Skip to main content
Main

Macaroni and Cheese

A baked pasta dish of macaroni, milk, cheese, butter, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Macaroni and Cheese

Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Macaroni and Cheese

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderately quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the macaroni

  1. Break the macaroni into pieces about 8 inches long.

  2. Put it into plenty of boiling water, add 1 teaspoon salt, and boil rapidly for 25 minutes.

  3. Drain the macaroni and blanch it in cold water for 10 minutes.

Combine and serve

  1. In a double boiler, heat the milk and add the butter.

  2. Stir in the drained macaroni and grated cheese until heated.

  3. Add salt and pepper to taste, and serve.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Milk + cheesetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

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

  4. White pepper + buttertop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Cheese + white peppertop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together233 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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 its chewy, starchy body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that becomes a creamy sauce when heated.
Grated cheese
Melts into the milk to add richness, fat, and savory flavor.
Butter
Adds fat and a smooth, rich mouthfeel to the sauce.

The step that matters

Heating the cheese into the milk. Cheese proteins can turn stringy or grainy if the sauce is overheated or boils hard, so heat gently in the double boiler until the cheese just melts.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, cheese, butter):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, cheese, butter. 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.

More macaroni and cheese recipes

Baked 52Croquettes 10Timbale 8Casserole 6Soup 5with Tomato Sauce 3 See all 313 →

You might also like

Cheese MakingCheese Making50 recipesCheese FrittersCheese Fritters34 recipesCheese OmeletteCheese Omelette31 recipesRice and Cheese CasseroleRice and Cheese Casserole23 recipes