Reply to post: Re: Curly -- or Straight?

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Re: Curly -- or Straight?

If, as you say, the mean length of dry linguine is just over 25 cm, have you taken into account how much this increases by when cooked? Pasta can as much as double in volume when cooked, so assuming the swelling is isometric, this would mean the length would increase by up to the cube root of three, minus 1 (or by a little over 25%)

Of course, this still doesn't make linguine 14 cm, but depending on how well cooked it is (I prefer it al dente), your 25 cm piece could end up as long as 31.5 cm, and measuring using such soggy pasta could mean that the 2 m distance you refer to in your blog may only be 6.3 linguine.

It seems to me that the El reg measurement may refer to the cooked length of half a piece of al dente linguine. Maybe this is taking into account the practise some cooks have of breaking the pasta in half before adding it to the pot?

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