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Stewed Macaroni

Stewed macaroni is a creamy pasta dish made with macaroni, butter, flour, stock, cream, salt, and white pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Stewed Macaroni

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the macaroni

  1. Boil the macaroni in water until tender.

  2. Drain the macaroni well.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter, then stir in the flour and cook for a minute.

  2. Gradually add the stock and cream, and stir until smooth.

  3. Season with salt and white pepper.

  4. Add the macaroni and bring to a boil.

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

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  4. Veal + white peppertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Butter + vealtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,381 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Melted with flour to form a roux that thickens the sauce and adds richness.
Flour
Cooked with melted butter to form a roux that thickens the stock and cream into a smooth sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and a silky texture to the sauce.
Veal or beef stock
Forms the savoury liquid base that the roux thickens into a sauce.
Macaroni
Provides the starchy body of the dish, soaking up the sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour into the butter and adding the liquid gradually. Cooking the flour briefly in melted butter coats the starch granules so they disperse evenly. Adding the stock and cream slowly while stirring keeps the sauce smooth instead of lumpy.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, veal, cream):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, veal, cream. 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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