Skip to main content
Main

Macaroni and Cheese

A dish of boiled macaroni coated with melted cheese, egg, water, and cracker meal, then fried in lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Macaroni and Cheese

Why it works: Cheese and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 28% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,253 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Macaroni and Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the macaroni

  1. Boil the macaroni for 25 minutes.

  2. Drain the macaroni.

  3. While hot, mix in the minced cheese to melt it.

Coat and fry

  1. Once cooled, beat the egg with water.

  2. Dip each string of macaroni into the egg mixture.

  3. Coat the macaroni with cracker meal.

  4. Heat lard in a frying pan.

  5. Fry the macaroni for about 1 minute.

  6. Drain the macaroni in a colander.

  7. Cut the strings in half.

Serve

  1. Pile the macaroni loosely on a dish.

  2. Serve very 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Cheese + eggtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,253 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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 its chewy, starchy body.
Cheese
Melts into the hot pasta to add richness and a creamy, savory flavor.
Egg
Acts as a binder so the cracker meal sticks to the macaroni strings.
Cracker meal
Forms a crisp, golden coating that browns when fried.
Lard
Fat for frying that crisps the coating and adds savory flavor.

The step that matters

Mix in the cheese while the macaroni is hot. Cheese melts smoothly into hot pasta, while cooled pasta lets it clump and turn greasy. Heat drives the melting that binds the cheese to the starch.

“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.

More macaroni and cheese recipes

Baked 52Croquettes 10Timbale 8Casserole 6Soup 5with Tomato Sauce 3 See all 313 →

You might also like

Cheese MakingCheese Making50 recipesCheese FrittersCheese Fritters34 recipesCheese OmeletteCheese Omelette31 recipesRice and Cheese CasseroleRice and Cheese Casserole23 recipes