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Macaroni with Cream

A creamy macaroni dish made with butter, cheese, cream, pepper, salt, mustard, and puff pastry garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream 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 Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the macaroni

  1. Boil the macaroni in hot water until done.

  2. Cut the cooked macaroni into pieces.

Make the dish

  1. In a pan, combine the macaroni, butter, grated cheese, and cream.

  2. Add pepper, salt, and mustard to the pan.

  3. Heat over the fire until well mixed and hot.

  4. Dish the macaroni out.

  5. Garnish with diamond-shaped pieces of puff pastry.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  4. Cheese + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,805 recipes

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

  5. Cheese + creamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,655 recipes

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

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 a firm, starchy body.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the dish.
Grated cheese
Melts into the hot cream to add savoury flavour and body.
Cream
Adds moisture and creaminess that coats the macaroni pieces.

The step that matters

Heat over the fire until well mixed and hot. Heating gently while stirring lets the cheese melt into the cream and butter evenly. Overheating can cause the dairy to separate and turn grainy or oily.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, cheese, cream, pepper):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Onionfits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, cheese, cream, pepper. 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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