Tajarin: Piedmont's Egg-Yolk Pasta with Butter and Sage

Tajarin are the thin, golden egg noodles of the Langhe hills in Piedmont, made with far more egg yolk than everyday pasta. Cut by hand about 3 mm wide, they cook in 2 minutes and need little more than butter and Parmigiano. In autumn, cooks in Alba shave white truffle over them. The rest of the year, sage will do.

What tajarin are

A Piedmontese word for a thin noodle

Tajarin is the Piedmontese name for tagliolini, a narrow ribbon of egg pasta. The word comes from tajé, “to cut”, according to Turismo Torino, the Turin tourism board. The province of Cuneo calls them typical of the Langhe and Monferrato, though they are made all over Piedmont.

They sit between two better-known shapes. Visit Asti, the tourism board of Asti, describes a thinner pasta than tagliatelle “but thicker than capellini”. Italy’s agriculture ministry lists tajarin among Piedmont’s traditional food products, as entry 312 in the 2025 revision of its national list. The name has no protected status.

All those yolks

The figure every Piedmontese source repeats is a number of yolks. Turismo Torino gives 30 yolks for each kilo of flour, and so does GialloZafferano, Italy’s largest recipe site. Others go higher. The chef Giovanni Ruggieri, in La Cucina Italiana, notes that the original Langhe recipe calls for 40 (our translation).

The rich version is not the only one. In the mountain valleys, eggs were precious goods for barter, the regional tourism board Piemonte Italia explains. Valley tajarin used whole eggs, and few of them.

An old Turin cookbook

Tourism boards date tajarin to the 15th century, but they name no document. The oldest text we could check is Giovanni Vialardi’s Turin cookbook of 1854. It calls the noodles tagliatelli. Its recipe uses 3 yolks and 2 whole eggs for 400 g of flour. The dough is “very stiff”, rolled “as thin as a sheet of paper” and cut into threads (our translation).

Why tajarin are in the news

The Alba truffle fair is on

The 96th Alba White Truffle Fair runs from October 10 to December 6, 2026, with its truffle market open every weekend. Its program includes three tajarin classes at Eataly in Monticello d’Alba, on November 5, 12 and 19. The fair calls the dish one of the signature preparations of Piedmontese cooking. The 27th World Alba White Truffle Auction follows on November 8.

A dry summer, dear truffles

White truffles are scarce this year after a dry summer, il Resto del Carlino reported on October 9. On the market’s opening day, La Voce di Alba quoted €500 to €600 per 100 g, depending on size. In an interview published on October 14, the president of the National Truffle Study Centre, Antonio Degiacomi, gave €350 to €450 per 100 g.

The fair publishes no official price list, so these are quotes, not a market index. At those prices, 8 g of truffle for one plate costs €28 to €48, by our arithmetic.

A favorite with readers

In December 2025, readers of the food guide TasteAtlas rated tajarin with Alba white truffle third among the world’s dishes. It scored 4.52, Croatia Week reported. That is a popularity vote, not an expert award. We found no 2026 sales, production or search figure for tajarin itself.

What goes into tajarin

We compared 36 recipes. Twenty-two are Italian, from GialloZafferano and its blogs, La Cucina Italiana, Sale&Pepe, Dissapore and the tourism boards of Turin, Asti and Piedmont. Fourteen are in English, from Eataly, Great Italian Chefs, Hank Shaw, Domenica Marchetti and others. Thirty give a dough; six start from bought pasta.

The egg ratio

Across all 30 doughs, the median is 54 g of egg for every 100 g of flour, with a range of 25 to 128 g. Nineteen use yolks only. Their median is 60 g of yolk per 100 g of flour, about 33 yolks per kilo, so the famous 30 is close to the middle.

This recipe uses 8 yolks and 1 whole egg for 300 g of flour, about 65 g of egg per 100 g. A yolk-only dough “tends to tear and dry out quickly”, GialloZafferano warns (our translation). The one white makes it a little more forgiving.

Flour

Eight of the doughs use Italian 00 flour, and eight mix soft flour with fine durum semolina. Three use durum semolina alone, three a strong type 0 flour, and eight plain or unnamed flour. Oil goes into 13, salt into 18, and water or wine into 7. Turismo Torino adds water, while Visit Asti says water and egg white are “absolutely forbidden”.

Rest, width and cooking time

The median rest is 30 minutes, with a range of 10 minutes to 2 hours. The median cut is 3 mm wide, from 2 to 5 mm. Fresh tajarin cook for a median of 2½ minutes, and several recipes simply drain them when they float. Each person gets a median of 75 g of flour, about 113 g of fresh pasta.

The sauces

Truffle with butter comes up in 14 of the 36 recipes, and meat ragù, from sausage to chicken livers, in 13. Mushrooms appear in 6. Butter and sage, the everyday version, appears in only 3. The province of Cuneo calls meat sauce the typical pairing.

How to make tajarin

A stiff, slow dough

Expect a hard dough. Great Italian Chefs warns that “it’ll feel a bit harder than regular pasta dough”. Knead it for 10 minutes, until it is smooth and springs back. Wet hands help more than extra water, which makes the strands soft.

Roll it thin

The sheets should be about 1 mm thick, or a little less. Machine settings differ by brand, so go one or two notches from the thinnest. By hand, roll until you can see the grain of the board through the sheet.

Dry it a little, then cut

A sheet cut straight away sticks to itself. Sale&Pepe dries the sheets for 10 to 15 minutes first. Great Italian Chefs wants them “dry enough for it not to stick together when you cut it, but not too dry”. Roll each sheet up, slice across, and shake the ribbons loose.

Dust with semolina or cornmeal

Flour sinks into the dough and turns gluey. Use fine semolina instead, as GialloZafferano does. Domenica Marchetti adds that in Piedmont “they might use very fine cornmeal”. Gather the cut tajarin into small nests on a tray.

Keep the butter pale

Melt the butter gently and stop before it browns. Eataly swirls butter with ½ cup of pasta water until it turns creamy. Chef Michele Casadei Massari of Lucciola in New York explains why, for truffle tajarin: “The butter must stay pale; browning will mute the Alba truffle’s delicate aroma”.

Not everyone agrees. Carlo Cracco lets his butter turn a light hazelnut color for truffle tagliolini.

Serving tajarin with white truffle

How much truffle

Most sources call for 5 to 10 g of truffle per plate. Scatti di Gusto says 7 to 10 g is enough for a plate of tagliolini, and La Cucina Italiana uses 5 to 6 g a head. Among the recipes we compared, the median was about 8 g.

Shave it raw

The Alba fair’s own guide says to brush the truffle under running water, dry it, and let it rest for 10 minutes. It is never cooked. Slice it raw, paper-thin, with a truffle slicer, straight over the hot plate.

A fresh truffle keeps about a week, the guide adds. Wrap it in paper towel and keep it in a lidded glass jar in the fridge. The Piedmont season runs from October 1 to January 31.

Truffle oil is not the same

Many truffle oils never touch a truffle. They get their smell from a lab-made version of the truffle’s main aroma compound, 2,4-dithiapentane, America’s Test Kitchen explains. Butter, sage and good Parmigiano make a better plate than a drizzle of it.

Other ways to serve tajarin

For a ragù night, toss the noodles in a meat sauce such as our Sunday gravy, loosened with pasta water. Sautéed porcini in butter work too. For a full Piedmont dinner, start with a pot of bagna cauda and its autumn vegetables.

Safety, storage and allergens

Raw dough

Don’t taste the raw dough. “Flour is a raw food”, the FDA says, and grinding grain does not kill bacteria. Raw eggs can also carry Salmonella. Wash your hands, the board and the fork after handling them, and cook the pasta the day you make it.

Storing fresh tajarin

USDA’s FoodKeeper guide gives fresh pasta 1 to 2 days in the fridge and 2 months in the freezer. To freeze tajarin, set the nests on a floured tray until hard, then bag them. Cook them from frozen, for a minute longer.

Italian cooks often dry the nests at room temperature for a day or more. With so much raw egg in the dough, the fridge or freezer is the safer choice.

The leftover whites

You will have 8 egg whites. Raw whites keep 2 to 4 days in the fridge and up to 12 months in the freezer, according to the USDA chart. Use them in meringues or an omelet.

Calories and allergens

A plate of butter-and-sage tajarin comes to about 600 calories, with 19 g of protein, 31 g of fat and 59 g of carbohydrate. Our estimate adds up USDA FoodData Central figures for the flour, eggs, butter and cheese, then divides by 4. It leaves out the truffle, and the salt the noodles take up from the pot.

The dish contains egg, wheat and milk. US law treats all three as major food allergens, the FDA explains.

Fixes for tajarin that tear, stick or turn gummy

• The dough stays crumbly: keep kneading for 3 more minutes with wet hands. Add water only 1 teaspoon at a time.
• The sheet tears in the machine: the dough is too dry or was not folded enough at the widest setting. Fold it in half and start again from the widest notch.
• The noodles stick together: the sheet was too wet when you cut it. Let the next sheet dry 5 minutes longer, and dust more semolina.
• Thick, chewy noodles: the sheet was too thick. Roll it to about 1 mm.
• Gummy tajarin: they cooked too long. Fresh noodles need only 1 to 2 minutes.
• A greasy sauce: the butter split. Add a splash of hot pasta water and toss again off the heat.

Substitutes for hard-to-find ingredients

• 00 flour: all-purpose flour. The dough may need 1 more teaspoon of water.
• Semolina for dusting: fine cornmeal or polenta, as some Piedmontese cooks use.
• Parmigiano Reggiano: Grana Padano.
• White truffle: sage, as in this recipe, or a few sautéed porcini.
• A pasta machine: a long rolling pin and a sharp knife.
• Some of the yolks: whole eggs, one for every 2 yolks you leave out. The noodles will be paler and softer.

Frequently asked questions

What does tajarin mean?

It is the Piedmontese word for tagliolini, thin egg noodles. Turismo Torino traces it to tajé, “to cut”. It is said roughly “tie-yah-REEN”.

What is the difference between tajarin and tagliatelle?

Tajarin are narrower, usually 2 to 3 mm wide, and richer, with many more yolks in the dough. Tagliatelle are wider ribbons, usually made with whole eggs.

Why does tajarin use so many egg yolks?

The yolks give the deep color, the richness and a firm, silky strand. Piedmontese sources ask for 30 to 40 yolks per kilo of flour. The yolk-only recipes we compared averaged about 33.

Can I make tajarin without a pasta machine?

Yes. Roll the dough very thin with a long rolling pin, let it dry for 10 minutes, then roll it up and cut it with a knife.

How long do you cook fresh tajarin?

About 1 to 2 minutes in plenty of salted boiling water, until the noodles float. Frozen nests need about a minute more.

Can I freeze tajarin?

Yes. Freeze the nests on a tray, then bag them for up to 2 months. Cook them straight from the freezer.

How much white truffle do you need per person?

About 7 to 10 g per plate, shaved raw over the hot pasta.

What can I serve with tajarin instead of truffle?

Butter and sage, as here, a meat ragù, or porcini sautéed in butter.