Stanley Tucci Considers This Italian Food Misconception A Capital Offense (Yikes)

Stanley Tucci is one of Hollywood's preeminent foodies. The Emmy-winning and Oscar-nominated actor co-wrote and co-directed "Big Night," a dramedy about an Italian restaurant that remains one of the most sumptuous movies about food ever made. And on "Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy," he travels Bella Italia in search of delicious meals from Italy's many regional cuisines. So it stands to reason that he would have some strong opinions about Italian food myths and misconceptions, chief among them being the idea that any sauce goes with any pasta.

Appearing on "Dish," a British podcast hosted by media personality Nick Grimshaw and Michelin-starred chef Angela Hartnett, Tucci took aim at one of the "millions of misconceptions" people have about Italian cuisine. "That every kind of pasta goes with every kind of sauce," he said, is "a huge misconception." His ultimate assessment, however, went a bit further: "It's a capital offense, really," said Tucci in the same fastidious deadpan he lent to his line readings as Nigel Kipling in "The Devil Wears Prada". We're fairly certain he was kidding, but we're not going to push our luck — we saw "The Lovely Bones."

Not that we had any reason to doubt the Tooch, but a quick Google search will back up every bit of what he's saying in that podcast. (Well, except for the "capital offense" part, anyway.) Different pastas are, in fact, suited for different sauces, and while it won't necessarily ruin your meal if you mix and match, you may not be getting the most out of your cooking.

Consider a dish like spaghetti bolognese, which Tucci alluded to in that podcast clip. While it's a common enough pairing in the Western world that it gets a nickname that makes it sound like a "Lord of the Rings" character ("spagbol"), spaghetti is actually not ideal for the dish. Something as thin and delicate as spaghetti simply can't support a robust meat sauce like bolognese — it'll just slide off. A flat, wide pasta like tagliatelle is a much better choice. Spaghetti, for its part, thrives in dishes with lighter sauces, like a simple marinara sauce or aglio e olio.

Not every pasta shape is so specialized. Something like penne will play nicely with pretty much anything, with the notable exception of clam sauces like vongole (which can get little pieces of clam caught in the pasta holes). But it's worth keeping in mind Tucci's advice if you're trying to make something like carbonara (which can be enriched with cinnamon, as per Giada de Laurentiis) or fettuccine alfredo (which was raised to culinary fame by Hollywood stars).