system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: Why does the shape of pasta seem to effect the flavor?

Is it just my brain playing tricks on me or can the shape/structure of a food alter it's flavor?  If it can alter the flavor, does this have something to do with the different ratio of air:food that's hitting your taste buds?
gpt
The air content of food can definitely affect its flavour, yes.  A good example is milk foam on a specialty coffee's top where you have added air to make it frothy. 

But that's not so much the case of identical pasta that's formed into different shapes. There it's more about the water content and the size and consistency of the chunks you are eating. A large-unit pasta like a linguine has bigger chunks of pasta and less sauce than a small-unit pasta like orzo (essentially rice grains) or couscous (essentially tiny pellets). Generally people don't chew pasta much when they eat it so the larger types are generally preserved until you swallow them.

Eating is a whole experience that doesn't just involve taste and smell. There's texture and mouth feel and moisture content too, and all of these things can affect the flavour you perceive. Even without sauce, a mouthful of very overcooked boxed spaghetti tastes very different from a proper 'al dente' plate of freshly made spaghetti, for example.

(Finally, some pastas like whole wheat spaghetti and egg noodles really do have different flavour because they're made with different additions and different types of base grain.)