Alphabet pasta
al-fah-BET-toh · Italian: Alfabeto
Tiny letters of the alphabet.
Name. Alfabeto in Italian.
What it is
Alphabet pasta is pastina cut as letters, a shape aimed at children since the late nineteenth century. It goes into broth and into the canned alphabet soups of the United States and Britain.
Some brands add numbers.
How to cook alphabet pasta
6 to 8 minutes in boiling salted water. Take the shorter time for al dente, the longer time for fully cooked.
6:00
Start when the water returns to the boil.
Water and salt
- Pasta, dry
- 400 g
- Water
- 4 L
- Salt
- 40 g
100 g per person as a main. A litre and 10 g of salt per 100 g. Adjust with the portion calculator.
The steps
- Bring 4 L of water to a full boil in a tall pot. Add 40 g of salt when it boils.
- Add the alphabet pasta. Stir for the first minute so nothing sticks. Start the timer when the water returns to the boil.
- Or cook it in the broth it will be served in, and do not drain it.
- Bite a piece at 5 minutes. A hairline of white at the centre is al dente.
- Scoop out a cup of the cooking water. Drain, or lift the pasta straight into the pan.
- Toss with the sauce over the heat for a minute. Add cooking water a splash at a time until it clings.
Read more: what al dente means and why the pasta water matters. Times for every shape are on the cook page.
How it holds sauce
Broth and soup. It is a toy.
Pairs with: In brodo · Minestrone
Classic plates: Alphabet soup, Alfabeto in brodo.
Nutrition
Per 100 g of dry semolina pasta. The shape does not change these numbers. The dough does, so a whole wheat or egg version of this shape reads differently. See every dough.
| Per 100 g | Energy | Protein | Carbohydrate | Fibre | Fat | Sodium | Iron |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dry | 371 kcal | 13.0 g | 74.7 g | 3.2 g | 1.5 g | 6 mg | 3.3 mg |
| Cooked | 158 kcal | 5.8 g | 30.9 g | 1.8 g | 0.9 g | 1 mg | 1.3 mg |
One portion. 100 g dry becomes about 235 g cooked, 371 kcal and 13 g of protein. Pasta takes on 2.3 times its weight in the pot.
Who makes alphabet pasta
22 alphabet pasta products are catalogued, most of them sold in France, Switzerland, Canada. Of those, 5 are organic, 2 are made in Italy.
Brands: Auchan (4), Panzani (3), Casino (2), Cora (1), Demeter (1), Doodingues Bio (1), Fiorini (1), Grand Mere (1), Groupe Casino (1), Italpasta (1).
No alphabet pasta? Use these
Ranked by how they behave with sauce, not how they look. Full substitute list.
Side by side
Easy to confuse with
Other names
Alfabeto, alfabeto, alphabets, alphabetti, letter pasta.
Sources
- Cook time: typical dried, brand pages.
- Photograph: Buchstabensuppe.jpg, Till Westermayer from Freiburg, Germany, CC BY-SA 2.0.
- Open Food Facts (products, brands, labels), Open Database License, read on 2026-08-25.
- USDA FoodData Central (nutrition per 100 g, by dough: FDC 169736, Pasta, dry, enriched; FDC 169737, Pasta, cooked, enriched, without added salt), public domain. The cooked yield is derived from the two energy figures.
- Alphabet pasta, Wikipedia (names, origin), CC BY-SA 4.0
- Q9056689, Wikidata
- Dimensions: brand spec sheets and measured boxes. Blank fields are unmeasured, never guessed.