Sorprese
Small bell shaped pasta with a ruffled edge and a crease on one side. Can be ridged or smooth (lisce)..
Name. Italian for surprises. The tiny folded pieces look like a filled pasta, but they hold no filling.
What it is
Sorprese are a tiny soup pasta made from durum wheat semolina and eggs. Each piece is a small folded shape that looks like a miniature filled pasta. La Campofilone gives a width of 0.4 cm and extrudes them through bronze. Barilla sells them in its Emiliane egg pasta line and describes a rough surface with a firm bite. Cooks also fold a fresh version at home from small squares of dough. That home version is known as sorpresine.
No source names a region of origin for the dried shape. Barilla presents it as part of an Emilian egg pasta tradition. La Campofilone makes it in Campofilone in the Marche. Both brands intend the shape for liquid dishes. It goes into meat broth, vegetable soup, and smooth vegetable purees. La Campofilone suggests a finish of Parmesan flakes. The fresh sorpresine of Emilia-Romagna are also served in broth.
How to cook sorprese
7 minutes in boiling salted water. Take the shorter time for al dente, the longer time for fully cooked.
7:00
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 sorprese. 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 6 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.
What it is served with
Pairs with: In brodo · Minestrone
Classic plates: sorprese in brodo.
By brand: numbers, cook times, spec sheets
1 brand, 1 product page.
| Brand | Product | Cook |
|---|---|---|
| La Campofilone | Sorprese all'uovo 250 g | 7 min |
Nutrition
Per 100 g of dry egg 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 | 384 kcal | 14.2 g | 71.3 g | 3.3 g | 4.4 g | 21 mg | 4.0 mg |
| Cooked | 138 kcal | 4.5 g | 25.2 g | 1.2 g | 2.1 g | 5 mg | 1.5 mg |
One portion. 100 g dry becomes about 278 g cooked, 384 kcal and 14 g of protein. Pasta takes on 2.8 times its weight in the pot.
No sorprese? Use these
Ranked by how they behave with sauce, not how they look.
Other names
sorprese all'uovo, sorprese lisce, sorpresine.
Sources
- Sorprese all'uovo 250 g, La Campofilone (cook time, from the brand's own product page)
- La Campofilone: Sorprese (profile: origin, form, use)
- La Campofilone recipe: Sorprese with vegetable soup and Parmesan flakes (profile: origin, form, use)
- Vico Food Box: Barilla Emiliane Sorprese all'uovo (profile: origin, form, use)
- Cook time: La Campofilone Sorprese all'uovo 250 g: 7 min.
- Photograph: Sorprese2.jpg, Popo le Chien, CC0.
- USDA FoodData Central (nutrition per 100 g, by dough: FDC 169731, Noodles, egg, dry, enriched; FDC 169732, Noodles, egg, enriched, cooked), public domain. The cooked yield is derived from the two energy figures.
- Sorprese, Wikipedia (names, origin), CC BY-SA 4.0
- Dimensions: brand spec sheets and measured boxes. Blank fields are unmeasured, never guessed.