Shape: Fettucce / Fettuccine / Strangozzi

The Mountain Ribbons of Abruzzo

A Ribbon Between Hands and Sky

In the uplands of the Maiella and the Gran Sasso, pasta is rolled the way people breathe — quietly, rhythmically, with intent.
When a cook lifts a sheet of dough to the light and cuts it into long, flat ribbons, she isn’t measuring; she’s remembering.
These are fettucce — or, across nearby valleys, strangozzi — the hand-cut ribbons that tie Abruzzo’s mountain kitchens together.

They are the shape of patience: thicker than tagliatelle, leaner than pappardelle, rough at the edges from the knife. When tossed with cheese and egg for Cacio e Ova, they become the purest expression of the region — simple ingredients made luminous by precision.

From Monastery Tables to Shepherd Camps

Flat ribbons of dough appear throughout central Italy, but in Abruzzo they took on a particularly devotional character.
In medieval monasteries like San Liberatore a Maiella, monks prepared laganae — early sheets of flour and water — during fasts. Over centuries these sheets became narrower and, with the spread of eggs in domestic cooking, transformed into fettucce.

The twin name strangozzi (from stringere, “to tighten”) probably travelled east from Umbria via transhumance routes linking the Valle Peligna to the Tiber valley. In some dialects, the word echoes strozzapreti (“priest-stranglers”), a tongue-in-cheek reference to monks’ appetites.

By the 1700s, Abruzzese households had two standards: egg-rich fettucce for feast days, and water-and-flour strangozzi for the rest. Both were cut by hand on the same wooden board, and both carried the smell of the mountains.

How They’re Made

The method has hardly changed in 300 years.

The dough begins with semola rimacinata and eggs — roughly one per 100 grams of flour, plus a pinch of salt and a trickle of oil.
It’s kneaded until smooth, rolled into thin sheets, then dusted with flour and folded like linen before slicing into long ribbons 6–8 millimetres wide.

For strangozzi, the dough omits eggs and uses soft wheat flour mixed with water, giving a paler colour and firmer chew.
Both are dried briefly on linen cloths or wooden racks. When cooked, they stay slightly springy — the texture locals describe as tenace.

This tenacity is what makes them ideal for Cacio e Ova, for lamb ragù, or simply with garlic, oil, and chili — dishes that depend on the pasta’s grip rather than the sauce’s weight.

The Ribbons of Faith and Work

In the Maiella villages, fettucce have always been a kind of edible offering. On feast days, women carried trays of them to church courtyards, dusted with flour so fine it looked like snow.
The same dough fed shepherds on the transhumance trails — cooked in blackened pans over sheep-fat fires, tossed only with pecorino and pepper.

The duality endures: fettucce for celebration, strangozzi for survival. Both express the same mountain ethic — do little, but do it perfectly.

5. Where They’re Still Made and Served

Artisans & Producers

• Rustichella d’Abruzzo includes both Fettuccine and Fettuccine all’Uovo in its line, bronze-drawn and slow-dried for up to 56 hours.
• De Cecco and Cocco Pasta, both from Fara San Martino, continue the Abruzzese tradition of ribbon-cut pastas using local spring water.
• Zaccagni Pasta (Lanciano) produces small-batch bronze-cut strangozzi-style ribbons made from 100 % Italian wheat.
• In smaller agriturismi around Guardiagrele and Sulmona, the shapes are still rolled by hand, sold fresh by the kilo.

Restaurants & Trattorie

• Villa Maiella, Guardiagrele — signature Fettucce al Cacio e Ova made with local pecorino and mountain eggs.
• La Corte, Sulmona — seasonal Strangozzi ai Funghi Porcini using pasta rolled in-house each morning.
• Ristorante Taverna 58, Pescara — serves Fettucce alla Pastora, lamb ragù perfumed with rosemary.

Across Abruzzo, these ribbons remain the pasta most likely to be handmade daily in restaurants — a quiet defiance against automation.

A Study in Restraint

Every region of Italy has a pasta that mirrors its temperament.
For Abruzzo, this is it: disciplined but tender, modest but exacting.
The narrow width demands consistency; one careless cut and the balance of sauce to pasta is lost.

When coated with egg and cheese, the strands shine like candlelight. When tossed with olive oil and herbs, they taste of stone walls and sunlight.
They prove that simplicity, done with conviction, becomes sophistication.

Fun Facts & Curiosities

• The word fettucce simply means “small slices”; it first appeared in Abruzzese household ledgers in the 1700s.
• Strangozzi may come from stringhe (“laces”) rather than the comic “priest-stranglers.”
• In L’Aquila, a variation called tagliolini alla chitarra combines both traditions — cut with strings but shaped like ribbons.
• Because the dough could be rolled thin without machinery, fettucce were among the first pastas taught in rural schools for domestic science in the early 1900s.
• A superstition says that if the ribbons stick together in the pot, the cook is thinking of love instead of stirring.

Reflection

Fettucce and strangozzi are not flashy; they are the architecture of Abruzzo’s table — quiet, exact, enduring.
They hold within their folds the memory of stone houses, of bells in the fog, of families who understood that perfection isn’t in invention but in repetition.

When you twirl them on a fork, they resist just enough — the taste of grain, air, and discipline.
That is the flavour of the Maiella: humble brilliance stretched into a ribbon.