Agnolotti piemontesi
Pasta filled with roasted meat and vegetables, born to use up leftovers and become the classic first course of Piedmontese celebrations; the «plin» is the smaller variant from the Langhe and Monferrato.
Agnolotti piemontesi are the meat-filled pasta that Piedmont regards as its quintessential first course: small squares or rectangles of thin pasta sheet closed around a filling of roasted meats, vegetables and cheese, served in broth or dry, with meat sauce or butter[1]. Born in home kitchens as a way not to waste roast leftovers, they became the food of celebrations par excellence[2], and in their smaller variant, the «plin» agnolotto, a culinary symbol of the Langhe and Monferrato[3].
The name and origins
The Treccani dictionary also records the word in the form agnellotto, and most likely derives it from anellotto, an augmentative of «anello» («ring»), referring to the shape of the pasta[1]. Different stories circulate about the dish's invention. The best-known legend tells of a cook of the House of Savoy named Angelino, who supposedly created agnolotti for a celebratory banquet after an assault on a castle was repelled; the press instead recalls an 1846 recipe in which the plin appears for the first time, attributed to Francesco Chapusot, cook of the English ambassador in Turin[4].
In the nineteenth century, court cuisine and bourgeois cuisine met in cookbooks written by the royal household's cooks: Giovanni Vialardi published in 1864 the Cucina borghese semplice ed economica (Simple and Economical Bourgeois Cooking), one of the texts that shaped the Piedmontese bourgeois table, halfway between popular cuisine and that of the palace[5].
From the tables of the wealthy to everyone's table
Peasant tradition links agnolotti to the use of leftover meat[2]: the filling varied from house to house according to what was left in the pantry during the week[6]. For food historian Karima Moyer-Nocchi, interviewed on the subject, the dish's real popularity is recent[4]:
«The popularity of agnolotti is linked to the postwar period, when there was a shift from the tables of the well-off to those of the less wealthy»
Precisely because of the effort they required, they remained a food for special occasions. In the Monferrato of the early twentieth century, for Carnival lunch, the women of the village would gather to knead and roll out very thin sheets of dough to fill, as recalled in an account published by the magazine Astigiani[7]. Writer Luciano Bertello, a scholar of the dish, has stressed its «sacred value», tied to Christmas, Easter and being together as a family[4].
The filling and the shape
There is no single recipe. Meat remains the basic ingredient: some use three roasts, some two, some add sausage; alongside the meat come spinach or boiled rice, eggs, Parmesan and nutmeg[2]. Chef Ugo Alciati sums up this domestic variety as follows[6]:
«Every woman had her own recipe: some put in rice, some cabbage, some just meat and vegetables.»
The version with rice and cabbage was also revisited by chef Enrico Crippa in the volume A tavola con i grandi cuochi, published by Slow Food Editore, which presents it as a recipe born to use up leftover food[8].
The «plin» agnolotto takes its name from the Piedmontese word for «pinch»: the pasta, rolled out very thin, is closed by pinching it between the fingers and cut into small rectangles[3]. According to Alciati the recipe is not difficult but long: a perfect plin requires reckoning on two days of work, between the slow oven-roasting of the meats, whose juices are then used for the sauce, and the sealing done firmly with two hands[6].
How they are served
The two classic ways are with roast meat sauce and with butter melted with sage[2]. There used to also be a third way, «al tovagliolo» («in the napkin»): as soon as cooked, the agnolotti were laid in a napkin to keep them soft and eaten without any sauce, sometimes with red wine or with the broth served separately[3]. The custom survives in contests among enthusiasts: at the contest among Rotary clubs of south-eastern Piedmont, held for about twenty years, in March 2023 at Villa Bottaro in Silvano d'Orba the winners were the napkin-style plin of the Ovada club, with a three-roast sauce; for the first time the Alba club also took part[9].
Lidia's agnolotti
One of the most celebrated recipes is that of Lidia Alciati, who with her husband Guido Alciati created the legendary restaurant Guido in Costigliole d'Asti, in the Asti area; the Agnolotti di Lidia are spoken of as a brand tied to the family's history rather than a recipe that has stayed identical over time, carried on by their son Ugo, the only one of the three children to go into the kitchen[10]. Ugo Alciati recounts that Lidia already had her own plin recipe in 1960, created «in her own image»; today he serves it again at the Guido restaurant in Fontanafredda with only veal and pork, without rabbit as she did, with escarole instead of cabbage and at triple the size[6]. On 21 September 2025 the «Agnolotti di Lidia al sugo d'arrosto» were served in Piazza Carignano, in Turin, at the «Sunday lunch» organized by the City of Turin in support of the bid for Italian cuisine to be listed as Unesco intangible heritage[11].
Recent fame
In May 2024 the New York Times's T Magazine devoted a feature to plin agnolotti, written by Dawn Davis, who had visited the Langhe in autumn starting from the question of which was Italy's finest filled pasta[12]. During the trip, the journalist, accompanied by Karima Moyer-Nocchi, met among others Ugo Alciati, Davide Palluda, Maurilio Garola, Piermassimo Cirio and winemaker Angelo Gaja[4]. In 2025 television also compared the plin of four restaurants between Monferrato and the Asti area, with Joe Bastianich and Bruno Barbieri as judges[13].
In Turin, agnolotti were for decades the flagship product of neighbourhood pasta shops. One of the best known, Pastificio Ferri on corso Giulio Cesare 155, in Barriera di Milano, opened in 1952 and repeatedly awarded as a Maestro del Gusto, closed on 1 August 2026 after 74 years and three generations of the same family[14].
Pages linking here
Related articles: Vitello tonnato
Sources
- Treccani
- Mole24 — 8 May 2015
- Mole24 — 2 January 2019
- Gazzetta d'Alba — 4 June 2024
- Mole24 — 30 October 2014
- Gazzetta d'Alba — 24 October 2023
- Astigiani
- Slow Food Italia — 30 November 2018
- Gazzetta d'Alba — 12 March 2023
- Identità Golose — 10 May 2020
- TorinoClick — 21 September 2025
- Mole24 — 23 May 2024
- Gazzetta d'Alba — 22 May 2025
- Mole24 — 1 August 2026