Tortellini: A Culinary Icon of Emilia-Romagna

You’ve decided to make tortellini and wonder what the traditional recipe for the filling is. But with so many online, how do you choose?

Tortellini are a legendary filled pasta from Emilia-Romagna. If you’ve ever tasted them in Bologna or had them prepared by relatives (often grandmothers) or friends, you know what I’m talking about. Often served in broth on special occasions, they are quite small, and packed with flavor. In the past, making them was a family affair– even the kids helped out, since it takes many hands to prepare them.

For this analysis, I used R software (The R Project for Statistical Computing). For the figures, I mainly used the packages Tidyverse and Tidyplots.

But let’s say you’ve decided to make them yourself. You search online and find countless variations. So how do you choose, when you want to be sure to create the distinct taste of traditional bolognese tortellini?

If you’re passionate about fresh egg pasta, you may already know that Bologna’s pasta expert, Alessandra Spisni, is the queen of hand-rolled pasta. So, you might go straight to her recipe. But if you’re unfamiliar with Signora Spisni, which recipe best captures the taste of tortellini as they’re eaten in the “Bermuda Triangle” of tortellini—between Modena, Castelfranco Emilia, and Bologna?

Analysis of 17 Top Recipes

For this analysis, I collected the tortellini filling recipes published by 17 top Italian chefs. Most of these recipes serve four people, except for the one from the Confraternita del Tortellino (the Brotherhood of Tortellini), which I adjusted proportionally to match the others. The recipe from Pellegrino Artusi should serve 3 people (Artusi wrote in 1891 the famous cookbook “Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well”), so I have adjusted those proportions to serve 4 people.

This barchart has the main information. Now we will break it down.

The Essential Ingredients

How many ingredients do the recipes contain? See the histogram below:

Unlike many recipes that allow for wide variations, traditional tortellini filling always includes these core ingredients:

Pork loin (graph shows histogram in grams)

Prosciutto (histogram in grams)

Mortadella (histogram in grams)

Parmigiano Reggiano (histogram in grams)

Egg (1) (all but one of the recipes have one egg)

Most chefs use pork loin or pork loin fillet. Most cook the pork, but some leave it raw. Monica from Tortellini & Co states that her family’s tradition is to use raw meat. On the other hand, Maestra Spisni cooks it with plenty of butter, deglazes it with wine, and adds broth. She also recommends using a slightly fattier cut instead of pork loin.

There are only a few variations in the herbs used for cooking the pork. Some chefs add sage, rosemary, or bay leaves.

Differences in Proportions and Seasoning

The proportions of these four main ingredients are usually similar (roughly 1:1:1:1.5), but some chefs add extra mortadella for a more aromatic filling.

Averaging across all of the recipes, this pie-chart shows the average share of each ingredient. Using these percentages actually produces an excellent filling!

Some mortadella contains peppercorns or pistachios, and chefs often recommend removing these.

Salt is not always added since the ingredients are naturally flavorful. Black pepper is included by some chefs, but not if it is already present in the mortadella.

Most chefs suggest letting the filling rest in the fridge—ideally overnight—to make it easier to work with and for the flavours to blend together.

Prosciutto and Parmigiano Reggiano: Key Details

For some chefs, the prosciutto must be from Parma, while others specify that it should be mild in flavor and that the fat should not be removed.

Parmigiano Reggiano is included in every recipe, but some specify that it should be aged at least 30 months, others 24 months, and some emphasize that it must be DOP-certified Parmigiano Reggiano. Note that most of the recipes use a higher proportion of Parmigiano compared to the other ingredients.

An Unexpected Ingredient: Bone Marrow

In his historic recipe, Maestro Pellegrino Artusi even included ox bone marrow as an additional ingredient. His recipe was probably adapted to the ingredients commonly available at that time.