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Lightened Up Baked Macaroni and Cheese

I love macaroni and cheese; it’s comforting and no matter how crappy your day was, it makes you feel whole inside. Wow, that’s a tall order! I’m totally picturing that commercial from the ‘80s when the guy comes home from work at night in a rain storm with the flu and his dog shows up with medicine around his collar (I’m officially old).

By tastykitchen · From Open Recipes · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 29,030 recipes mention both. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

The recipe

Serves 8
Prep10 min
Cook1 hr

Ingredients

Contains: milk, wheat (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Step-by-step directions aren't available for this recipe. See the full recipe at the source →

By tastykitchen. Recipe from Open Recipes.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together29,030 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Broccoli + garlictop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,072 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  3. Butter + white winetop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together5,039 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Broccoli + pastatop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together286 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Garlic + pastatop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together2,077 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the broccoli

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (wheat, butter, onion, flour, garlic, white wine, pasta):

  1. Potatobetter flavor fit
  2. Chivebetter flavor fit
  3. Tomatoabout as good a flavor fit
  4. Broccolithe original

Fit is the average pairing score against wheat, butter, onion, flour, garlic, white wine, pasta. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).