Skip to main content
Main

Macaroni and Eggs

A simple pasta dish combining macaroni with hard‑boiled eggs, seasoned with salt and pepper, topped with white sauce and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Macaroni and Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the macaroni

  1. Boil salted water and add the macaroni.

  2. Cook until nearly tender.

Prepare the eggs

  1. Place hard-boiled eggs in cold water for 1 minute to cool.

  2. Peel the eggs and cut them in half, removing the yolks carefully.

  3. Cut the egg whites into rings.

Assemble and serve

  1. Mix the egg rings with the macaroni.

  2. Season with salt and pepper.

  3. Pour white sauce or cream mixed with melted butter over the dish.

  4. Garnish with chopped parsley and the egg yolks.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Egg + parsleytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Sauce and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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 starchy base that gives the dish its body.
Hard-boiled eggs
Supply firm, mild protein texture and rich flavour to the dish.
White sauce or cream
Adds moisture and a creamy, smooth coating to the pasta.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a silky mouthfeel in the sauce.

The step that matters

Cooking the macaroni until nearly tender. Pasta keeps softening in its own heat and in the sauce, so stopping just short of tender keeps it from turning mushy once combined and served.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Nutmegfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, pepper, sauce, butter. 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

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes