Tagliatelle is the canonical Bolognese partner in Emilia-Romagna; serving bolognese on penne is an American convention that Italians find amusing. The tube does catch the meat well, though.
• Pesto alla genovese — Penne is a fair (not ideal) pesto vehicle. The ridges hold the basil oil; the tubes don't fill the way they do with cream. Trofie or trenette is the Ligurian default.
• Baked pasta al forno — Penne's structural integrity holds up to 30 minutes in a 400°F oven where spaghetti would turn to glue. The American baked ziti — usually mozzarella, ricotta, marinara — is the obvious move; penne arrabbiata al forno with sausage is the upgrade.
• Sausage and cream sauces — Italian sausage crumbled into a cream-and-tomato base fills the tubes and the ridges hold the sauce. A weekday workhorse.

A Cultural Note

Penne carries two long arguments. The first is regional: who actually invented it? Liguria points to Capurro's 1865 patent. Campania points to oral tradition and the fact that diagonal-cut tubes were eaten in Naples before Capurro filed his paperwork. Food historian Oretta Zanini De Vita, in Encyclopedia of Pasta (2009), credits Liguria with the industrial standardization and Campania with the culinary precedent — probably the right answer.

The second argument involves penne alla vodka, which is — depending on who you ask — either the most beloved Italian-American invention or the most embarrassing one. The most-cited origin is Orsini's restaurant on West 56th Street in Manhattan in the 1970s, where the chef reportedly developed it as a flashy tableside dish. The dish was huge in the 1980s, declined to a 1990s suburban-Italian punchline, then died for two decades.

Then Gigi Hadid posted her vodka-pasta recipe on Instagram in April 2020, mid-pandemic, and the dish detonated. The recipe — a simplified vodka sauce on penne or rigatoni — went viral on TikTok, racked up tens of millions of views, and is now the single most-searched pasta recipe of the 2020s. Bon Appétit ran a full reassessment in 2022 arguing the Hadid version was, broadly, correct. The Roman food establishment remains unconvinced. Penne, indifferent to all of it, continues to sit on the grocery shelf at $1.79 a box.

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