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Macaroni and Mushrooms

A macaroni dish cooked with butter, cheese, and sautéed mushrooms.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Macaroni and Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the macaroni

  1. Boil macaroni in water with pepper and salt for 20 minutes.

  2. Drain the macaroni and place it in a clean stewpan.

  3. Pour stock over the macaroni.

  4. Add butter and grated cheese, then stir over gentle heat for 5 minutes.

  5. Transfer to a hot dish.

Cook the mushrooms and serve

  1. Wash and skin the mushrooms, then slice them.

  2. Combine sliced mushrooms, butter, salt, and pepper in a stewpan.

  3. Toss mushrooms over the fire for 10 minutes.

  4. Place the mushrooms on the macaroni.

  5. Serve.

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. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  2. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  3. Cheese + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + cheesetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,861 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 dish and carries the sauce and mushrooms.
Grated cheese
Melts into the stock and butter to give the macaroni a rich, savoury coating.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to both the macaroni and the mushrooms.
Stock
Moistens the macaroni and carries flavour through the dish.
Mushrooms
Soften and release their juices in the pan, adding savoury, earthy flavour.

The step that matters

Stir the macaroni over gentle heat. Gentle heat lets the cheese melt smoothly into the stock and butter without turning oily or grainy, and keeps the pasta from sticking or scorching on the base of the pan.

“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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