Skip to main content
Main

Macaroni Au Gratin

A baked macaroni dish with cheese, butter, and breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Macaroni Au Gratin

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Cook the macaroni

  1. In a pot, combine milk and water with nutmeg and salt; bring to a boil.

  2. Add macaroni and cook until tender, then drain.

Assemble and bake

  1. In a deep dish, layer macaroni and sprinkle some grated cheese on top.

  2. Pour remaining cheese over the macaroni and dot with butter.

  3. Sprinkle bread crumbs on top and bake at 400°F (200°C) until golden brown.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Cheese + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

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

  4. Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  5. Cheese + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 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

Pipe macaroni
Forms the bulk and structure of the dish, holding the sauce in its tubes.
Cheese
Melts into the milk to create a creamy, binding sauce and a savory flavor.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, helping the top brown as it bakes.
Fresh milk
Provides the liquid base that becomes the creamy sauce with the cheese.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden topping through browning in the oven.

The step that matters

Bake until golden brown. The bread crumbs and butter brown through dry heat, which gives the crust its color and flavor. Pulling the dish too early leaves the topping pale and the cheese sauce under-set, while overbaking can dry the macaroni.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Pepperfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against cheese, butter, milk, bread. 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMacaroni and CheeseMacaroni and Cheese102 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipes