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Dessert

Maccaroni Pie

A pie filled with macaroni, forcemeat balls, sausage, egg yolks, mushrooms, and a creamy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 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 ↓

Maccaroni Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the crust

  1. Make a short crust with flour, egg, butter, sugar, and salt.

  2. Roll the dough to ⅛ inch thick and line a buttered pie dish.

Make the filling

  1. Boil and dress the macaroni as described above.

  2. In a saucepan, melt butter and mix with flour.

  3. Moisten with veal stock and cream, then add Parmesan, mustard, salt, and cayenne.

  4. Mix the macaroni with the sauce.

Assemble and bake

  1. Fill the pie with macaroni, forcemeat balls, sausage meat, hard boiled egg yolks, and mushrooms.

  2. Bake until golden.

  3. Serve hot.

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 + parmesan cheesetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,163 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 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

Flour
Forms the dough structure and thickens the sauce when cooked with butter.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crust and enriches the sauce.
Egg
Binds the short crust dough and adds richness.
Parmesan cheese
Adds savoury, salty flavour and body to the sauce.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness to the sauce.
Veal stock
Adds savoury depth and moisture to the sauce.

The step that matters

Make the sauce roux. Cooking the butter and flour together briefly removes raw flour taste and gives the sauce a smooth base; adding liquid too fast or unevenly can leave lumps.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, egg, butter, sugar, veal, cream, parmesan cheese):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, egg, butter, sugar, veal, cream, parmesan cheese. 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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