Now, you could just buy a box of penne pasta, use it for all sorts of quick-fix dinner needs and call it a day. But give this a thought: Penne pasta is but one of more than 300 different types of pasta existing today, shares Food52.

Pasta roughly translates to paste in Italian, referring to the mix of flour, water, and/or eggs that pasta is made from (via The History Kitchen). This simple mix of a few ingredients, however, differs greatly through the many regions of Italy, where each region produces its own type of pasta based on what it is meant to be eaten with.