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Creamed Macaroni

A baked macaroni dish with butter, flour, milk, cheese, and cracker crumbs topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Creamed Macaroni

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the macaroni

  1. Boil macaroni in salted water for 20 minutes.

  2. Drain and rinse with cold water.

Make the cheese sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt butter and stir in flour.

  2. Add salt and milk slowly, cooking until smooth.

  3. Stir in grated cheese until melted.

Bake and serve

  1. Layer macaroni and cheese sauce in a baking dish.

  2. Top with cracker crumbs and bake until 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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Milk + cheesetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Macaroni
Forms the bulk and the structure of the dish.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce.
Grated cheese
Adds savory flavor and creaminess as it melts into the sauce.

The step that matters

Add salt and milk slowly, cooking until smooth. Adding liquid gradually to the butter and flour mixture lets the starch disperse evenly, preventing lumps and producing a smooth, thick sauce.

“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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