My private Italy: Tortellini and its siblings, a journey through the stuffed pasta of Emilia-Romagna

There is a strip of land, a little over two hundred kilometers long, running along the Via Emilia, where stuffed pasta is not simply a dish: it is an identity, a matter of local pride, a centuries-old dispute, and a domestic ritual. Emilia-Romagna is the undisputed homeland of the tortellino, but reducing the question to a single shape would be an unforgivable wrong to a region where every city — and sometimes every family — guards its own version, its own fold, its own filling.

From Piacenza to Rimini unfolds a gastronomic geography made of tortellini, cappelletti, anolini, tortelli, cappellacci, and balanzoni: a taxonomy that tells centuries of history, of Renaissance courts, of azdore (matriarchs of the home) and sfogline (pasta-rolling women).

The origins: between History and Legend

The documented history of tortellini dates back to the Middle Ages. Already in the 12th century, in Bolognese territory, references appear to stuffed pasta served on feast days; a document from 1112 mentions twisted breads, and in the 14th century, meat-filled “torte” were common on noble tables. Boccaccio, in the Decameron, imagines in the land of Bengodi (elsewhere called “Il Paese della Cuccagna”) a mountain of grated Parmesan cheese down which roll “macaroni and ravioli”: a sign that the idea of stuffed pasta cooked in capon broth was already rooted in the fourteenth-century imagination.

But it is legend, more than philology, that has crowned tortellini. It is said that in Castelfranco Emilia — a town disputed halfway between Bologna and Modena, and not by chance — a curious innkeeper spied through the keyhole on a noblewoman staying at his inn (in some versions she is none other than Venus herself, descended among mortals). Struck by the sight of her navel, the innkeeper rushed to the kitchen and tried to reproduce its shape in a small square of pasta dough folded around his finger. Thus the tortellino was born, “Venus’s navel”: a legend also fueled by the mock-heroic poem “La secchia rapita” (The Stolen Bucket) by Alessandro Tassoni (1622), which stages precisely the warlike rivalry between the people of Bologna and Modena — the same rivalry still fought today, fortunately, only with rolling pins.

Castelfranco Emilia, for its part, has turned the legend into heritage: every September the Sagra del Tortellino Tradizionale (Traditional Tortellino Festival) re-enacts the innkeeper’s scene in costume and celebrates the dish that made the town famous.

Bologna and Modena: The Dispute Over the Navel

Who invented the “tortellino”? Bologna and Modena have contended over it for centuries, and the question has never truly been settled — nor, probably, does anyone wish to settle it, since the dispute is itself part of the ritual. What is certain is that on December 7, 1974, the Dotta Confraternita del Tortellino (Learned Brotherhood of the Tortellino), together with the Italian Academy of Cuisine, filed with a notarial deed at the Bologna Chamber of Commerce the “official” recipe for the filling: pork loin, raw ham, Bologna mortadella, Parmigiano Reggiano, eggs, and nutmeg. A codification that sets a canon, even while knowing that every family will continue to jealously guard its own secret proportions.

The pasta sheet, strictly egg-based and rolled out with a pin by the sfogline — almost priestly figures of Emilian cuisine — is cut into tiny squares, three or four centimeters to a side. In the center goes a hazelnut-sized bit of filling, then the fold into a triangle, the sealing of the edges, and finally the decisive gesture: wrapping it around the little finger, which closes the tortellino into its unmistakable ring shape. In Bologna the tendency is toward a slightly larger size, in Modena a smaller one with a more generous percentage of ham in the filling: nuances, certainly, but nuances people are willing to argue about for hours.

On one point, however, Bologna and Modena are rock-solid and united: tortellini are served in broth, and the broth is meat broth — capon or hen and beef, simmered for a long time. Tortellini in cream sauce, which spread after the Second World War and is much loved abroad, is considered by purists little short of heresy; as for versions with ham and peas or, worse, Bolognese-style with meat ragù, it is best not to mention them in public between the Reno and Secchia rivers. Tortellini in broth is the Christmas dish par excellence: in Emilian homes, Christmas Eve is measured in hundreds of hand-sealed pieces, in whole afternoons spent around the family board, three generations lined up folding pasta.

Cappelletti: Romagna, Reggio, and Ferrara

Moving east and west along the Via Emilia, the tortellino gives way to the cappelletto, its larger cousin, so named because its shape recalls a medieval hat. But beware: very different traditions coexist under the same name.

In Romagna — from Imola to Forlì, from Cesena to Ravenna and on to Rimini — the cappelletto (caplèt in dialect) traditionally has a filling of cheeses alone: raviggiolo or squacquerone, ricotta, Parmesan, lemon zest, and nutmeg. This is the “lean” version, born of a land historically poorer in meat than opulent Emilia, and it was already described in 1811 in a Napoleonic survey of the traditions of the Department of the Rubicone. Pellegrino Artusi, the father of modern Italian cuisine, born in Forlimpopoli, codified in his famous 1891 manual the “cappelletti alla romagnola” allowing a little capon breast in the filling as well. Here too the christening is in capon broth, especially at Christmas.

In Reggio Emilia, by contrast, the cappelletto (caplèt) has a meat filling and stands out for an entirely local, now almost legendary custom: broth “with grace,” meaning with a glass of Lambrusco added directly to the steaming bowl — the bèvr’in vén, a relative of the Mantuan bevr’in vin.

In Ferrara, an Este city with a refined gastronomic destiny, the caplìt coexists with the shape most identified with the city: the “cappellaccio di zucca” (caplaz in the local dialect), a large pasta filled with violina squash, Parmesan, and nutmeg, already documented in the recipe books of the Este court in the sixteenth century — Cristoforo da Messisbugo and Giovan Battista Rossetti describe its ancestors. The cappellaccio, today a PGI product, is dressed with butter and sage or with meat ragù, in a sweet-and-savory contrast that is the signature of Ferrarese cuisine.

Anolini and Tortelli: Western Emilia

Heading up the Via Emilia to the northwest, in Parma and Piacenza the anolino reigns (anolén in Parma, anvëin in Piacenza): a disc or half-moon of stuffed pasta whose heart is beef stracotto, braised for hours (tradition even calls for days) in wine and aromatics, then mixed with breadcrumbs and Parmesan. In Piacenza and some areas of the Parma countryside there is also a “lean” version, without meat, made only of cheese and bread. The anolino too is a Christmas dish and is served, needless to say, in “triple” broth — of beef, capon, and pork. Bartolomeo Scappi, cook to the popes in the sixteenth century, already mentioned “anolini” in his works.

Parma is also the land of tortél dóls (sweet tortelli from the Bassa, filled with mostarda and plum jam) and, like all of Emilia, of tortelli d’erbetta: filled with ricotta and chard, dressed with melted butter and Parmesan, absolute stars of the dinner on the eve of St. John’s Day (June 23), when in Parma they are eaten outdoors while waiting for the night’s “miraculous” dew.

In Bologna, alongside the tortellino, lives its bigger sibling: the tortellone, filled with ricotta, parsley (or spinach), and Parmesan, dressed with butter and sage. And a curiosity entirely Bolognese: the balanzone, a green tortellone made of spinach pasta filled with mortadella and ricotta, which takes its name from the Bolognese mask of Doctor Balanzone, the pedantic, talkative lawyer of the Commedia dell’Arte.

A short diversion south of Via Emilia: Tortello in Tuscany

Cross the Apennines and the tortello changes temperament along with its name. Where Emilia-Romagna prizes the miniature — the tortellino folded ring-small around a pinch of filling and served in broth — Tuscany goes the other way: its tortelli are large, hearty squares meant to be eaten dry, dressed with ragù or simply butter and sage, never swimming in a bowl of broth. The proportions invert too: Emilian pasta cradles a generous, often meat-and-cheese-rich filling in a thin, precise wrapper, while the Tuscan tortello is prized for its “wide sidewalks” of pasta around a plainer, more rustic core — ricotta and spinach in the Maremma, potato in the hill country, minced meat and stale bread in the tordelli of Lucca and Versilia.

It is, in short, the same medieval idea of stuffed pasta the two regions share, filtered through Emilia’s courtly refinement on one side of the mountains and Tuscany’s peasant economy of cheese, greens, and leftover bread on the other.

A Living Heritage

What makes the galaxy of Emilia-Romagna’s stuffed pasta unique is not only the variety of shapes, but the cultural system that sustains it. The “sfogline” and the “azdore” (the “keepers” of the Romagna household) have handed down through generations a manual knowledge that schools, confraternities, and festivals today try to preserve: the Dotta Confraternita del Tortellino in Bologna, the Tortellino Festival, the Castelfranco festival, the contests among Reggio’s rezdore. The gesture of closing a tortellino around the little finger — small, identical, repeated thousands of times — has become the symbol of a region that has made cuisine its diplomacy and the table its parliament.

Bologna the Learned and the Fat, Modena of engines and balsamic vinegar, ducal Parma, Este Ferrara, the Romagna of the azdore: each folds its pasta its own way, and each is convinced — with excellent reasons — that it is right. Perhaps this is precisely the secret of the tortellino and its siblings: not a single dish, but an eight-centuries-long conversation, one that continues every Sunday, in every kitchen, around a flour-dusted board. And one that, fortunately, will never end.