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Macaroni with Bechamel Sauce

A baked pasta dish of macaroni coated in a creamy béchamel sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

Macaroni with Bechamel Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the pasta

  1. Boil the macaroni in salted water until tender, then drain.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat, add the flour, and stir to form a roux.

  2. Gradually whisk in the milk, cooking until the sauce thickens.

Combine and serve

  1. Combine the drained macaroni with the sauce, mix well, and serve hot.

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

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 bulk of the dish and gives it its chewy, tender body.
Butter
Carries flavour and, with flour, forms the roux that thickens the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce by absorbing liquid when cooked with the butter into a roux.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, which thickens as it cooks and gives it creaminess.

The step that matters

Cooking the milk into the roux. Adding milk gradually while whisking keeps the starch in the roux evenly dispersed, so the sauce thickens smoothly without lumps. Cooking it until it thickens lets the starch gelatinise fully, which gives the sauce its body.

“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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