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Macaroni Plain

A simple macaroni dish cooked with milk, butter, and a cornstarch thickener.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Macaroni Plain

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the macaroni

  1. Break the macaroni into pieces and boil in water for 20 minutes until tender.

  2. Drain and rinse the macaroni in clear water.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In a saucepan, thicken the milk with cornstarch, adding salt and pepper.

  2. Stir in the butter and heat through.

  3. Add the macaroni to the sauce and serve immediately.

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 + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Milk + peppertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together26,984 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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

What each ingredient does

Macaroni
Provides the starchy bulk and chewy body that makes up the dish.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, giving it creaminess and a mild sweetness.
Cornstarch
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce as its starch swells when heated.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, rounding out the flavor and smoothness of the sauce.

The step that matters

Thickening the milk with cornstarch. Cornstarch must be mixed well and heated while stirring so its starch granules swell and gelatinize evenly. Added lumpy or left under-heated, it leaves a grainy or raw-starch taste and an uneven, thin sauce.

“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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