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Chicken and Macaroni

A dish of boiled chicken served with macaroni in milk, butter, onion, salt, pepper, and grated Parmesan cheese.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Chicken and Macaroni

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the chicken and macaroni

  1. Boil the chicken in water until cooked through, about 30 minutes.

  2. In another pot, boil the macaroni in water with a lump of butter for 15 minutes.

Make the macaroni and cheese

  1. Drain the macaroni and replace the water with milk, adding the onion, salt, and pepper.

  2. Boil until the macaroni is tender but unbroken, about 15 minutes.

  3. Grate the Parmesan cheese over the macaroni.

Serve

  1. Place the cooked chicken on a serving dish and top with the macaroni and cheese.

  2. 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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  3. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 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

Pipe macaroni
Provides the starchy body of the dish, holding its shape as it cooks in the milk.
Milk
Cooks the macaroni to a creamy, tender texture and forms the base of the sauce.
Parmesan cheese
Adds savory, salty flavor and helps thicken and enrich the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavor and softens the pasta's texture.
Whole chicken
Supplies the main protein, cooked gently in water until done through.

The step that matters

Boil the macaroni until tender but unbroken. Boiling the pasta in milk too long or too hard can scorch the milk and break the pasta apart, while stopping too early leaves it firm. Gentle simmering keeps each piece intact and the texture creamy.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, butter, milk, onion, 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.

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