Name: Escalloped Beef and Macaroni
Ingredients: ¼ pound macaroni; 1 quart cooked beef; 1 cup bread crumbs; 1 tablespoon flour; 2 tablespoons butter; 1 pint water; salt to taste; pepper to taste

Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Escalloped Beef and Macaroni

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the sauce

Boil the macaroni in salted water until tender.
In a separate bowl, rub the butter and flour together, then add the pint of water used to boil the macaroni.
Season the sauce with salt and pepper.

Layer and bake

In a baking dish, layer macaroni, seasoning well, then cover with part of the sauce.
Add a layer of cooked beef, then repeat the layers of macaroni, sauce, and beef until all ingredients are used.
Top the final layer with bread crumbs and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.
Serve in the same dish.

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.

Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,971 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Beef + breadtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,032 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).
Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

Flour and butter 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 casserole and holds the layers together as it cooks tender.
Butter and flour: Rubbed together and mixed with water, they form a simple roux-style sauce that thickens and moistens the layers.
Cooked beef: Adds savory meaty flavor and substance between the layers.
Bread crumbs: Form a crisp, browned topping in the oven.

“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.