Hungarian "consumer protection" magazine Kosár ("shopping cart") recently published the results of an interesting test comparing some of the various brands of pasta commonly available on the shelves of domestic retailers. According to a summary of the finding on marketinginfo.hu, researchers analyzed samples of the two most popular types of pasta, spaghetti and bow tie (or farfalle to you purists). Among the ten different spaghetti brands tested, three were judged to be of excellent quality, two good and five mediocre, while among the three bow tie pasta brands, one was found to be excellent, one good and one mediocre. However, all were shown to be healthy, even if they were not so tasty. This, however, is not what is so interesting.

Instead, what's attention-grabbing is that the judges found that in some cases, the cheapest available pastas were the best. For example, the winner in the spaghetti category was the supermarket chain Profi's own "white label" brand, which came ahead of some much more popular and expensive Hungarian and even Italian brands.

As for why some of the super-cheap Hungarian pastas may have pipped their Italian competition, we're not sure. But according to the summary, after examining the packaging, texture and the smell of the various pastas, the researchers carefully cooked them exactly the same way. Since many Hungarian brands of pasta are designed to cook in about half the time as traditional quality Italian pastas, this could explain why some might not have cooked up so nicely.

On the other hand, since many Hungarians' idea of the ideal pasta dish is a clump of stringy noodles topped off with sour cream and grated Trappista (see above), there isn't much use springing for that fancy imported linguine or penne, anyway.