{"id":20755,"date":"2025-01-24T14:59:23","date_gmt":"2025-01-24T15:59:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=20755"},"modified":"2025-01-24T16:23:10","modified_gmt":"2025-01-24T16:23:10","slug":"the-perfect-cacio-e-pepe-recipe-according-to-science","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=20755","title":{"rendered":"The Perfect Cacio e Pepe Recipe, According to Science"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Italian scientists have drawn from thermodynamic principles to prevent a famous pasta from turning into a gooey mess.<\/p>\n

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A group of Italian physicists has dared to tinker with the traditional recipe for cacio e pepe<\/a>, the challenging Roman dish consisting of pasta, pecorino cheese and black pepper. In a new study<\/a>, the scientists claim to have \u201cscientifically optimized\u201d the recipe by adding an ingredient: cornstarch.<\/p>\n

Cacio e pepe, which means cheese and pepper, is a showcase of Italian cuisine, with fresh ingredients producing bold flavor. The dish was supposedly invented by shepherds \u201cwho had to stuff their saddlebags with hypercaloric ingredients,\u201d according to the new paper. Today, it is a staple at Rome\u2019s classic pasta joints, where chefs steeped in tradition may not look kindly at scientific lessons on culinary thermodynamics.<\/p>\n

The authors were aware they were treading on sensitive ground. \u201cI hope that eight Italian authors is enough,\u201d said Ivan Di Terlizzi, a statistical physicist at the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems in Dresden, Germany, who is originally from Puglia, Italy.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The recipe may be simple, but getting it right is anything but. The silky sauce comes together when pecorino cheese and ground peppercorns are mixed into the starch-heavy water drained from the cooked pasta. Doing so will ideally create an emulsion \u2014 a d\u00e9tente between substances that wouldn\u2019t otherwise mix, as when oil and water form mayonnaise.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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But as many cooks have discovered, the mixture of cheese and steaming pasta water can catastrophically result in what the researchers called the \u201cmozzarella phase.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Italian scientists have drawn from thermodynamic principles to prevent a famous pasta from turning into a gooey mess.A group of Italian physicists has dared to tinker with the traditional recipe for cacio e pepe, the challenging Roman dish consisting of pasta, pecorino cheese and black pepper. In a new study, the scientists claim to have \u201cscientifically optimized\u201d the recipe by adding an ingredient: cornstarch.Cacio e pepe, which means cheese and pepper, is a showcase of Italian cuisine, with fresh ingredients producing bold flavor. The dish was supposedly invented by shepherds \u201cwho had to stuff their saddlebags with hypercaloric ingredients,\u201d according to the new paper. Today, it is a staple at Rome\u2019s classic pasta joints, where chefs steeped in tradition may not look kindly at scientific lessons on culinary thermodynamics.The authors were aware they were treading on sensitive ground. \u201cI hope that eight Italian authors is enough,\u201d said Ivan Di Terlizzi, a statistical physicist at the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems in Dresden, Germany, who is originally from Puglia, Italy.The recipe may be simple, but getting it right is anything but. The silky sauce comes together when pecorino cheese and ground peppercorns are mixed into the starch-heavy water drained from the cooked pasta. Doing so will ideally create an emulsion \u2014 a d\u00e9tente between substances that wouldn\u2019t otherwise mix, as when oil and water form mayonnaise.But as many cooks have discovered, the mixture of cheese and steaming pasta water can catastrophically result in what the researchers called the \u201cmozzarella phase.\u201dWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20757,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20755","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20755","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20755"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20755\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20758,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20755\/revisions\/20758"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/20757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}