How Italian Scientists Perfected Cacio e Pepe

Italian physicists just won an Ig Nobel Prize for solving how to make silky, clump-free cacio e pepe using heat, starch, and physics. 

A crack team of all-Italian scientists from institutions across Europe have, believe it or not, won a Nobel Prize for scientifically perfecting a bowl of cacio e pepe. We all know Italians take their pasta seriously, but it’s hard to argue with an international prize under their belt.

This isn’t your usual Nobel Prize handed out for breakthroughs in medicine or theoretical physics. The Ig Nobel Prize is awarded for research that first makes you laugh and then makes you think.

However, it's really not advisable to laugh in the face of a group of Italians presenting a bowl of pasta to you. Just a tip. 

ISTA researcher Fabrizio Olmeda with the Ig Nobel Prize. © Fabrizio Olmeda

Cacio e pepe is famously simple: pasta, black pepper, pecorino, and pasta water. But simple doesn't mean easy to cook, Infact it's notriously difficult to perfect. So often It clumps, separates, or turns to paste. These scientists figured out why.

Using the principles of phase transitions, they discovered that when the temperature is too high, cheese proteins denature and clump together. Something they aptly called the “mozzarella phase.” Too little starch? Same problem. The fix is control: proper starch concentration, letting pasta water cool slightly, and mixing slowly off the heat.

Dear reader, fear not, they didn't waste a single speck of sauce in these tests.

“We did not waste a single drop of sauce,” said researcher Matteo Ciarchi. “We would do the famous Italian scarpetta thing, which is to take a piece of bread and clean the plate — or the petri dish, in the case of our experiments.”

Ivan Di Terlizzi added, “If you’re going traditional, just add cheese, pepper, and pasta water — let the water cool a bit first. At high temps, the cheese clumps. Cooler water gives the starch more time to bind to the cheese proteins.”

Watch how it's made:

 

Ingredients: 

4 g starch (potato or corn starch)

40 ml water (to mix the starch)

160 g Pecorino Romano

240 g pasta (ideally tonnarelli)

Pasta cooking water

Black pepper and salt (to taste)

We stock the same aged Pecorino Romano used in traditional cacio e pepe. Try it yourself — and avoid the mozzarella phase.

[Shop Pecorino at MERCATO PRONTO! »]