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Simple Macaroni

A simple macaroni dish cooked in boiling water and served with a creamy sauce made from milk, butter, egg, and optional cheese.

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 boiling water over macaroni and let it stand for 20 minutes.

  2. Drain and rinse with cold water, then drain again.

  3. Cook in a kettle of boiling milk and water until tender, then drain.

  4. Season with butter, salt, white pepper, and cheese if desired.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, heat milk with butter, salt, and cayenne over boiling water.

  2. Add a beaten egg and stir until thick like cream.

Serve

  1. 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 gives it its chewy, starchy body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the cream sauce and adds richness and softness.
Butter
Adds fat for richer flavour and a smoother mouthfeel in the sauce and macaroni.
Egg
Thickens the hot sauce as its proteins set, giving it a creamy consistency.

The step that matters

Adding the beaten egg to the hot sauce. Egg proteins set when heated, so if the sauce is too hot or boiling when the egg goes in, it can curdle or turn grainy. Stir steadily and keep the heat moderate so it thickens smoothly.

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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