Skip to main content
Main

Macaroni Pie

A baked macaroni dish with beef, cheese, biscuits, and a savory gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Biscuit and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 121 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Macaroni Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the ingredients

  1. Boil the macaroni and discard the first water.

  2. Boil the macaroni again in the milk until soft, then set aside.

  3. Prepare a gravy with the beef, seasoned with ground pepper, salt, and soup herbs, then set aside.

  4. Pound the cheese into fine powder.

  5. Mix half of the powdered cheese with dry mustard, salt, and ground pepper, then set aside.

  6. Finely crush the biscuits.

Make the filling

  1. In a saucepan, combine the boiled macaroni with enough beef soup to cover it. Add the mixed cheese, mustard, salt, and pepper.

  2. Cook over low heat until the gravy thickens.

Assemble and bake

  1. Grease a baking tin with 3 oz of butter.

  2. Pour the macaroni mixture into the tin.

  3. Mix the remaining cheese with the crushed biscuits and sprinkle on top. Dot the remaining 1 oz of butter over the top.

  4. Bake in the oven at 300°F (150°C) for 10 to 15 minutes until light brown.

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. Biscuit + mustardtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together121 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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 pie and absorbs the milk and gravy as it softens.
Beef
Provides the savoury meat gravy that moistens the macaroni and carries the seasoning.
Milk
Softens the macaroni further and adds moisture and richness to the filling.
English cheese
Adds savoury flavour and helps the filling become rich and creamy.
Biscuits
Crushed into crumbs, they form a crisp topping that browns in the oven.
Butter
Greases the tin and, dotted on top, adds fat that helps the crust brown.

The step that matters

Cooking the filling over low heat until the gravy thickens. Gentle heat lets the starch in the macaroni and gravy thicken slowly without scorching on the bottom of the pan. Rushing it with high heat can burn the base and leave the filling loose or lumpy.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Onionfits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, beef, biscuit, pepper, cheese, butter. 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.

More macaroni pie recipes

Italian 3 See all 30 →

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesMacaroni and CheeseMacaroni and Cheese102 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipes