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Macaroni Plain

A macaroni dish cooked in milk and thickened with flour, seasoned with butter, pepper, and paprika.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Macaroni Plain

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the macaroni

  1. Boil the macaroni in salted water for five minutes.

  2. Without lifting the cover, transfer to a cooking kettle and cook for two hours.

  3. Drain the macaroni.

Make the sauce

  1. Thicken the milk with flour in a saucepan.

  2. Season with butter, pepper, and paprika.

Combine and serve

  1. Add the macaroni to the sauce, heat, and serve immediately.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

Macaroni
Forms the body of the dish and holds the sauce in its starchy surface.
Milk
Provides the liquid base that becomes the creamy sauce.
Flour
Its starch thickens the milk into a smooth sauce as it heats.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother mouthfeel in the sauce.

The step that matters

Thickening the milk with flour. Flour must be blended evenly into the milk so it does not clump. Heating the mixture gelatinizes the starch granules, which thickens the sauce. Stirring keeps heat even and prevents scorching on the bottom of the pan.

“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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