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Cream Macaroni

A macaroni dish with a creamy sauce made from milk, flour, butter, cheese, egg, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Cream Macaroni

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the macaroni

  1. Cook the macaroni in boiling salted water for 10 minutes.

  2. Drain the macaroni.

  3. Add 1 cup of milk to the macaroni and stew until tender.

Make the cream sauce

  1. In another saucepan, heat 1 cup of milk until boiling.

  2. Thicken the boiling milk with 1 teaspoon of flour mixed with cold milk.

  3. Stir in 2 teaspoons of butter, 3 tablespoons of grated cheese, and a pinch of Cayenne.

  4. Remove the sauce from the heat.

  5. Stir in the beaten egg.

Assemble and serve

  1. Drain the milk from the macaroni.

  2. Place the macaroni in a hot dish.

  3. Pour the cream mixture over the macaroni.

  4. 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  3. Milk + cheesetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

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

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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 body of the dish, cooked until tender to hold the sauce.
Milk
Makes up the liquid base, thickened with flour into a smooth cream sauce.
Flour
Thickens the boiling milk so the sauce coats the macaroni.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the sauce.
Grated cheese
Adds savoury flavour and body to the cream sauce.
Beaten egg
Enriches and gently thickens the sauce when stirred in off the heat.

The step that matters

Stir in the beaten egg off the heat. Egg proteins set at around simmering temperatures and can scramble if the sauce is too hot. Removing the pan from the heat first lets the egg thicken the sauce smoothly.

“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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