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Dessert

Macaroni Pudding

A sweet macaroni pudding baked with milk, eggs, sugar, spices, and jam, topped with puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Macaroni Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the macaroni custard

  1. Simmer macaroni in milk with lemon peel and cinnamon until soft.

  2. In a dish, combine cooked macaroni, milk, egg yolks, egg white, sugar, nutmeg, and almond water or jam.

Assemble and bake

  1. Roll out puff pastry and place it around the edge of the dish.

  2. Pour the macaroni mixture into the dish and bake until set.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + almondtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Nutmeg + almondtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Macaroni
Forms the body of the pudding, giving it a soft, starchy bite once cooked in milk.
Milk
Cooks the macaroni and forms the liquid base that sets into the custard.
Egg yolks
Enrich the custard and help it set into a smooth, tender texture when baked.
Egg white
Adds protein that helps the custard set firm when heated.
Almond water or orange marmalade or raspberry jam
Adds flavour and a touch of sweetness and fruit or almond aroma to the custard.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Egg proteins coagulate as they heat, so the custard must be baked only until it firms. Overbaking makes the eggs curdle and turn grainy and watery.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, cinnamon, egg, sugar, nutmeg, almond):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, cinnamon, egg, sugar, nutmeg, almond. 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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