[HN Gopher] Phase behavior of Cacio and Pepe sauce
___________________________________________________________________
Phase behavior of Cacio and Pepe sauce
Author : rev13013
Score : 289 points
Date : 2025-01-03 13:59 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (arxiv.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (arxiv.org)
| conjectures wrote:
| science ftw
| saagarjha wrote:
| I'm going to be upset if this doesn't win an Ig Nobel
| dwattttt wrote:
| It's a shoe-in
| saagarjha wrote:
| Please keep your footwear out of the sauce ;)
| dwattttt wrote:
| Ramen to that
| Oarch wrote:
| Only 4 days into 2025 and we've already found the winner. At
| ease, HN.
| smegger001 wrote:
| I mean its good but is it to the Ig Nobel level?
|
| I mean its no "Homosexual Necrophilia in the Mallard Anas
| Platyrhynchos"
| ggm wrote:
| Subjects: Soft Condensed Matter
|
| This has to be targeting igNobels
| tommiegannert wrote:
| The phase diagrams are great. This really raises the bar for cook
| books. If you can't show a diagram to explain why you chose that
| ratio of ingredients, why should I trust you to have made the
| optimal sauce?
| gghootch wrote:
| Your comment is probably tongue in cheek, but this level of
| detail is pretty standard for advanced cooking. Serious Eats,
| Chef Steps or What's Eating Dan have published loads of recipes
| backed up by research and accompanied by great graphs.
| PittleyDunkin wrote:
| > this level of detail is pretty standard for advanced
| cooking
|
| Cooking so advanced you need a fat wallet hehe
| walthamstow wrote:
| Huh? Serious Eats is a free website, so is Kenji's YouTube
| channel
| ceejayoz wrote:
| I can't speak for the others, but Serious Eats tends to be
| more of a "skip the silly gadgets, just use a knife" sort
| of place.
| joshvm wrote:
| This is ubiquitous in baking at least. Also in confectionery
| where phase changes and structures are important (the canonical
| example being tempering). The extreme is probably Modernist
| cuisine.
|
| You can look at the book "ratio" which presents a small number
| of standard recipes as proportions, with some hints for
| modification. I'd also recommend Lateral Cooking which
| describes recipes in terms of spectrums of ingredient variation
| or addition, usually starting with the simplest form. Finally
| there's a lot of interest in physics for coffee brewing,
| particularly pourover, but I'm somewhat skeptical of the rigour
| in that field and how much of it translates to better tasting
| cups.
| leoc wrote:
| Let me linkbot those books and authors:
|
| _Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday
| Cooking_ by Michael Ruhlman, 2010, ISBN 978-1416571728
| https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Ratio/Michael-
| Ruhlman... . There's also a mixed-drinks companion book from
| 2023, _The Book of Cocktail Ratios: The Surprising Simplicity
| of Classic Cocktails_ with ISBN 978-1668003398:
| https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Book-of-
| Cocktail-...
|
| https://ruhlman.com/
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Ruhlman
|
| _Lateral Cooking: One Dish Leads to Another_ by Niki Segnit,
| 2019, ISBN 978-1635572643 (978-1635572643 US ed.)
| https://www.nikisegnit.com/lateral-cooking . Seems to lean on
| Segnit's prevous book, 2010's _The Flavour Thesaurus_ , ISBN
| 978-0747599777 (978-1608198740 2012 US ed.):
| https://www.nikisegnit.com/the-flavour-thesaurus .
| fvdessen wrote:
| As the paper says:
|
| A true Italian grandmother or a skilled home chef from Rome
| would never need a scientific recipe for Cacio and pepe,
| relying instead on instinct and years of experience.
| cantSpellSober wrote:
| What about replacing other charts?
|
| The equivalent in amateur aviation? "Instinct and years of
| experience replace..."
| ambicapter wrote:
| Well, I am neither an italian grandmother nor a skilled home
| chef so I don't care.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Can we rent a nonna?
| cantSpellSober wrote:
| The Recipe section is mostly to show the problem is solved
|
| > small temperature variations can completely compromise the
| recipe's outcome
| gorgoiler wrote:
| I took a trip to my local university library once and found the
| food science section. It made _On Food and Cooking_ look like
| _Green Eggs and Ham_ in comparison and I learned more than I
| cared to about pineapple canning.
|
| (To be fair, McGee's work does exactly what I did but with
| multiple orders of magnitude more effort: summarizing food
| science journal papers into single paragraphs.)
|
| One thing that's always struck me as fun about cooking as a
| science is that your reagents need to be live calibrated by
| look and feel. Want to use the right amount of cyder vinegar
| but it's from a brand / manufacturer you don't know? You're
| going to have to live titrate it with your mouth!
|
| Don't even get me started on inconsistencies between egg
| manufacturers. Clara's lecithin content seems to be at least
| 10% stronger than Number 4's, and she is also more tolerant of
| being stroked.
| sonofhans wrote:
| Those egg manufacturers can be temperamental, eh? Perhaps
| Clara's found some midnight snacks somewhere. I know mine got
| rodents every now and then to supplement the feed, but I
| never measured lecithin content on the, uh, production
| output.
| joeross wrote:
| lol "optimal sauce" is such an HN approach to describing good
| food
| djtango wrote:
| Science and empiricism usually eventually wins out over the
| long term but thankfully for human civilisation, people have
| been able to achieve extremely good outcomes in things with
| very loose models and folk wisdom - for instance sports people
| don't need to understand physics to "Bend it like Beckham"
|
| In cooking, the folklore knew that salting your egg mix before
| beating an omelette long before Chemistry could catch up and
| explain it. In the meantime all the cynics were making worse
| omelettes
| s0rce wrote:
| I'm not sure most cookbooks claim to offer an optimal recipe or
| even that there is an optimal one and that preference may play
| a big role. Some sites like serious eats do more investigation
| but I agree, I really like the phase diagram approach. Seems to
| best apply for stabilized colloids (mayo, ice cream,
| vinaigrettes, etc).
| bdauvergne wrote:
| Conlusion: just add some (possibly cooked) flour to your sauce.
| It's called "singer" in French.
| sebtron wrote:
| The authors suggest corn or potato starch, not flour.
| bdauvergne wrote:
| Using flour is easier, you can use corn flour also.
| gattilorenz wrote:
| Starch is what does the trick, flour contains some too but
| it's definitely not easier than adding some maizena
| lordmauve wrote:
| What we call cornflour in British English, and cornstarch
| in US English, is flour heavily processed to remove
| everything except starch, giving a flavourless thickener.
|
| If you use wheat flour you will change the flavour and also
| add a slight graininess as the flour grains don't
| completely homogenise.
| duskwuff wrote:
| But watch out - "corn flour" in the US is _unprocessed_
| finely ground corn - like cornmeal, but less coarse. Not
| a substitute for corn starch.
| Hikikomori wrote:
| Kinda prefer sauces that use flour over those, different
| mouth feel.
| Hikikomori wrote:
| Or beurre manie.
| mastazi wrote:
| In Italy we just add to the pan some of the water in which the
| pasta was cooked; this is rich in starch due to the cooking
| process. This works with other recipes as well, for example
| gricia or aglio olio & peperoncino. I guess that adding flour
| would produce a texture more similar to gravy and that's not
| what we're going for in traditional Italian cooking.
| mgaunard wrote:
| except that doesn't really work, it usually doesn't contain
| enough starch unless you used little water and worked with
| very starchy pasta.
|
| even famous italian pasta restaurants use the cornflour
| technique.
| riffraff wrote:
| This is addressed in the paper, there isn't enough starch in
| the water for it to reach the ideal proportion unless you
| "risotto" the pasta (I don't think there's "risottare" in
| English sorry).
|
| Adding corn/rice starch is advised by some Italian chefs too
| cause it's just a lot easier to get a reliable result (see
| the videos on Italia Squisita by Monosilio).
|
| You _can_ eyeball it with pasta water, it 's just harder.
| MezzoDelCammin wrote:
| That's one thing I never quite understood on the "Italian"
| way to cook pasta (basically "use a bucket of water").
| Using just the bare minimum ("risotto" as You call it) is
| in my opinion way more efficient and opens up a lot of
| interesting options (i.e. using the residue for a sauce).
| There's an extra step (the need to stir occasionally), but
| it can also remove a step (straining may be superfluous if
| the residue is used for a sauce base).
| mastazi wrote:
| > (basically "use a bucket of water")
|
| the traditional way to cook cacio e pepe and the other
| recipes I mentioned in my GP comment is to move the pasta
| from the pot to the pan, then add some of the water from
| the pot to the pan so you have the "risottare" phase
| (most people in Italy would call that mantecare, at least
| in central Italy). I appreciate that adding something
| like corn starch would make it thicker, but also
| different people may have a different understanding of
| the concept of "creamy".
| riffraff wrote:
| risottare and mantecare are different things.
|
| Risottare is cooking the pasta in little water (or other
| liquid) so all the starch stays in the pan/pot, adding
| water or sauce as needed. This is the part you do with
| broth when cooking rice for risotto.
|
| Mantecare is when you mix the pre-cooked pasta with
| condiment in a pan, possibly adding some pasta water.
| This is the part you do with butter and parmigiano when
| making risotto ("mantecare" comes from "manteca", spanish
| for cream/butter).
|
| You can do one, none, or both for a given dish, and get
| different outcomes :)
|
| See e.g. (in italian)
| https://www.dissapore.com/cucina/come-risottare-la-pasta/
| mastazi wrote:
| OK I get what you mean, I've seen risottare before used
| as a synonym to mantecare (I think it was some Italia
| Squisita video) but it makes sense that it's actually
| what you describe i.e. cooking pasta like a risotto,
| hence risottare. Thanks for the link
| riffraff wrote:
| I think you need to define "efficient" :)
|
| E.g. continuously stirring the pasta while you could be
| doing something is a waste of time where you could be
| doing something else, so less "efficient". Turning off
| the heating and letting the water cook covered uses very
| little energy but takes more real time so also less
| "efficient" in a way.
|
| More active stirring also tends to break up the pasta, so
| depending on what kind you use you may end up with a
| different outcome (works great for pasta e ceci or pasta
| e fagioli! Wouldn't want it for spaghettini)
|
| Mostly, I think the traditional way seems unnecessary
| because modern pasta is _a lot_ stronger than it used to
| be. I you try to make a one pot pasta with low quality
| pasta (low protein) you may end up with glue (source: am
| Italian, live in country which produces shitty pasta).
| Hikikomori wrote:
| You dont need to stir continuously though? Maybe every
| 1-2 minutes.
| MezzoDelCammin wrote:
| Yeah, lot of cooking is up to personal preference. In my
| case efficient here means using less water/energy.
| Optionally it can also be using less time, but that
| depends on what the end result is supposed to be.
|
| As for the stirring, I'd say "it depends". Personally, I
| prefer to use fresh egg pasta. It cooks in maybe 2-3min
| and does require maybe 1min of stirring (maybe 20-30s in
| the beginning and end and perhaps one or two quick checks
| in between). I'm fairly sure I'd stir it somewhat of I
| used more water and I'd definitely need to strain it, so
| there the amount of time / effort is at worst the same,
| at best slightly in favor of using "risotto" method.
|
| When it comes to dry pasta, I guess it depends on volume.
| If You're cooking a batch for 10, the traditional method
| probably makes sense. Otherwise, I pay attention anyway
| to how much the pasta sticks and clumps together.
| gpderetta wrote:
| Risotto-ing[1] the pasta works very well, but it is
| definitely more time consuming.
|
| [1] I know you can verb anything, but this just doesn't
| work.
| vitus wrote:
| One small clarification: rather than cooking your pasta in
| less water, the paper actually describes boiling down the
| pasta water to further concentrate it ("risottata") by
| reducing its weight by 3x (presumably shifting your starch
| concentration from 0.5% to 1.5%).
|
| That said, as you mention, it's just a lot easier to get
| the consistency right by adding your own starch in measured
| proportions.
| dboreham wrote:
| This seems wrong. My Caccio recipe begins with specifying
| the exact volume of water, derived from some experiments I
| performed when my son first asked me to make the dish. I
| also performed experiments to get the exact time the pasta
| should be boiled (it has to be removed to the skillet prior
| to being done so you either need a time machine or prior
| experience to know the time, which varies with altitude).
| Nowhere does this dish call for "yeah just fill the pot and
| throw in some salt". The salt also needs to be carefully
| controlled because the water ends up in the dish and the
| cheese is salty.
| Culonavirus wrote:
| And they say "cooking is art, baking is science"... pffft
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| And _process engineering_ is when you 're actually serious
| about quality and consistency of results.
| dismalaf wrote:
| You don't need to know about the science for it to be science
| _shrugs_
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| People who say that are wrong anyways. Cooking on the stovetop
| benefits from precision more than is popularly believed, _and_
| baking requires less precision that is popularly believed. Both
| are pretty similar: you have leeway to change things up as you
| see fit, but go too far and you will absolutely fuck it up.
| s0rce wrote:
| Yup, tons of home cooked recipes that rely on emulsions
| (gravy, cream soups, salad dressing, pasta sauces) often end
| up oily and broken.
| mgaunard wrote:
| One interesting aspect of pasta sauces is that the amount of
| starch they need is usually incompatible with the recommended
| amount of water to boil the pasta in, and if you use less water,
| your italian friends are going to complain.
|
| Cheating by adding some starch is the right approach, and works
| much more reliably.
| Hikikomori wrote:
| Why do we need so much water when cooking pasta, is it even
| correct? I know pasta tend to stick if you have less water,
| boiling hard with lots of water alleviates that, but so does
| some stirring.
| soared wrote:
| > It turns out that not only do you not need a large volume
| of water to cook pasta, but in fact, the water does not even
| have to be boiling.
|
| https://www.seriouseats.com/how-to-cook-pasta-salt-water-
| boi...
| gavindean90 wrote:
| Use a short wide pan and just barely keep the noodles covered.
| You will get better pasta, easier cacio e Pepe and reduced
| energy costs related to pasta.
| mgaunard wrote:
| You will, but italians will insult you for not respecting the
| 1 liter per 100g of pasta rule.
|
| In practice, cooking it like a risotto is actually a great
| approach.
| portaouflop wrote:
| I heard this a lot but when I actually try it like go
| describes my pasta gets mushy and mealy - what am I doing
| wrong?
| mgaunard wrote:
| temperature too low?
| douglee650 wrote:
| Pasta being overcooked. Also may be using lower quality
| pasta.
| bromuro wrote:
| I'm Italian, and I don't have any insults for you until you
| overcook your pasta or cook it unevenly.
| fph wrote:
| Not sure about the energy costs: surely a short wide pan
| dissipates more heat than the classical pasta pot.
| gfna wrote:
| I would also like to see a study which considers the age of the
| pecorino. I seem to have an easier time of getting the proper
| emulsion with older drier pecorino, and less risk of clumping
| dboreham wrote:
| Costco peccorino works well.
| fosk wrote:
| Whole Foods has superior quality pecorino, the one with the
| black crust.
|
| The last 10% quality improvement is the hardest to achieve
| without good ingredients, even if you can make it work
| otherwise.
| Darioros wrote:
| As an Italian it is depressing that we only make headlines for
| pasta sauce...
| philshem wrote:
| Not only pasta sauce ;)
|
| > Detection of buffalo milk adulteration with cow milk by
| capillary electrophoresis analysis
|
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002203021...
| toolslive wrote:
| Note that if you're after the perfect recipe and you want to find
| the ideal ratios/temperature aso, changing the setup "one factor
| at a time" is a working but sub-optimal strategy. You want to
| look into DoE (Design of Experiments)
| Metacelsus wrote:
| time to do a fractional factorial Cacio e Pepe!
| andreagrandi wrote:
| corn... potato starch......... WTH?!
|
| Ohh... I know what you did here!
|
| Someone needs to train their LLMs with original italian BESTEMMIE
| and posted this link to encourage Italian people to write a lot
| of them.
|
| Smart move :)
| DiscourseFan wrote:
| Corn and potato starch have almost no flavor and are far easier
| to use for making Italian sauces than pasta water, which has a
| far lower starch content.
| messe wrote:
| You can get starchier water by using less water to cook the
| pasta. I usually do it in my sautee pan, and just barely
| cover the pasta.
| DiscourseFan wrote:
| It's far more technical to do so and produces the same
| effect
| csantini wrote:
| The trick is to: 1. Cook the pasta in very
| little water ("pasta risottata"). 2. Vigorously
| agitate (emulsify) the sauce with that super starchy broth
|
| If you do it right, no water is drained at all:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZN8g_ZNAJcg
| chongli wrote:
| That video amuses me to no end! All that work to carefully make
| a delicious pasta and then such a tiny serving at the end!
|
| The simple, classic Italian cheese pastas (cacio e pepe as well
| as carbonara) are so delicious you can't just eat a small bite.
| You need a big bowl!
| Mystery-Machine wrote:
| No, you don't. That's why USA suffers from high obesity
| rates. You need to eat a small portion that is just enough.
| You won't starve, trust me.
| iamacyborg wrote:
| That's still a _very_ small portion.
| greenthrow wrote:
| Only by insane american portion sizes. It's normal for an
| italian restaurant. And it's plenty of food.
| iamacyborg wrote:
| I'm not American, I'm a short, skinny French guy.
|
| I'd be left very hungry if someone served me a portion of
| pasta that small.
| vinceguidry wrote:
| This is why cacio e pepe is most often served as an
| appetizer, rarely as a main meal.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| Bro what. That is _maybe_ four bites. It is by no means
| "plenty of food".
| deadbabe wrote:
| It's 50g of carbs, all you need in one meal.
| iamacyborg wrote:
| That's enough for a mouthful when you're mid-run.
| devit wrote:
| 50g of carbs per "meal" are only enough if you eat 10-15
| meals per day.
| hollerith wrote:
| _Or_ if you get most of your calories from fats and
| proteins.
| deadbabe wrote:
| And then you wonder why your triglycerides are screwed
| eating 500-750g of carbs a day
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| Ah yes Italians, famous for being stingy with portions,
| feeding you the minimum portion possible.
| hansvm wrote:
| 740 kcal of pasta and cheese went into the dish, and
| under half (370 kcal) ended up on that plate. People
| vary, but even short, old people with no exercise have a
| maintenance metabolism of 3x that. To maintain my weight
| I need 10x that.
|
| I suspect most of the reactions here are cultural (do you
| get most of your calories with breakfast, are restaurant
| meals larger or smaller than home meals, is that the only
| food with the meal or do you typically have other
| starters and desserts, do you snack throughout the day,
| ...).
|
| I typically eat once a day, sometimes adding in a small
| breakfast, I don't snack, I don't really care for
| desserts, and certainly for a weeknight meal I might make
| cacio e pepe but definitely won't also whip up
| breadsticks, cocktails, and a few sides most of the time.
| Nearly anyone with those eating habits would find this a
| small amount of food (in the sense that if they ate it
| instead of their normal dinner regularly they'd lose
| weight quickly, at least 3lbs per month, 25lbs in my
| case).
|
| Even people who eat 3 square meals and snack some (no
| more than half a family-size bag of chips) through the
| day will find this on the small side (losing weight if
| all 3 meals are that portion) if they're moderately
| active, no older than 40, and no shorter than 5'10.
| zolland wrote:
| They were really just making a fun comment about how good
| the food tastes...
| chongli wrote:
| Thank you! I was totally caught off guard by the
| swiftness and harshness of the response to what I thought
| was a pretty innocent comment about the joy of Italian
| pasta.
|
| If I had to guess, the pasta serving in the video was no
| more than about 150-200 calories. Dry pasta is 370
| calories per 100g and pecorino is 390 per 100g. That
| serving was maybe 30g worth of pasta and maybe 10g worth
| of cheese.
|
| Needless to say, that's a snack-sized portion of pasta,
| not a meal.
| Mystery-Machine wrote:
| Sorry I misunderstood your comment.
| washadjeffmad wrote:
| I wouldn't sweat it. It was probably just one of our
| resident "transcendent biohackers" who thinks eating is
| an impediment to maximizing their human potential.
|
| Stim use is an effective appetite suppressant, after all.
| quotz wrote:
| The pasta plate is called Primo Piatto meant to be eaten as
| the first part of the main course. The Secondo Piatto is the
| second part of the main course usually a meat dish, is meant
| to be eaten after the pasta. Hence why, the pasta course is
| small and needs to be small. However, there are exceptions,
| where pasta dishes can be the full main course on its own.
| The reason most italian pasta dishes are only a part of the
| main course is because they're not a balanced meal, and
| therefore will not properly feed you.
|
| The concept of having multi-course meals is foreign to the
| USA both historically and culturally. The word "Entree"
| actually means appetizer in french, while in the USA it means
| main dish for whatever reason. Its even more ridiculous that
| USA restaurants that pretend to be fancy put "entrees"
| instead of "main dishes" on their menus.
| bradleyjg wrote:
| Still too small for that. It's barely bigger than an amuse
| bouche.
|
| I think this must be a tasting portion, maybe a cooking
| school thing or similar.
| wlll wrote:
| I make fresh tomato pasta sauces this way as well as the cheese
| based ones sometimes. A bit of butter and olive oil in the
| sauce, minimal water in with the pasta (I really like
| orecchiette) and finish the pasta off in the sauce with a bit
| of the minimal remaining water. Very clingy, very silky.
| pizza wrote:
| dupe? ;D https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42591570
|
| (@dang i actually dont mind u dont gotta do nothin)
| Keysh wrote:
| I like how the arXiv sub-category this paper is in is "Soft
| Condensed Matter".
|
| Because of course it is.
|
| (Also, the Acknowledgments ends with "We further thank [list of
| names] for their support and for eating up the sample
| leftovers.")
| dbfclark wrote:
| Another completely viable solution (other than adding extra
| starch) I've found is to sprinkle a bit of sodium citrate (the
| sodium salt of citric acid, a common food additive and cheap on
| Amazon) over the cheese before adding to the pan. This improves
| the melting qualities of the cheese and avoids the starch issue
| altogether. You're basically using pecorino velveeta.
| jmvoodoo wrote:
| When I read the paper I immediately wondered if this would
| work. Good to see that someone has tried it and indeed it does!
| righthand wrote:
| You also can do this with basic natural and readily available
| ingredients:
|
| 1t-1T (teaspoon, Tablespoon) lemon/citrus juice and a literal
| two-finger tiny pinch of baking soda, without buying
| specialized chemical compound ingredients off of Amazon that
| may be lying about their contents.
|
| Sodium citrate is already in citrus and the baking soda kills
| the acidity that may make the taste more harsh (another great
| trick is adding a pinch of baking soda to homemade tomato soup
| to kill the tomato acidity and blend it better with added
| milk/cream).
|
| 1T of white wine can do wonders for cheese sauce as well.
| wrboyce wrote:
| What is 1T? Given the context I am assuming tablespoon, but
| that's not an abbreviation I've ever encountered before (tbsp
| being the only abbreviation I have seen).
| righthand wrote:
| Big T is tablespoon, little t is teaspoon. Probably not
| common since a tablespoon is 3x the size of a teaspoon and
| people would mix them up and the flavor profile would be
| wrong. You might encounter these abbreviations in cookbooks
| or from more experienced cooks for the sake of brevity.
| righthand wrote:
| The baking soda trick works wonders with canned tomatoes that
| may have a tin-like taste too.
| calf wrote:
| That's nice, I remember reading about sodium citrate and
| maybe having to bake baking soda in the oven or something
| like that. Getting it from lemon juice would be a lot easier.
| righthand wrote:
| And if you want the acid, don't use the baking soda. You
| still get the sodium citrate.
| Aloisius wrote:
| _> Sodium citrate is already in citrus_
|
| Citric acid is in the citrus. You're making sodium citrate
| when you add baking soda.
|
| I keep citric acid around for cooking and adjust water pH for
| plants since SF water is so alkaline, so I just make it from
| that.
|
| For x grams of sodium citrate desired, mix 0.744x grams
| citric acid and 0.976x grams sodium bicarbonate in enough
| water to dissolve. Stir until reaction stops. Boil off water
| if desired.
|
| You need 2-3g of sodium citrate for every 100g of cheese.
| righthand wrote:
| I think it's important to discern that sodium citrate is
| part of the base of citric acid. So while yes the sodium
| bicarbonate, baking soda, will break down the rest of
| citric acid and leave you with sodium citrate, the citric
| acid will be just as effective on it's own for those
| without baking soda at the ready. The baking soda changes
| the flavor as well which may not be desirable. In the case
| of a cheese sauce you may not want lemon acidity flavors
| pulling through.
| Aloisius wrote:
| Em. I just tried it with citric acid and it didn't work
| at all. I'm not entirely certain how it is expected to
| work.
|
| AFAIK, sodium citrate works by sequestering calcium in
| insoluble Ca-paracaseinate during the ion-exchange with
| the emulsifying salt, leaving soluble Na-paracaseinate, a
| potent emulsifier. Citric acid, though, isn't an ionic
| compound.
|
| I'm not sure what you mean by sodium citrate being part
| of the base of citric acid. There is no sodium in citric
| acid. I'm also unclear as to what you mean by baking soda
| changing the taste. You're not adding baking soda to
| cheese. You're adding sodium citrate. If you're worried
| about an incomplete reaction, I suppose you could reduce
| the baking soda, though the remaining citric acid will
| affect the taste somewhat.
| douglee650 wrote:
| Someone get these guys hooked up with lasagna manifolds
| https://web.stanford.edu/~cm5/lasagna.pdf
| larodi wrote:
| I must admit, the paper inspired me cook a pasta as close as
| possible to suggestions, together with Claude ingesting the PDF
| and the result was really good.
|
| Thanks, physics PHDs!
| Metacelsus wrote:
| My wife attempted this recipe several times over the last few
| years, it always turned out to be a gunky mess. Maybe this will
| help!
| marsavar wrote:
| "We thank Tetsuya Spippayashi for enlightening clarifications on
| the historical origins of Cacio and pepe"
|
| That surname can't be real...
| dismalaf wrote:
| Probably a bad transliteration.
| serial_dev wrote:
| I prepared this dish a couple of times, the second time I
| randomly got lucky and made a great cacio e pepe, since then all
| my attempts turn out clumpy, "mozzarella-like" and not creamy.
|
| No matter how many videos I watched, I could never make it well
| enough.
|
| I'm glad someone got to the bottom of this issue.
| dboreham wrote:
| You had the temperature too high. I use an IR thermometer.
| Nonna from the old country just knows how long to wait for it
| to cool down enough which is why it looks like magic easy in
| their YouTube videos.
| mapt wrote:
| The secret is that restaurants which make traditional cacio e
| pepe are using pasta water to emulsify the sauce.
|
| But it's not the same pasta water you're using at home!
|
| Only a tiny amount of starch is coming off of the 500g of pasta
| you just cooked in the proper ratio in 5000g of water (with 50g
| of salt). They've been cooking with their pasta water all day or
| all week; It's completely full of starch that came off the other
| pasta.
|
| Dump a bunch of cornstarch or flour in there to get above 1%
| concentration (or more efficiently, into a tiny portion in a
| bowl) to replicate the emulsifying effect, or just use a
| different emulsifier.
| bradleyjg wrote:
| Or just use less water to cook the pasta? What's the downside?
| bobmcnamara wrote:
| Clumping
| greggyb wrote:
| Stir.
| tanvach wrote:
| Sometimes I forget to stir and have to reboil the pasta.
| Long noodles like spaghetti will stick like crazy and
| have inconsistent cooking. If I need to cook quickly I
| use less water. Otherwise more water is hands off.
| wlll wrote:
| I don't get clumping. I use an adequate quality pasta (De
| Cecco mostly), stir it when I put it in the water, and a
| few times after that, cooking to al dente. If I'm making a
| Caccio e Pepe or Carbonara I cook the spaghetti or (my
| preference) Buccatini I'm aiming for the minimum amount of
| liquid left, ideally just enough to put in the sauce. I use
| a frying pan so I can lay the noods out flat to minimise
| the water.
|
| As I said I don't get clumping, it is absolutely possible
| to cook noods in minimal water without clumping because I
| do it so try switching some thing up if it's happening to
| you.
| Aloisius wrote:
| How do you stir long pasta in minimal water before it has
| softened?
|
| While small pasta shapes are relatively easy to stir such
| that they break contact with anything nearby right from
| the beginning, long pasta tends to move together when
| stirring until they've softened - at which point they've
| already started sticking together.
|
| You can try to stir it so that the pasta isn't all
| running parallel before it softens, but then you get ends
| start sticking out of the water until it softens more,
| leading to uneven cooking.
|
| For long pastas, I've found using more water and just
| adding a little flour while cooking to be a lot easier.
| ikawe wrote:
| It's more of a "jostle" than a stir when cooking
| spaghetti in a frying pan.
| eecc wrote:
| De Cecco? Nah, that's pretty bad. You want to try
| Garofalo or Molisana.
| speff wrote:
| Or use the normal amount of water and reduce the liquid after
| straining the pasta out?
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| If you do that, you gotta strain into another pot, and then
| reduce that. No need. Just use a lot less water, and barely
| cover the pasta.
| wlll wrote:
| By the time you reduce the liquid the pasta is going to be
| pretty cold. Just using less water takes less time.
| crazygringo wrote:
| You certainly can, but:
|
| - It's still not going to be enough starch
|
| - You can't rely on box cooking times even as a starting
| point. Your pasta will take significantly longer to cook,
| since it will bring down the temperature of the water when
| you put it in, since there's so little water
| messe wrote:
| In my experience box cooking times are never quite right,
| and irrelevant if you're going to be finishing your pasta
| in the sauce anyway.
|
| Unless you're extremely familiar with the exact brand of
| pasta, temperature of your stovetop, etc., you should be
| tasting your pasta toward the end of cooking to decide when
| to stop cooking it.
|
| > - It's still not going to be enough starch
|
| I'm inclined to disagree, but only have anecdata on this,
| so I can't really get into an extended debate over it. So I
| guess now I get to look forward to experimenting with
| starch additions the next few times I cook pasta.
| aardvarkr wrote:
| 1. The starch comes from the pasta, not the water.
| Decreasing the water increases the concentration of the
| starch in said water. That's why every good recipe for
| cacio e Pepe I've seen recommends using as little water as
| possible
|
| 2. This has been thoroughly debunked. Kenji did a full
| write up of this but suffice to say that starches absorb
| water starting at 180 degrees. As long as you have the
| water above that temp it will cook in the same amount of
| time.
|
| https://www.seriouseats.com/how-to-cook-pasta-salt-water-
| boi...
| wintermutestwin wrote:
| Here is a great video on cooking pasta with less water:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=259MXuK62gU&t=219s
| hsuduebc2 wrote:
| That makes sense, but using the same water for weeks at a time
| seems a bit disgusting to me. Even if it is boiled quite often.
| Mystery-Machine wrote:
| What? What is gross? Did you ever saw raw meat? It's probably
| gross. There are also insects walking over your vegetables.
| Gross.
| hsuduebc2 wrote:
| Gross part is that you are boiling same liquid in open
| space where people are working and making a mess. Also you
| are going to accumulate residue ar the bottom. Unlike meat
| or vegetables this can't be washed.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Do you find it gross when there's a big stockpot
| simmering stock for 12 hours without a lid in order to
| reduce?
|
| And what's to wash? You don't wash food _after_ cooking,
| and pasta is like bread -- it certainly doesn 't need
| washing beforehand either. It's just flour and some other
| ingredients.
|
| It's not like vegetables where you need to wash off dirt,
| pesticides, etc. Or meat where you wash off bacteria.
| Those aren't issues with pasta.
| hsuduebc2 wrote:
| I do not. I didn't make myself clear in first comment.
| Sorry for that. I was talking about using same water for
| a whole week. I felt that it is not optional. The residue
| building at the bottom, open space of messy kitchen with
| lid open and constant reheating because it cools
| overnight is what seems little bit off for me.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Oh, I see - yeah I've never heard of a restaurant using
| the pasta water across days. I don't think that's a
| thing. In fact it's a whole thing about how the pasta
| gets better throughout the day, because you start with
| fresh water each day. And remember that water is
| constantly being added to the pot as it gets soaked up by
| the pasta.
|
| Just from a food safety perspective I'm not sure it's
| legal to reuse across days, given that it's going to take
| all night to cool, only just in time to be reheated
| again.
| aardvarkr wrote:
| If it's constantly at a boil I doubt there's a food
| safety issue though high volume pasta shops probably
| don't need to keep the water more than a day
| Mystery-Machine wrote:
| Ahhhhhh, I also misunderstood your comment. Yeah, I hear
| you. Maybe you can keep the starch water in airtight
| container...not sure. I don't keep starch water for the
| next time I'll cook pasta. I just use the currently made
| starch water to create a sauce. Highly recommended! But,
| as mentioned in the research, wait for the water to cool
| down a bit. Or make a risottata in a pan. <- also highly
| recommended if you have a pan big enough.
| hsuduebc2 wrote:
| Edit: That makes sense, but using the same water for whole
| week at a time seems a bit disgusting to me. Even if it is
| boiled quite often.
|
| Sorry I wasn't able to edit it.
| ta988 wrote:
| Wait until you hear about 38y and more soy sauce from China
| or broths (with meat and fish) that cooked for years in Korea
| in the same pots.
| greenthrow wrote:
| They aren't using the same water for a week. The GP comment
| is nonsense.
| jounker wrote:
| but keep it below 4% to prevent it from getting too viscous.
| soared wrote:
| Discussed about half way through this post:
| https://www.seriouseats.com/how-to-cook-pasta-salt-water-boi...
| andybp85 wrote:
| did this recently and it totally works
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Dump a bunch of cornstarch or flour in there_
|
| Don't add powdered starch to hot water. It will clump. Add it
| to a small amount of cold water and then add _that_ to the hot
| pasta water. (And the starch you want is amylopectin. Waxy
| potato starch will work better than corn starch [1].)
|
| [1] https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Amylose-and-
| amylopectin-...
| s0rce wrote:
| This is what the paper suggests.
| neom wrote:
| I've made a lot of Cacio e Pepe over the years, the best video on
| the subject is Ethan Chlebowski imo. Ethan Chlebowski videos are
| generally REALLY great.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10lXPzbRoU0
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| >> Pecorino cheese was ideal due to its extraordinary shelf life,
| black pepper was used to stimulate heat receptors, and homemade
| spaghetti provided the carbohydrate intake
|
| Likely people just happened to have pasta, pepper and pecorino
| chesse (since they raised sheep) and they put them all together
| because that beats eating each one on its own.
|
| Or of course the article is right and pre-industrial sheep
| shepherds knew about carbohydrates and heat receptors.
| strken wrote:
| "Pre-industrial sheep shepherds" had mouths and stomachs just
| the same as us. They didn't grab ingredients totally at random.
| There's a reason the dish uses substantial and filling pasta
| instead of boiled celery or mint leaves or something.
| amarcheschi wrote:
| A few days ago i complained about my internship to a friend of
| mine who answered: "scientific research isn't an arrow, it
| expands like an oil drop on the floor"
|
| I get it now, i get it
|
| btw, on italian subreddit cucina (cooking) they talk about how an
| italian chef had previously done a similar thing based on his
| experience
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/cucina/comments/1htahbk/250100536_s...
|
| Now, please allow me a bit of sarcastic nationalism, but Welcome
| to Italy. The cradle of civilization.
| nimish wrote:
| This is the real hacker news. More of this!
|
| We need more curiosity about things :)
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