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Macaroni De Fromage

A simple cheese sauce served over boiled macaroni.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 De Fromage

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the cheese with the butter in a tin plate.

  2. Once melted, add the cream and hot milk, and mix well.

Finish and serve

  1. Cut the boiled macaroni into small pieces and add it to the mixture.

  2. Stir in the mustard powder and pepper.

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

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

Cheese
Melts into the sauce to give it rich flavour and a creamy body.
Butter
Melts with the cheese to add fat, smoothness and richness to the sauce.
Cream
Adds fat and moisture, making the sauce smoother and creamier.
Hot milk
Thins the cheese mixture into a pourable sauce without cooling it down.
Macaroni
Provides the body of the dish, soaking up the sauce as the main starch.

The step that matters

Melting the cheese with the butter. Cheese turns grainy or oily if overheated, so melt it gently over low heat. Adding the cream and hot milk afterward helps the sauce stay smooth and emulsified.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cheese, butter, cream, milk, pepper):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Onionfits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cheese, butter, cream, milk, pepper. 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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