Skip to main content
Dessert

Macaroni Pudding, Sweet

A sweet baked macaroni pudding made with milk, eggs, lemon rind, sugar, nutmeg, and brandy.

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

Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Macaroni Pudding, Sweet

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Cook the macaroni

  1. Put the macaroni and 1 pint of milk with the lemon peel into a saucepan.

  2. Let it simmer gently until the macaroni is tender.

  3. Remove the lemon peel and transfer the mixture to a pie dish.

Make the custard and bake

  1. Mix the other pint of milk with the eggs, then stir the mixture well.

  2. Add sugar and brandy.

  3. Pour the mixture over the macaroni.

  4. Grate nutmeg on top.

  5. Bake in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C) for 1 hour.

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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Nutmeg + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,311 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Milk + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,738 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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 pudding and absorbs milk as it softens, giving body.
Eggs
Set during baking to bind the milk and macaroni into a custard-like pudding.
Milk
Provides the liquid that cooks the pasta and forms the creamy custard base.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavour depth to the pudding.

The step that matters

Bake in a moderate oven. Eggs set through gentle heat; if the oven is too hot, the custard can curdle or turn grainy and the top may brown before the centre sets.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, egg, sugar, nutmeg, brandy):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, sugar, nutmeg, brandy. 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

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesBrandy PeachesBrandy Peaches68 recipes