Quick Student food One pan

Butter and cheese pasta

Name: Butter and cheese pasta
Total time: 18 min
Yield: 2
Ingredients: 200 g Pasta; 40 g Butter; 80 g White cheese; 8 g Salt, per litre

Three ingredients. What makes the difference is not an ingredient but the ladle of cooking water you keep.

18 minTime

620Kcal / serving

1240Total kcal

Method

Salt the water at 7–10 g per litre and boil the pasta one minute short of the packet time.

Why It finishes that last minute in the pan with the sauce, and that is where its starch goes into the sauce.

Salt · 3.85% High. Osmosis is pulling water out, the texture is tightening and the flavour is closing.
Before draining, keep back a ladle of the cooking water.

Salt · 3.85% High. Osmosis is pulling water out, the texture is tightening and the flavour is closing.
Melt the butter in a pan, add the pasta and half the water and toss for a minute.

Why The starchy water builds an emulsion between fat and water, so the butter coats the pasta instead of running off it.

Salt · 3.23% High. Osmosis is pulling water out, the texture is tightening and the flavour is closing.

If you want a crust, do not stay under 140 °C. Food cooks at this heat but never colours.
Off the heat, crumble in the cheese and stir.

Why White cheese splits over direct heat, and the pan’s residual warmth is enough to melt it.

Salt · 3.05% High. Osmosis is pulling water out, the texture is tightening and the flavour is closing.

What the model could follow

This recipe was run through the engine step by step — what goes in when, and at what temperature and for how long. The reactions above come from that run.

peak 120 °C · 12 minutes · engine 1.0.0 · confidence low

Servings

2

Ingredients

200 g Pasta
40 g Butter
80 g White cheese
8 g Salt, per litre

What did you think

Who is eating

Everyone A baby under one Pregnant A child An athlete

The 1 rules we hold for this group did not fire for this dish. That does not mean the dish is suitable for them; it means those particular rules did not apply.

Not about the dish — about the person

Salt in a day

5 g 2000 mg

An adult Context established

Under 5 g of salt a day, which is under 2000 mg of sodium — just under a teaspoon. A label usually gives sodium, and the two are not the same number: salt is about 2.5 times the sodium.

World Health Organization, Salt reduction

Free sugars

10%

Strong recommendation — adults and children Context established

The same share for adults and for children. Ten per cent of a 2000-calorie day is roughly 50 g of sugar, and a single can of a fizzy drink is more than half of it. The risk of weight gain, obesity and tooth decay rises above this line.

World Health Organization, Information note about intake of sugars recommended in the WHO guideline for adults and children, 2015

Not on this site: There is no guidance here on eating during pregnancy — caffeine, fish, iron, folate, none of it — because we have no source for any of it. Ask the doctor following the pregnancy.

This choice is not stored anywhere.

Diets

Gluten-free Not suitable Pasta
Vegan Not suitable Butter, White cheese
Vegetarian Suitable if the label checks out The rennet may be animal; look for microbial rennet on the packet.
Lactose-free Suitable if the label checks out Strained or aged: most of the lactose is gone, but not all of it.
Diabetes-friendly It depends Quickly digested starch. Cooling it builds resistant starch, and fat, protein, fibre or acid alongside it flattens the curve.

This verdict comes from the recipe\u2019s own ingredient list. The label on a packaged ingredient is always the last word.

Calculated nutrition

620 kcal
20 g Protein
75.3 g Carbohydrate
26.1 g Fat
3.2 g Fibre

Per serving, computed from raw weights as bought. Cooking drives water off and sometimes adds fat, and neither is accounted for.

composition figures unsourced · held in the system

Taste profile

What it tastes like

The axes that define this recipe: salty 33, richness 40.

Sweet 12
Salty 33
Sour 8
Bitter 8
Umami 22
Heat 0
Richness 40
Aroma 14

This profile is computed rather than measured: the role-weighted average of its ingredients’ taste vectors, shifted by what the cooking does. The thin line is the database average on that axis.

Computed similarity

Closest in taste

Not hand-picked: ranked by distance across the eight taste axes.

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