Skip to main content
Main

Macaroni Rarebit

A macaroni dish cooked with milk and cheese, served over buttered toast.

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

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 Rarebit

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the macaroni

  1. Break macaroni into small pieces and soak in warm water until tender.

  2. Drain and place in a saucepan with milk, then boil for 10 minutes.

Make the cheese sauce and serve

  1. Add cheese, butter, and salt, and stir until the cheese melts.

  2. Remove from heat and pour over buttered toast.

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

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

  3. Milk + cheesetop 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

Macaroni
Provides the starchy bulk and chewy structure of the dish.
Milk
Supplies liquid that cooks the pasta and forms the creamy base for the sauce.
Cheese
Melts into the liquid to give the sauce its body and savoury flavour.
Butter
Adds fat for smoother texture and richer flavour in the sauce.

The step that matters

Melting the cheese. Cheese proteins can turn grainy or oily if overheated, so stir it in gently and remove the pan from heat once it has melted to keep the sauce smooth.

“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