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Alfredo sauce

Sauces & dressings · Pasta sauces

Alfredo sauce

19

Butter, cream and parmesan, and nothing else pretending otherwise. It is the eighth most-searched recipe in America and the exact opposite of the marinara on this site — worth having both, and worth seeing the two numbers next to each other.

Time
15 min (5 prep + 10 cook)
Servings
6
Per serving
330 kcal
Protein
8 g

Both directions are legitimate — the score measures fullness per calorie, not virtue. Every version is the same dish, rebalanced.

Ingredients

Every ingredient links to its food page — same data, same score, same formula.

Steps

  1. Melt the butter over low heat and cook the garlic a minute without colouring it.
  2. Add the cream and bring it barely to a simmer. Do not boil it — cream splits and the sauce goes grainy.
  3. Take the pan off the heat before adding the parmesan, a handful at a time, whisking each in. Off the heat is the whole trick; cheese added to a hot pan seizes into strings.
  4. Season with pepper and nutmeg and use immediately over hot pasta, loosening with a splash of pasta water.

Compared to the marinara?

About four times the calories for the same spoonful, and the scores sit at opposite ends of the scale. Both are legitimate sauces; this is simply what the difference costs, stated plainly.

Alternatives

Why this score

engineered against fullness

Dense calories with little protein, volume or fiber to fill you up.

Three routes to fullness — one is enough

9% of kcal
44% water
0 g/Mcal

What pulls it down

2%
9%

How scores work

Computed on the finished dish, not an average of the parts: 1979 kcal goes into the pot, 492 g of ingredients comes out as ~480 g of food → 412 kcal per 100 g. Cooking moves water, and energy density is the score's biggest lever — so we show the math. Full formula here.

Per

Calories
412
Protein
(9%)
9 g
Fat
(86%)
40 g
Carbohydrates
(6%)
6 g
of which sugar
2 g
Fiber
<1 g
Sodium
535 mg

Percentages are the share of calories from each macronutrient.

Computed from the ingredients' USDA data — nothing typed by hand. Every number is traceable, every score recomputable.

More sauces & dressings

Photo: AI-generated. Nutrition and score are computed from the ingredients with the published formula — this recipe hasn't been kitchen-tested by us yet.