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Macaroni with Parmesan Cheese

A simple macaroni dish cooked with cream, butter, flour, and topped with toasted Parmesan cheese.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter 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 ↓

Macaroni with Parmesan Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the macaroni

  1. Boil the macaroni until tender and drain it.

Make the sauce

  1. In a toasting pan, combine the macaroni, cream, butter, and flour.

  2. Boil for 5 minutes.

Serve

  1. Pour onto a plate and top with toasted Parmesan cheese.

  2. Serve immediately on a warm plate.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Butter + parmesan cheesetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,163 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cream + parmesan cheesetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,566 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  5. Cream + flourtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

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

Macaroni
Forms the bulk of the dish and gives it its body.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, helping the dish turn silky when heated.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour, carrying richness through the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the cream and butter into a binding sauce that clings to the pasta.
Parmesan cheese
Adds savoury, salty flavour and browning when toasted on top.

The step that matters

Boil for 5 minutes. Boiling the cream with flour lets the starch swell and thicken the sauce. Too little heat leaves it thin and floury, while overcooking can cause the cream to separate and turn grainy.

“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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