The method is very simple: you take a pot with two liters of water, boil it, salt it generously and slide in the pasta of your choice. Then just turn off the stove. "After you bring the water to a boil, you just put in the pasta and wait two minutes," Italian scientist and Nobel laureate Giorgio Parisi, who studies some of the most complex problems in the universe, explained on his Facebook page. "Then you can turn off the gas, put the lid on and calculate a minute longer than the stated cooking time. This method saves you 'at least eight minutes of energy' - and those minutes add up.

He never expected that Parisi's proposal to save energy would trigger a worldwide controversy. Italian chefs in particular took his method to heart and boiled with anger: Antonello Colonna, whose restaurant in Labico (Italy) has a Michelin star, explained to "La Repubblica" that this method only leads to a pot of rubbery pasta would lead. "I remember well at my parents' house the gas bottle ran out while the spaghetti was cooking and when that happened we had a problem because the consistency of the product was now compromised," he said.

Chef Luigi Pomata took more drastic terms, calling it "a disaster" to turn off the heat while the pasta was cooking. "Let's leave the cooking to the chefs while the physicists experiment in their lab."

David Fairhurst, lecturer at the "School of Science

Sources: "La Repubblica", "The Conversation"