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Italian Macaroni

A simple dish of boiled macaroni mixed with grated cheese and butter, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cheese and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,962 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Italian Macaroni

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the macaroni until very tender, about 20 to 30 minutes.

  2. Grate enough cheese to flavor the macaroni.

  3. Melt butter until hot enough to moisten the macaroni.

Assemble and serve

  1. In a serving dish, mix the cooked macaroni with the grated cheese.

  2. Pour the melted butter over the macaroni and serve immediately.

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

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

  2. Cheese + peppertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,861 recipes

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

  3. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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 soft, starchy body.
Grated cheese
Adds savory flavor and a rich, salty taste to the pasta.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and moistens the macaroni so it coats evenly.

The step that matters

Boil the macaroni until very tender. Pasta that is not cooked fully stays firm and chewy, and it will not absorb the butter and cheese well. Cooking it until very tender helps it take up the fat and flavor evenly.

“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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