Name: Boiled Macaroni
Ingredients: 1 small pie-dish full of macaroni; 1 cup of milk; 1 good-sized piece of butter; a little salt

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 ↓

Boiled Macaroni

Ingredients

1 small pie-dish full of macaroni
1 cup of milk
1 good-sized piece of butter
a little salt

Directions

Prepare and cook

Soak the macaroni in cold water for 1 hour.
Boil the soaked macaroni in water for 30 minutes.
Add the milk and continue boiling until tender.

Drain and serve

Drain the macaroni in a colander for 1 minute.
Transfer to a serving dish. Add butter and salt.
Serve.

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.

Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Macaroni: Forms the dish's main body, becoming tender as it soaks and boils.
Milk: Added during boiling to soften the pasta and contribute creaminess and mild sweetness.
Butter: Adds fat and richness, coating the pasta for a smoother mouthfeel.

“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.