Carbonara

I'm planning to cook spaghetti alla carbonara as a night-before-the-marathon meal for my wife and her fellow runners. I am trying to merge two recipes that I like into one, but there is a HUGE difference in the number of eggs called for.

Recipe A (4 servings) calls for 8 large eggs. Recipe B (4-6 servings) calls for 2 large eggs. Huh?!?!

Any guidance here? I'm doubling the recipe, which means I'm looking at either 4 eggs, 16 eggs, or somewhere in between. My gut says to split the difference and use around 6-8 eggs for the doubled recipe. The other ingredients remain similar (cup of cheese, pound spaghetti, same amount of pancetta).

Normally I would just wing this and keep adding eggs until it looked right, but since the key to carbonara is getting the egg mixture in fast while the drained pasta is hot in order to cook the eggs, I likely need to make a decision pre-cooking and stick to it.

Thanks.

Don't use 16 eggs. That'd be too many. How about 1.5 eggs per serving? That would be about right.

I love carbonara. If you've never had it at Lou Lou, try it some time - ours is aces (but we do not mount it with eggs unless the diner specifically requests it).

Thanks Marsha. MUCH appreciated, and I love Lou Lou's carbonara.

16 eggs (roughly 2 per serving) seemed very high to me. For approximate service for 8, I'll roll with 10-12 eggs.

I like to thin it out with a good 1/2 cup of the cooking water, so I definitely don't want to go too far with the eggs.

FWIW, I used 9 eggs for 2 lbs. pasta. Unfortunately, I drained the freaking pasta without remembering to reserve some water, so I thinned with just a little (very little) cream.

It turned out great. The starchy water would have been better, but it turned out fine.