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Baked Macaroni, with Cheese

A baked macaroni dish with butter, cheese, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Baked Macaroni, with Cheese

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 ↓

Baked Macaroni, with Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the macaroni

  1. Break the macaroni into 2.5 to 3-inch pieces.

  2. Boil in salted water for 12 to 15 minutes until soft, shaking the saucepan frequently.

  3. Drain the macaroni in a colander.

Bake and serve

  1. In a pudding dish, combine the macaroni with butter, coarse sea salt, and grated cheese, layering if desired.

  2. Cover with milk and bake until the milk is absorbed and the top is 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  3. 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

Macaroni
Forms the bulk of the dish and gives it a firm, pasta-based structure.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, coating the pasta and carrying flavour.
Grated cheese
Melts into the pasta to give a creamy texture and savoury flavour.
Milk
Provides moisture that is absorbed during baking, softening the pasta and forming a sauce.

The step that matters

Baking until the milk is absorbed. Baking long enough lets the milk soak into the pasta and the top brown; pulling it too early leaves a soupy dish, while overbaking can dry it out.

“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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