Cheesy Pasta: My Gooey Mess

Last Saturday I said that with all the heavy health news going on, it was time to change it up and talk about something a little lighter. Nothing could be lighter than cooking with just three ingredients to get a magnificent pasta dish. The dish is called Cacio e Pepe (Cheese and Pepper in English), and all you need is pasta, fresh ground pepper, and pecorino cheese although Parmesan also works. What you may not realize is that you also need to watch an Italian nonna cook it about 100 times before you even try to cook it.

When done correctly, the sauce is delicious. I’ve tried making it twice. The first ended up with the cheese reformulating and making a gooey mess. The second was the same but was inedible because I put in way too much pepper, together with the gooey instead of smooth and glistening sauce. I wasn’t going to threaten the creations of Italian nonnas any time soon. (By the way, we thought Nonnas was a fun movie.)

That is until I listened to a podcast that mentioned the physics of cooking pasta. A guest on the podcast, a chef with a PhD in physics, mentioned the elusiveness of cooking this recipe. That caught my attention and led me to read a paper titled “Phase behavior of Cacio e Pepe sauce” in the journal Physics of Fluids. Not only did I find out a lot about how pasta loses starch, but I also found out about a secret ingredient that makes the sauce work—and it may be good for you as well! That’s Saturday’s Memo.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Reference: Physics of Fluids 37, 044122 (2025)