Farfalle

One US cup of farfalle weighs between 60.5 and 81 grams (2.1 to 2.9 ounces), depending on how the cup is filled and which source measured it. That range is the answer; a single number would not be. Every figure behind it is below, with the method each source used.

Also called bow tie pasta, bow ties, bowtie pasta, butterfly pasta, dry farfalle.

Dry pasta and noodles compared: cup weights side by side, the source behind each, and why they differ.

A cup of dry farfalle weighs between 60 and 81 g (2.1 to 2.9 oz), depending on the size of the bow ties. USDA weighs a cup of farfalle at 81 g; the USDA Food Buying Guide counts its large bow ties at 7 1/2 cups to the pound, 60 g a cup.

Farfalle, Italian for butterflies, are small rectangles of semolina pasta pinched in the middle into bow ties, with ridged or crimped edges. They come small (farfalline, for soup), regular and large; US school kitchens buy the large ones.

USDA SR Legacy "Pasta, dry, enriched" (FDC 169736) lists 1 cup of farfalle at 81 g without naming a size. The USDA Food Buying Guide's "Bowties, Large size, Enriched" gives 1 lb dry as about 7 1/2 cups, 60.5 g a cup. The two are 34% apart, far beyond the 10% tolerance for grains and pasta, because they describe different sizes of bow tie, so both stand and the page shows the range. America's Test Kitchen gives farfalle by weight only.

Labels spread just as wide. Prince prints its bow ties at "1 cup (56g)", 56 g a cup; Barilla's measuring chart gives 3/4 cup per 2-ounce serving, 75 g a cup; retailer listings show De Cecco and Kroger at 3/4 cup and another Kroger listing at 1 1/4 cups per 56 g. With a fixed 56 g serving and a cup rounded to a common fraction, they are kept as sources without a figure.

The physical check: bow ties are among the airiest pasta shapes on this site. Wings set at angles cannot lie flat against each other, and each pinched centre props its neighbours apart. At 60 to 81 g a cup is 0.26 to 0.34 g/mL. Dry semolina pasta is about 1.4 g/mL (Biernacka and colleagues, 2018, measured raw spaghetti at 1.34 to 1.45), so only 18 to 24% of the cup is pasta, against about 29% for penne and 35 to 40% for elbow macaroni. Bigger bow ties leave bigger gaps, which is why the large size is the light end.

Cooked: USDA weighs a cup of cooked farfalle at 107 g (FDC 169737). The Food Buying Guide gives a pound of large dry bow ties as 2.66 lb cooked, about 6 1/4 cups, which works out to about 193 g a cup, so a cooked cup depends on how firmly it is filled and is described here rather than published. Barilla counts a 2-ounce serving as 1 1/4 cups cooked.

Practical guidance: for regular farfalle, a cup weighs up to 81 g and a 1 lb box holds about 5 1/2 to 6 1/3 cups; for large bow ties, about 60 g a cup and 7 1/2 cups to the pound. Because a cup of bow ties is mostly air, weigh them when a recipe gives a weight: 8 ounces is 227 g.