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Macaroni Pudding

A baked macaroni dish with butter, flour, onion, milk, eggs, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Macaroni Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the macaroni

  1. Break macaroni into small pieces and boil in salted water until tender.

  2. Drain the macaroni.

  3. Run cold water over the macaroni until cool.

Make the custard base

  1. Melt butter in a pan.

  2. Add flour and chopped onion to the pan.

  3. Cook the mixture until light yellow.

  4. Stir in milk until smooth.

  5. Add eggs to the mixture.

  6. Add salt to the mixture.

  7. Add pepper to the mixture.

  8. Add nutmeg to the mixture.

  9. Add macaroni to the mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a pudding dish.

  2. Boil the pudding dish in a kettle of boiling water for 15 minutes.

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. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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 of the pudding, giving it body and a starchy structure once cooked.
Eggs
Set when heated, binding the milk and macaroni into a firm, sliceable pudding.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, providing moisture and a creamy texture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and carries the flavour of the cooked onion and flour.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk mixture into a smooth sauce that holds the pudding together.

The step that matters

Stir in milk until smooth. Adding liquid to the hot flour and butter roux can cause lumps if it is not stirred steadily. Smooth blending lets the flour thicken the milk evenly, giving the custard a uniform texture.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, milk, egg, pepper, nutmeg. 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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