Physicists stirred up controversy with scientific cooking tips in 2025

Scientists' new recipes for classic pasta and boiled eggs are among the most talked-about science stories of 2025, causing delight and rage in equal measure.

In January Ivan Di Terlizzi from the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems in Germany and colleagues reported their analysis of how to make The perfect cacio e pepe pasta saucea silky emulsion of black pepper, pecorino cheese and water that is notoriously difficult to smooth out without lumps. The secret, according to the team, is adding a little cornstarch.

This conclusion was based on extensive testing of hundreds of different sauces with subtle differences in the proportions of cheese, starch and water, which helped DiTerlizzi and his team construct detailed graphs and charts showing when a sauce was most likely to be lump-free. But despite this scientific rationale, their findings have been controversial, especially in Italy, the researchers' homeland.

“Since we are talking about Italian recipes, some comments on social networks were not very enthusiastic: “We have been preparing these recipes for many years; these scientists want to teach us how to do something new; cooking should be more about love than science,” says Di Terlizzi.

The response from the scientific community has been more positive, DiTerlizzi says, with colleagues stopping him in the hallways of physics conferences to ask excitedly about their work. In September, Di Terlizzi and his colleagues won one of this year's awards. Ig Nobel Prizesan ironic competition of scientific papers that make people laugh and then think. “Finding order in the world looks like disorder unless you look at it through the eyes of rigor and mathematics,” says DiTerlizzi.

In February Ernesto Di Maio at the University of Naples, Italy, and his colleagues developed new method Perfectly boiled eggs require at least half an hour of careful cooking. This is because the egg must be moved between pans of 30 °C (86 °F) water and boiling water every 2 minutes for eight cycles so that the white and yolk, which have set at different temperatures, cook evenly.

The recipe has proven popular online, but some social media users have complained that it usually takes too long to prepare. The media coverage led to some publicity in unexpected places, including a live cooking demonstration on Japan's main public television channel and an egg recipe question on the Italian version of a game show. Who wants to become a millionaire? “I just returned from Washington, D.C., where I attended a seminar on research management and cooked eggs for 30 people at the home of one ambassador,” says Di Maio.

Some of the scientific theory the team used to perfect the egg-boiling technique is now being repurposed for a more practical use, which involves making laminates by curing a single material at different successive temperatures, like an egg, Di Maio said.

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