Name: Stuffed Macaroni
Ingredients: 1 whole chicken; 1 whole egg; 2 egg yolks; ¼ teaspoon cinnamon; ¼ teaspoon pepper; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt; 1 cup finely grated Parmesan cheese; macaroni; broth or water (from boiling chicken)

Why it works: Cinnamon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,890 recipes. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

Stuffed Macaroni

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

Boil the chicken until the meat separates from the bones.
Remove the meat from the bones and pound it.
Mix in the whole egg, egg yolks, cinnamon, pepper, salt, and Parmesan cheese.

Stuff and cook

Stuff the mixture into the macaroni.
Boil the stuffed macaroni in the broth or water used to boil the chicken.

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.

Cinnamon + peppertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together4,890 recipes

Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).
Pepper + parmesan cheesetop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,322 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).
Chicken + parmesan cheesetop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,846 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).
Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together19,958 recipes

Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).
Egg + parmesan cheesetop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,368 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs: Bind the chicken and cheese into a filling that holds together.
Parmesan cheese: Adds salty, savory flavor and helps the filling firm up slightly.
Chicken: Provides the meat base and savory flavor of the filling.
Macaroni: Forms the pasta shell that holds the filling during cooking.

Swap the cinnamon

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

Basilfits better
Garlicfits better
Parsleyfits better
Cinnamonthe original

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