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Buttered Macaroni

A baked macaroni dish with butter, cheese, and breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cheese are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,962 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Buttered Macaroni

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the macaroni and drain it well.

  2. In a warmed pie dish, add the butter and then the macaroni.

Bake and serve

  1. Mix everything together, adding freshly grated cheese and a few dried breadcrumbs.

  2. Place in the oven and cook until golden brown.

  3. Serve in the dish in which it was cooked.

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

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

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 a tender, chewy structure.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, coating the pasta and helping it brown in the oven.
Freshly grated cheese
Melts into the pasta to add savoury flavour and a creamy, binding texture.
Dried breadcrumbs
Form a crisp, golden crust on top as the dish bakes.

The step that matters

Bake until golden brown. Cheese and breadcrumbs brown through the Maillard reaction at high dry heat. Pulling the dish out too early leaves the top pale and soft, while leaving it too long can dry the cheese and make it oily.

“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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