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Simple Macaroni

A simple macaroni dish cooked with milk, butter, salt, white pepper, and optional cheese, cayenne, egg, and mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Simple Macaroni

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the macaroni

  1. Pour 1 quart of boiling water over ½ pound of macaroni; cover and let it stand for 20 minutes.

  2. Drain the macaroni and rinse with cold water; drain again.

  3. In a kettle, combine the macaroni with boiling milk and water until tender.

  4. Drain the macaroni again and season with butter, salt, white pepper, and cheese if desired.

  5. Alternatively, boil ¼ pound of macaroni with 1 teaspoon salt in 1 quart of boiling water for 20 minutes.

  6. Pour off the water, add ⅓ cup milk, cover, and stew until tender.

Make the cream sauce

  1. Meanwhile, heat ⅓ cup milk with 2 tablespoons butter, ¼ teaspoon salt, and a pinch of cayenne over boiling water.

  2. Stir in the beaten egg until thickened like cream; add mustard if desired.

  3. Pour the sauce over the macaroni and serve hot.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Milk + cheesetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Macaroni
Forms the bulk of the dish and carries the sauce.
Milk
Provides liquid and creaminess that forms the base of the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the sauce and macaroni.
Egg
Thickens the sauce as it heats, giving it a creamy body.

The step that matters

Stirring in the beaten egg. Egg proteins set when heated, so the sauce thickens. If it gets too hot or is heated too fast, the egg can scramble and turn grainy. Keep the heat gentle and stir constantly.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, butter, cheese, egg):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, cheese, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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