Physicists weigh in on cacio e pepe

[wtg]

The beloved Italian pasta cacio e pepe is perhaps best known for two things: being delicious and being frustratingly difficult to cook. At first glance, it looks like a simple recipe, containing only three ingredients: pasta, pecorino romano cheese, and black pepper. But as anyone who has tried to make it will know, the cheese will often clump when added to the hot pasta water, turning what is supposed to be a smooth, creamy sauce into a stringy, sticky mess.

In Physics of Fluids, researchers from the University of Barcelona, the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems, the University of Padova, and the Institute of Science and Technology Austria studied the physics of mixing cheese in water. They determined the mechanism that causes the cheese sauce to go from creamy to clumpy and developed a foolproof recipe for cacio e pepe based on their findings.

For these researchers, their work was about more than idle curiosity.

"We are Italians living abroad," said author Ivan Di Terlizzi.

"We often have dinner together and enjoy traditional cooking. Among the dishes we have cooked was cacio e pepe, and we thought this might be an interesting physical system to study and describe. And of course, there was the practical aim to avoid wasting good pecorino."

https://phys.org/news/2025-04-scientific-method-flawless-cacio-pepe.html

[Mik]

Cooking is chemistry and physics all in one. I've made clumpy cacio. Ugh. I'll try this.

[wtg]

Cliff Clavin, at your service.

[Mik]

Damnit, they don't give exact measurements.

[wtg]

Did you check the paper they linked to?

https://pubs.aip.org/aip/pof/article/37/4/044122/3345324/Phase-behavior-of-Cacio-e-Pepe-sauce

[Mik]

There it is - 10 parts water to one part starch.

[wtg]

This recipe is inspired by Luciano Monosilio's YouTube video, though it does not include olive oil as suggested in his version. Despite this difference, both recipes share a focus on respecting tradition while ensuring a reliable and enjoyable result.

Link to video

[RealPlayer]

I tried it only once, and it surprisingly turned out well. I was following some chef’s online video. Rather exacting instructions, I must admit.

[Steve Miller]

I’ve never made it but I might try now that I’ve seen this video.

Chefs always flip things in the pan like that. Do you guys do that? I’d like to learn.

[wtg]

I've been flipping for decades. Learned watching Julia on one of her shows.