The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science

starch molecules swell up, thickening the sauce, while the
evaporated milk adds a concentrated source of milk
proteins. This helps the entire mixture stay smooth and
emulsified, resulting in a creamy sauce. The easiest way to
incorporate the cornstarch is to toss it with the grated
cheese. That way, when you add the cheese to the pot, the
cornstarch is already dispersed enough that the cheese can’t
form annoying clumps. Want to get your sauce even
shinier? Cutting your flavorful cheese with just a bit of
American will introduce some full-strength emulsifying
agents that’ll get the sauce shiny enough to see your
reflection in.
The sauce was great on its own, but when added to pasta,
it didn’t quite cling to the noodles the way I wanted it to. To
fix this, I added a couple of eggs. Now, as the sauce cooks,
the long, twisted proteins from the egg white begin to
denature, unraveling and interconnecting with each other,
thickening the sauce into what is essentially a very loose
custard. The difference the eggs make in the sauce’s coating
ability is quite astonishing.
The best part? You don’t even have to make a separate
cheese sauce. Once the pasta is cooked, you can add all of
your other ingredients directly to the pot and just stir over
the burner until the sauce comes together on its own. What
we’ve got here is a stovetop mac and cheese recipe that’s
only about 10 percent more cumbersome to make than the
blue box (the only extra step is measuring a few ingredients)
but tastes far, far better.