Cappelletti or tortellini: Romagna and Emilia compared

Every year, around December, the same argument breaks out in some house between Rimini and Bologna. A relative from Emilia looks at the tray on the table and says what lovely tortellini. An aunt from Romagna lifts her eyes from the board and replies that those are cappelletti, and that the difference can be seen, felt and eaten. She is right. But it is worth explaining why, without falling out: tortellini and cappelletti are two different dishes with two different histories, and mixing them up is a little like calling a tigella a piadina.

The shape: a hat against a navel

The name already says it all. The cappelletto is a little hat. You start from a square of sfoglia, the sheet of egg pasta, fold it into a triangle over the filling, then take the two corners at the base and join them around your finger. A point is left standing at the top, like the peak of an alpine hat. The tortellino is closed around the little finger with a tighter turn instead, and the point is folded downwards: the result is that rounded knot which Bolognese legend compares to the navel of Venus.

At a glance, then: if you see a point standing up, it is a cappelletto; if you see a compact closed ring, it is a tortellino. In Romagna, in some families, the cappelletto is cut from a circle of sfoglia rather than from a square, and the half moon fold leaves a rounder edge. Whatever the starting shape, the closing gesture around the finger is the one you learn as a child.

The filling: roast meat and cheese against meat and cured pork

Here lies the biggest difference, the one you feel in your mouth. The filling of the Emilian tortellino is meat and savoury, fragrant cured pork: pork loin, prosciutto crudo, mortadella, Parmigiano Reggiano, egg and nutmeg. A tasty, compact filling that sits inside a tiny shell and gives the broth a decided flavour.

The cappelletto from Romagna, in its oldest version, is di magro, meatless: fresh cheese (raviggiolo, a soft young cheese, or ricotta), Parmigiano, egg, nutmeg and sometimes a grating of lemon zest. Pellegrino Artusi, who came from Forlimpopoli, describes it that way among the first recipes in his book and adds that you may also put in a little capon breast, but he offers it as a possibility, not as a rule. Around Rimini a filling with meat is widespread today, beef or pork roasted and chopped together with the cheese, and every family defends its own version. The Romagna signature stays the same, though: a sweeter and softer flavour than the tortellino.

If you would like to try our own version, the recipe for cappelletti in brodo explains the quantities and the closing step by step.

The size: small and very small

A Bolognese tortellino made as it should be starts from a square of pasta about three centimetres a side. The cappelletto from Romagna is more generous: the square goes from four to five centimetres. This is not laziness. With a soft, moist filling rich in cheese, a larger shell holds together better and cooks better. The tortellino, with its compact meat, can afford to be minute.

The thickness of the sfoglia changes as well. For tortellini the pasta has to be rolled very thin, because such a small shell must not smother the filling. For cappelletti you can stay a shade thicker, so that the pasta stands up to the broth without opening. The guide to pasta thickness by shape lists the measurements we use.

The towns: Bologna and Modena on one side, Romagna on the other

The tortellino is Emilian and its homeland is disputed between Bologna and Modena, with Castelfranco Emilia, which sits exactly halfway, laying claim to the legend of the innkeeper who spied on Venus through the keyhole. The Bolognese recipe was registered in the nineteen seventies by the Dotta Confraternita del Tortellino together with the Accademia Italiana della Cucina.

The cappelletto belongs to Romagna, but it has relatives scattered about: similar shapes are made in Reggio Emilia and in Ferrara, and in the northern Marche. In Romagna you find it from Imola to Cattolica, from Ravenna to the Apennines, and every area gives it a shade of its own: more cheese towards Ravenna, more meat towards Cesena and Rimini.

The broth: capon, always

On one thing Emilia and Romagna agree: filled pasta for feast days is eaten in broth, and the best broth is capon. A clear broth, made the day before, well skimmed and brought back to a gentle boil at the moment the pasta goes in. In Romagna cappelletti in brodo are the Christmas dish by definition, but at our house we eat them at Easter too, and on every winter Sunday when there are plenty of us at the table. Anyone who loves a soup will find in passatelli the other great classic of Romagna, quicker still to prepare.

Cappelletti served dry with ragù or with cream are a more recent habit, born in the restaurants along the coast. Good, certainly, but an azdora of the old days, the woman who ran the household, would have looked at them with suspicion.

How to tell them apart in three seconds

To sum up, with no need to taste:

• A point standing up and a wide closure: cappelletto. A tight closed ring: tortellino.
• Size: if ten of them fit in a ladle, they are tortellini; if five fit, they are cappelletti.
• Colour of the filling held against the light: pale and creamy, so cappelletto; dark and grainy, so tortellino.
• Who made them: if there is a long rolling pin on the board and the sheet was as wide as the table, you are in Romagna.

In the end, local pride is good for this. It keeps alive two recipes that, had they blurred into one, would both have lost something. Then, at the table, everyone eats what was made for them at home. And everyone is right.