Question in title really...

No. It's beaten eggs and egg yolks. Maybe with a bit of cream thrown in. How many are you cooking for?

No it's eggs/parmesan etc.

Nigella's recipe is lovely. here

White sauce on spaghetti would be yuk.
Isn't there cream in carbonara?

Cream is not essential. There's an even simpler version in Nigella's How To Cook which (from memory) is:

bacon
glass of wine.
1 egg and 1 yolk mixed with a pile of parmesan

1.fry bacon (I use a wok so you've got room to add spag later)
2.pour in wine so it sizzles and you get a syrupy winey bacony loveliness.
3. Turn off heat and add hot cooked spag - mix through.
4. Pour over eggy mixture and stir through the spag.
The residual heat from the spag and pan cooks the egg onto the spag.

Seriously good and very filling.

Meh ok Thank you!

(Have a jar of lasagne sauce and a bland looking pile of pasta, bacon, mushrooms... it can stay bland tonight)

I will cook a proper sauce next time though

No idea - asda do a nice ready italian pot of it though <lazy and a crap cook thats me>

Tip if you are making it though is to have really, really warm plates for serving up, as the eggs are added in raw and it's the heat of the pasta that cooks it through (in the authentic recipe I use anyway).

Might end up a bit too 'eggy' otherwise.
If you can ever be bothered making it that is - it's a bit of a palavar !!

We had carbonara tonight.
Egg,egg whites and grated cheese is all i stir in once spag is cooked.
And i normally use chopped cooked sausages instead of bacon. Yummy.

for my carbonara i
mix an egg and add some creme fraiche, grated parmesan and a squeeze of lemon juice, and normally do bacon lardons as well

yum!

I tried making Carbonara and turned out like this mank, scrambled egg thing! I followed the recipe, which was from the Sunday You magazine but it went wrong somewhere.

I live in Rome where recipe originates from, DP is Roman and here the recipe is kept very simple - fry pancetta in olive oil (or chopped bacon if no pancetta), cook pasta, drain pasta, toss egg yolk per person in pasta, mix with grated pecorino cheese or parmesan if no pecorino, serve immediately. Don't return to heat after added egg as will become like scrambled egg. The egg yolk is cooked slightly by hot pasta so not raw and makes lovely creamy sauce (without needing to add cream).