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Macaroni with Parmesan Cheese

A macaroni dish tossed in a butter and flour white sauce seasoned with salt, pepper, nutmeg, and Parmesan cheese.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Macaroni with Parmesan Cheese

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the macaroni

  1. Boil the macaroni as directed.

Make the sauce

  1. Make a white sauce by stirring together 1 oz of butter and 1 oz of flour over heat until bubbling.

  2. Add ½ pint of boiling water and season with 1 teaspoon of salt, ¼ teaspoon of pepper, and ¼ teaspoon of nutmeg.

Combine and serve

  1. Drain the macaroni and add it to the sauce with 1 oz of grated Parmesan cheese.

  2. Stir until thoroughly heated 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. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Butter + parmesan cheesetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,163 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Parmesan cheese + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,322 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  4. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

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 carries the sauce.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and provides fat for richness and smooth texture.
Flour (in the method)
Thickens the butter and water mixture into a smooth white sauce.
Parmesan cheese
Adds savoury, salty flavour and body to the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the boiling water to the butter and flour. Flour thickens only when its starch swells in liquid. Adding the water all at once to the hot roux can cause lumps, so the mixture should be combined smoothly to keep the sauce even and thick.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Basilfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, parmesan cheese, pepper. 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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