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Fish and Macaroni

A baked dish of boiled macaroni mixed with white fish, butter sauce, egg yolks, lemon, spices, and breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Fish and Macaroni

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.

Prepare

  1. Remove bones and skin from the fish and break it into small pieces.

  2. Boil the macaroni in water until tender, then drain and cut it into 1‑inch lengths.

  3. Mix equal quantities of fish and macaroni.

Make the sauce

  1. In a stewpan, melt the butter, then add the egg yolks, lemon juice, pepper, and salt.

  2. Stir in the melted butter until the sauce is smooth.

  3. Add the fish and macaroni to the sauce and heat thoroughly.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture onto a dish, keeping it high in the center.

  2. Cover with fine bread crumbs and brown the top in a 350°F (175°C) oven until light in color.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Fish + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

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

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Emulsify with the butter to give the sauce a smooth, rich body.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavor and gives the sauce its silky texture.
Macaroni
Provides starchy bulk that gives the dish body and holds it together.
Remains of any white boiled fish
Supplies the main protein and flaky texture of the dish.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce and balances the fat.

The step that matters

Stir in the melted butter until the sauce is smooth. Egg yolks can scramble or curdle if they get too hot or the butter is added too fast. Adding warm melted butter gradually while stirring lets the yolks thicken into a smooth, stable 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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