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The Invention of a New Pasta Shape

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41–50 of 191 posts

Re: The Invention of a New Pasta Shape

#41
post #5

For whatever reason, this reminds me of that guy that salted a steak all weird and people lost their minds. This was right after Trump was elected and there were riots... general chaos in the world. Yet, some dude salting a steak egregiously was the big thing for a while. I want this pasta shape to blow up just the same. I mean hell, spending 3 years on a new product is interesting and I hope the folks involved gain…

"The invention of a new dish does more for the happiness of mankind than the discovery of a new star" -- Brillat-Savarin

Re: The Invention of a New Pasta Shape

#42
post #4

Planet Money just did a 25 minute podcast with the inventor on the business side of making the pasta, including getting the patent, manufacturing the die, and finding a pasta maker who would agree to produce a limited run: https://www.npr.org/2021/03/19/979274990/the-new-shape-of-pa...

[deleted]

Re: The Invention of a New Pasta Shape

#43
post #8

Ew. Looks like a sea slug. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_slug#/media/File:Glossodor...

Unsurprisingly the sea slug uses its ruffles for the same purpose of increasing surface area [0], albeit for photosynthesis instead of sauce carrying:

> This slug, like other Sacoglossa uses kleptoplasty, a process in which the slug absorbs chloroplasts from the algae it eats, and uses "stolen" cells to photosynthesize sugars. The ruffles of the lettuce sea slug increase the slug's surface area, allowing the cells to absorb more light.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_slug#Diversity_in_sea_slug...

Re: The Invention of a New Pasta Shape

#44
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it looks like they just dissected the fisarmoniche into thirds: https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-fisarmoniche-pasta-close-u...

Are those the same as the more common radiatori, or are my eyes just not seeing a difference? (Maybe the fisarmoniche are bigger?)

The fisarmoniche have a wiggle in the fins, whereas the radiatori don't.

Re: The Invention of a New Pasta Shape

#45
post #19

The year is 2045. 35 percent of humanity's GDP is invested in improving pasta technology. The current record-setting pasta is being extruded through a bronze die which had been cast into a void produced by activated charcoal formed around transformer-derived non-euclidean topologies. A one-quarter-inch pasta has three square miles of surface area.

Extrusion is soooo 2032. Here in 2045 we direct nanobots to assemble our 3D-fractal pasta to atomic precision. Look for it under the brand name FractalDente™.

Mandelbrotini™

Re: The Invention of a New Pasta Shape

#46

The year is 2045. 35 percent of humanity's GDP is invested in improving pasta technology. The current record-setting pasta is being extruded through a bronze die which had been cast into a void produced by activated charcoal formed around transformer-derived non-euclidean topologies. A one-quarter-inch pasta has three square miles of surface area.

Presumably GPT-23 was put in charge of the world economy and told to maximise the utilization of open sauce.

Re: The Invention of a New Pasta Shape

#48

One of their advertising points is using right angles and varying thicknesses to produce different textures... so while parts will be aldente others mushy I guess. Sounds a lot like marketing attempting to pass off a bad feature as a positive

"al dente" isn't really a quality _part_ of a piece of pasta can have. If the whole thing is al dente... that's just undercooked.

The entire appeal of cooking it that way is having the variance in texture in the same piece. It absolutely makes sense to design a pasta shape that optimizes for that. In fact a lot of pasta shapes already do, whether or not it was intentional.

Re: The Invention of a New Pasta Shape

#49
post #34
post #5

For whatever reason, this reminds me of that guy that salted a steak all weird and people lost their minds. This was right after Trump was elected and there were riots... general chaos in the world. Yet, some dude salting a steak egregiously was the big thing for a while. I want this pasta shape to blow up just the same. I mean hell, spending 3 years on a new product is interesting and I hope the folks involved gain…

I mean, it wasn’t that much chaos, for most people. If you’re in the middle of a riot, sure, but otherwise? Trump’s election was dramatic but it was hardly show stopping.

Ended up stopping the show pretty hard for half a million people.
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