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Dessert

Macaroni Pudding

A baked sweet macaroni dish made with milk, eggs, sugar, molasses, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Macaroni Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the custard

  1. Simmer the macaroni in milk with lemon peel and cinnamon until tender.

  2. Transfer the macaroni to a dish and mix in eggs, sugar, nutmeg, peach water, and molasses.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake with pastry around the edge at 350°F (175°C) until set.

  2. For variation, add a layer of orange marmalade or raspberry jam and omit the peach water.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  3. Cinnamon + peachtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together625 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  4. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Pipe macaroni
Provides the starchy body that gives the pudding its soft, tender structure.
Milk
Cooks with the macaroni to form the liquid base that sets into a custard.
Eggs
Coagulate on baking to set the custard and bind it into a sliceable texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the custard brown lightly at the edges.
Molasses
Adds dark color, deep sweetness and a rich flavor to the pudding.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Egg proteins set gradually with heat; underbaking leaves a runny custard, while overbaking makes it curdled, rubbery and watery.

Swap the peach

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Peachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, lemon, cinnamon, egg, sugar, nutmeg, molasses. 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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