(250-gram boxes available at grocery stores nationwide for anywhere from $4.99 a box to $8.95 a box)

Pasta made with eggs can be one of the world's most glorious treats--but far more often it's either mediocre or a complete disaster. Why? Because it's not easy to get it right. We all started making fresh pasta with eggs some years ago with our home pasta machines--you did, didn't you?--but the results, at least in my house, never equal the magnificence of the real thing in Italy. Fresh egg pasta purchased at specialty stores and supermarkets? Usually gummy and awful, in my experience. Even the fresh egg pasta at the best Italian restaurants in America usually fails to capture the magic.

I was just about to give up on the idea of having great egg pasta with any regularity--when along came Cipriani! This is the family, of course, that started Harry's Bar in Venice, Italy, in 1931--and has now expanded into an international empire of restaurants, stores and products. Among those products is a line of boxed pastas made with eggs. The first thing that's unusual here is that boxed pasta is usually made without eggs, just flour and water; the eggs are usually reserved for fresh pasta. But the Ciprianis have managed to create a dried, boxed, egg pasta that is among the finest egg pastas I have ever tasted, fresh or not! That impossible egg-pasta chew--resilient, springy, firm but tender simultaneously--is the signature of these amazing pastas.

How do they do it? They use the best Durum Semolina from Puglia, they include 7 eggs in every kilo of pasta, they work the dough through their machines at least 30 times (most commercial pasta gets worked once or twice), and they dry the pasta at very low temperatures. I tasted three different shapes, and several varieties in each shape--and loved them all. The Tagliolini All' Uovo is the thinnest of the three, kind of a wiry, angel-hair type of thing.

I love it most when it's simply sauced; more "stuff" masks the fabulous texture. In fact, my ideal way of serving it is in a bowl surrounded by 1/2 cup of very rich chicken broth. There's a regular Tagliolini (my favorite, because it seems the eggiest), an organic version, and a spinach version. The Tagliarelle All' Uovo is a wider ribbon, kind of like fettucine.

The three tagliarelle I tasted were all great, but the organic one--called "Da Agricoltura Biologica"--seemed to have the most resilient texture, which I liked. Any of these Tagliarelle would be the choice for butter-egg-cheese sauces, possibly including vegetables. A third shape I tasted is the Tagliardi All' Uovo--incredibly thin rectangles, about 1 1/2" by 1", that are the biggest texture treat of all. What a chew! There was little difference between the regular and the spinach in my tasting. The Tagliardi could take a wide variety of sauces; I'm thinking a Bolognese meat sauce might be just about ideal.

Cipriani has put the cooking times on the boxes, but to my al dente taste they're a little too long. I would test the Tagliolini when it has cooked for just under 2 minutes, the Tagliarelle after 2 1/2 minutes, and the Tagliardi after 3 1/2 minutes.

Cipriani's main retail store is at:
100 East 42 St.
New York, NY 10017
212 499-0599
212 883-5616 (fax)

You can call them to find out the closest location to you of a store that sells the boxed pasta. Or you can get that info by logging on to: www.cipriani.com

David Rosengarten is the author of The Rosengarten Report, a food newsletter for people who love to eat. You can find out how to get his recommendations, recipes and more by visiting his web site at: www.davidrosengarten.com