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Dessert

Macaroni Pudding

A sweet macaroni pudding made with boiled macaroni, milk, sugar, lemon juice, cinnamon, butter, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,950 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Macaroni Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the macaroni

  1. Boil the macaroni in the water until tender and it has absorbed the liquid.

  2. Cook in a frying kettle.

  3. Add the butter and salt.

  4. Cover for 5 minutes without cooking.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in the milk, sugar, lemon juice, and cinnamon.

  2. Simmer for 10 more minutes after boiling, stirring gently to avoid breaking the macaroni.

  3. Serve in a deep dish with butter and powdered sugar, or cream and sugar.

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

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 pudding, softening as it absorbs the liquid.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness, thickening gently as it simmers with the pasta.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the lemon's acidity.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet, creamy flavour.

The step that matters

Simmer gently after adding the milk. Once the milk goes in, stirring too hard or boiling vigorously can break the soft macaroni apart and leave the pudding mushy. Gentle heat keeps the pasta pieces intact while the milk thickens slightly.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, milk, sugar, cinnamon. 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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