Cacio e Pepe vs. Carbonara vs. Amatriciana

Three of the pastas on our menu come from the same short stretch of Roman cooking, and they are close enough relatives that people mix them up constantly. They are built on the same idea and separated by two or three ingredients each. Here is how to tell them apart, and how to choose.

Cacio e Pepe — the original

Cacio e pepe means cheese and pepper, and that is the entire recipe: Pecorino Romano, black pepper, pasta, and the starchy water the pasta cooked in. No meat, no tomato, no cream, no butter, no oil.

It is the hardest of the three to make properly. The sauce is an emulsion — grated pecorino whisked into hot starchy water until it turns into a glossy cream. Get the temperature wrong and the cheese seizes into stringy clumps instead of a sauce. There is no ingredient to hide behind and no way to rescue it once it splits, so it has to be made to order, one plate at a time.

Order it if you want to taste technique. It is sharp, peppery and salty, and it is the most purely Roman thing on the menu.

Carbonara — cacio e pepe with egg and pork

Take cacio e pepe and add two things: egg yolk, and guanciale. That is carbonara. The yolk enriches the emulsion and turns it golden and silky; the guanciale renders its fat into the sauce and brings salt and depth.

What is not in it: cream. Carbonara has never contained cream. The silkiness comes from the yolk and the emulsion, and adding cream makes it heavier, blander and less interesting — it flattens the pecorino, which is the ingredient doing most of the work. We get asked about this often enough that it is worth saying plainly. Ours is made the Roman way.

The other thing it does not contain is bacon. More on that below.

Order it if you want richness. It is the most comforting of the three.

Amatriciana — the red one

Amatriciana takes the guanciale and the pecorino, drops the egg, and adds tomato and a touch of chilli. It comes from Amatrice, a town northeast of Rome, and it is the only one of the three with tomato in it.

It is also the brightest and the sharpest. The tomato cuts the fat from the guanciale, the chilli lifts it, and the pecorino keeps it salty. Where carbonara is rich and rounded, amatriciana has edges.

Order it if you want something lively, or if a plate of pure egg-and-cheese sounds like too much.

The thread running through all three

Two ingredients appear in every one of them: Pecorino Romano, a hard sheep’s-milk cheese much saltier and sharper than parmesan, and — in two of the three — guanciale, cured pork cheek.

Guanciale is not bacon and not pancetta. It is fattier and more delicate than either, and it renders down into the sauce rather than sitting on top of it as a separate crunchy element. Substituting bacon introduces smoke, which none of these dishes want. Substituting pancetta gets closer but is leaner, so the sauce ends up thinner.

The fourth thing they share is that none of them uses cream, and none of them uses more than about five ingredients.

Which to order

• First time, want the classic: Carbonara.
• Want to judge the kitchen: Cacio e Pepe. It is the one that cannot be faked.
• Want tomato, or want something less heavy: Amatriciana.
• Feeding someone who does not eat pork: Cacio e Pepe is the only one of the three that works.

Does the pasta shape matter?

More than people expect, and it is the part of the order most often left to chance.

Cacio e pepe and carbonara are emulsion sauces — thin, glossy, and they cling by coating rather than by catching. They want a long shape with enough surface area to hold a film of sauce: spaghettoni or linguine. Fettuccine works too, though its width can overwhelm the delicacy of a cacio e pepe.

Amatriciana has body. There is tomato in it and pieces of guanciale, so it benefits from a shape with somewhere for those pieces to sit. Rigatoni is the traditional answer — the ridges grip, the tube catches. Strozzapreti works on the same principle with a bit more chew.

None of this is a rule you can get wrong in a way that ruins dinner. But if you have no preference, ask for spaghettoni with the carbonara and rigatoni with the amatriciana, and the dishes will land closer to how they are eaten in Rome.

A note on cheese at the table

All three already contain a substantial amount of Pecorino Romano, and every pasta leaves our kitchen finished with Parmigiano Reggiano. Adding more at the table is entirely your call — but taste it first. These are salty dishes by design, and the pecorino is doing more work than it looks like it is.

All three are $25, all are finished with Parmigiano Reggiano, and you choose the shape — spaghettoni, linguine, fettuccine, strozzapreti or rigatoni. Gluten-free pasta is available for $3 more. The full list is on the pasta page.

Hungry yet?

Neapolitan pizza, Roman pasta and an Italian deli at 2500 E Commercial Blvd, Fort Lauderdale.