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Macaroni and Cheese Timbale

A baked macaroni and cheese dish with eggs, butter, flour, milk, and paprika, set in a mold and poached.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Macaroni and Cheese Timbale

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the sauce

  1. Line a mold with cooked macaroni.

  2. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  3. Stir in the flour and cook for 1 minute.

  4. Gradually add the milk, stirring until smooth.

  5. Add salt and paprika, then stir in the beaten eggs.

Assemble and cook

  1. Mix the sauce with the macaroni and cheese.

  2. Fill the mold with the mixture and poach in hot water until firm.

Serve

  1. Serve surrounded by a white sauce.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  3. Cheese + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the sauce and help set the timbale when poached.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk into a smooth white sauce.
Butter
Carries the flour and adds richness to the sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the white sauce.
Cheese
Adds savoury flavour and body to the macaroni mixture.
Macaroni
Provides the body and shape of the timbale.

The step that matters

Adding the beaten eggs to the sauce. If the sauce is too hot when the eggs go in, they can scramble and leave lumps. Stir them in off the heat or with the sauce only warm, so they thicken it gently and set evenly when poached.

“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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