A group of Italian physicists dared to tinker around Kacho E Pepe's traditional recipes, a challenging Roman cuisine composed of pasta, Pecolino cheese and black pepper. New research claims that scientists have “scientifically optimized” recipes by adding ingredients called cornstarch.
Kacho Epepe means cheese and pepper, and fresh ingredients are a representative of Italian cuisine that creates bold flavor. According to a new paper, the dish was invented by shepherds, “the saddle bag had to be packed with high -calorie ingredients.” Currently, it is a standard Roman pasta store, but chefs who have been dyed in tradition may not look at the scientific lessons on cooking thermodynamics.
The authors recognized that they were in a delicate position. “I hope eight authors in Italy are enough,” said Ivan De Territzy, a statistical physicist at the Max Planck Complex Physics Institute in Dresden, Germany. He is from Puria, Italy.
The recipe may be simple, but it is not easy to make it correctly. Pecolino cheese and ground pepper are mixed with water with a lot of starch from the boiled pasta to complete a smooth sauce. By doing so, Ideally, a detant between substances that do not mix in other methods, such as emulsion, that is, when oil and water form mayonnaise.
However, as many chefs have discovered, mixing cheese and pasta steam can cause a devastating situation called the “mozzarella stage”.
The boiling water distorts the shape of the whey protein contained in the cheese. After that, they bind to each other, bind to other proteins, which are contained in cheese, and cause lumps.
Scientists wanted to find a certain way to avoid gummy confusion.
“It's very difficult to find an appropriate balance,” says Fabrizio Olmada, a statistical physicist and Roman from Rome. Some say that the world's best Kacho E -Pepe is provided by Felice a Testaco's Tratcuria. “And even if you can understand it correctly, you may not understand what you did to improve it.”
Scientists heated various sources using a vacuum cooker that keeps the temperature of the water constant. They also made a wooden table that holds the pot at a predetermined position to secure a uniform heating. After heating, the sauce was poured into a plate plate, and on it was placed on a cardboard box covered with a transparent film. The light bulb illuminated the plate from below. As a result, in the photos taken on the iPhone attached to the tripod, the cheese lump became noticeable as black spots.
“Our samples were not all wasteful,” said Barcelona's biologist and another author in the dissertation, said. “Our friends came to greet them to see them, and they helped us and ate all the samples. It is presumed that it is included.
When scientists tried experiments with various temperature and various starch concentrations, it was found that starch had a significant effect on the consistency of the sauce. The newspaper states that the entire process is “less affected by temperature mistakes.”
The starch is made of a long molecular string, that is, a polymer. When the polymer absorbs water and swells, the polymer binds to the casein to prevent whey -proteins.
A traditional method of mixing cheese with pasta water often does not work because the water does not contain enough starch. The scientist's method completely eliminates pasta moisture. Instead, dissolve the commercially available corn starch in ordinary water and heat before adding cheese. Researchers have calculated that the ideal concentration of starch should be 2-3 % of the cheese weight. (The recipes they optimize require about 2/3 cups of cheese and less than one teaspoon for “two hungry”.)
Italian gourmet may be skeptical, but food science experts have said that the study is healthy.
“What they did was a very impressive job,” he said, the former Microsoft's highest technical manager, and cooking books “Modernist Cuisine” are widely thought to be a bible for molecular gastronomy. Nathan Miavold, the house, said.
Dr. Miavold has proposed another solution to add a widespread anticoagant sodium citrate, while praising Italian researchers for the sustainability of starch. He stated that large starch, a large starch, could also reduce the flavor of cheese.
In a way, many generations of Italian non -na were scientists who tried recipes, observe the results, and retry.
“Cooking is chemistry, but the most important thing is experience,” said Lydia Bastianic, a pioneer in Italian food in the United States. Just as the simplest scientific formula can be the most innovative, the simplest pasta emits the most intense flavor.
“Simple is the most difficult to reach,” said Ms. Basty Anich.
