Name: Macaroni with Butter
Ingredients: 8 ounces macaroni; ½ teaspoon coarse sea salt; 1 tablespoon butter; ½ cup grated cheese

Why it works: Butter and cheese are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,962 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Macaroni with Butter

Ingredients

8 ounces macaroni
½ teaspoon coarse sea salt
1 tablespoon butter
½ cup grated cheese

Directions

Cook the macaroni

Boil the macaroni in salted water until tender.
Drain and place on a plate.

Assemble and serve

Melt the butter in a small saucepan.
Grate cheese over the macaroni.
Pour the melted butter over the macaroni 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.

Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,962 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

Macaroni: Forms the body of the dish, giving a starchy, chewy base for the other ingredients.
Butter: Adds fat and richness, coating the pasta and carrying flavor.
Cheese: Adds savory flavor and some saltiness to the pasta.

“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.