Does the perfect pasta sauce come down to… PHYSICS?!
This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science.
Cacio e pepe: it’s just cheese and pepper, how hard can it be?
Turns out, deceptively hard! It eludes perfection due to its temperature sensitivity AND precise ingredient ratios.
So Giacomo Bartolucci and team set out to find that golden ratio. They tested a variety of cheese, starch, and water proportions.
Then they compared mixtures’ ability to combine smoothly across a range of temperatures.
The secret? Starch content! It needs to be two to three percent of the weight of cheese used. That creates the perfect consistency of sauce.
Don’t tell Nonna, but we aren’t measuring with our hearts for this dish!
Reference: Bartolucci, G., Busiello, D. M., Ciarchi, M., Corticelli, A., Di Terlizzi, I., Olmeda, F., Revignas, D., & Schimmenti, V. M. (2025). Phase behavior of Cacio e Pepe sauce. Physics of Fluids, 37(4), 044122. https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0255841