Made from flour and water, it's one of the most basic foods. And it's versatile, available in hundreds of shapes and used in endless dishes.
"Pasta by Design" (Thames & Hudson), by the London-based architect George L. Legendre, takes an unusual look at the Italian favorite. There is information about more than 90 kinds, including where each is from and its traditional preparations.
The shape of each is described in elaborate mathematical formulas and shown in a technical illustration. There's also a pasta family tree that groups the shapes into categories, like solid or hollow, smooth or striated, twisted or bunched. Here is a look at five pastas and their renderings.
Named at the turn of the 20th century after Princess Mafalda of the House of Savoy, mafaldine (like lasagna, but narrower) is generally served with meaty sauces or in seafood dishes. (Above the rendering is an equation for one of its dimensions.)
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Thames & HudsonGalletti
This tubular pasta with an undulating crest is usually served in tomato sauces, but it goes equally well with a boscaiola, or woodsman's, sauce of mushrooms.
Part of the extended fusilli clan, this shape has a hollow interior and a long twisted profile. Like all fusilli, it is traditionally eaten with a meat-based ragu but can also be combined with thick vegetable sauces and baked in the oven.
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Thames & HudsonFisarmoniche
Named after the accordion, fisarmoniche is good for capturing thick sauces, which cling to its folds. This sturdy pasta is said to have been invented in the 15th century.
These "little purses" are made from circles of durum-wheat dough. A spoonful of ricotta or other filling is placed in the dough, then the corners are pinched together to make a bundle. Near left, a graph of its cross-section.
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Thames & HudsonFagottini
CRABBY bosses, stupid rules, labyrinthine office politics: the corporate world is not for sissies anymore. Why? The conventional wisdom blames downsizing. But maybe, just maybe, the problems of the corporate world were caused by a single pernicious custom: the consumption of fizzy water at lunch.
It was about 1980 when people in their 20's and 30's, suddenly realizing that they might not be immortal after all, began to stimulate their endorphins at the gym instead of with gin. Then in 1986, the Internal Revenue Service decided it would no longer allow midday martini swilling as a deductible business expense. By May 4, 1987, Industry Week magazine was reporting that the number of executives who regularly drank alcohol at lunch had plunged from 56 percent to 26 percent.
They substituted designer water (no ice, it bruises the bubbles).
Taken in moderation, such water is undeniably potable. But the cumulative effect has been not only a work force that is far too alert for its own good, but also managers with mineral deposits where their hearts used to be.
It used to be, as the advertising-executive-turned-restaurateur Jerry Della Femina once put it, that ''this big alcoholic fog rolled in all over New York City every day after lunch.'' In other words, the day was divided into two balanced parts. Bosses and workers were awake, efficient, businesslike and fully functioning before lunch. After lunch, they apologized for any fits (or sharp objects) that they might have thrown that morning. Whatever tensions built up were worked out (or off) by the end of the day, and nobody expected anybody to work into the night.
But now, under the influence of fizzy water, people remain alert, anxious and functional all day long. This has created a world of too much thinking, too many projects, too many expectations.
Prohibition lasted only 13 years, which means that the end of neo-Prohibition -- the Age of Fizzy Water in American history -- is just about due. Cultural historians note that Prohibition ended in 1933 because people became fed up with the rigidity of temperance advocates and couldn't remember what the initial fuss had been all about.
So now, one hopes, the end of the no-fun 90's is drawing near. Maybe by the time the year 2000 rolls around, some new Carrie Nation will have taken an ax to any restaurants still serving fizzy water and to whatever you call those newfangled office coolers that dispense brand-name designer water.
