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Macaroni As Usually Served

A baked macaroni dish with cheese, butter, and breadcrumbs, finished under a broiler.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Macaroni As Usually Served

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the macaroni

  1. Combine milk, water, and salt in a pot.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Add macaroni and cook until tender.

  4. Drain the macaroni.

Assemble

  1. Transfer the macaroni to a deep dish.

  2. Mix in half of the grated cheese and small pieces of butter.

  3. Layer the remaining cheese on top.

  4. Cover with bread crumbs.

  5. Drizzle the rest of the warmed butter over the crumbs.

Brown and serve

  1. Brown the top using a broiler or by turning it before the fire until nicely browned.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Cheese + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

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

  4. Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  5. Cheese + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Pipe macaroni
Forms the bulk of the dish and holds the cheese sauce in its tubes.
Parmesan or cheshire cheese
Melts into the macaroni for savoury flavour and a rich, creamy texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the top crumbs brown evenly.
Milk
Provides the liquid base that becomes a creamy sauce with the cheese.

The step that matters

Brown the top under the broiler. Broiling is fast and intense, so the crumbs and cheese can scorch before browning evenly. Watch closely and move the dish as needed.

“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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