Name: Creamed Macaroni with Cheese Sauce
Ingredients: ½ ounce butter; 1 tablespoon milk; 1 teaspoon flour; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt; a little mustard; a little pepper; 1 saltspoonful bicarbonate of potash; grated cheese

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 ↓

Creamed Macaroni with Cheese Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Melt the butter in a saucepan.
Mix in the flour, salt, mustard, and pepper.
Gradually add the cold milk and stir until it boils.
Add the grated cheese and stir until melted.
Just before serving, mix in the bicarbonate of potash.

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.

Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,962 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together15,430 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Milk + cheesetop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,426 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Mustard + cheesetop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,805 recipes

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

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

Swap the mustard

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

Potatofits better
Capsicumfits better
Asparagusfits about as well
Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, milk, flour, pepper, cheese. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.