Skip to main content
Main

Macaroni Pie

A baked pie of macaroni, steak, mushrooms, shallot, and cheese, topped with clarified butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Shallot and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,982 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Macaroni Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the macaroni

  1. Boil the macaroni in veal broth or beef bouillon until tender.

Assemble the pie

  1. Layer part of the macaroni in the bottom of a pie dish.

  2. Sprinkle with grated cheese and dot with butter.

  3. Mix the shallot, mushrooms, salt, mace, pepper, and cayenne.

  4. Season the steak with the mixture and layer it alternately with the macaroni in the dish.

  5. Top with remaining macaroni and grated cheese.

  6. Drizzle clarified butter over the top.

Bake

  1. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) for 1 hour.

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. Shallot + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

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 broth as it bakes, giving body to the layers.
Steak
Provides the meat filling, whose juices moisten the macaroni during slow baking.
Grated cheese
Melts into the layers, adding richness and binding the macaroni together.
Butter
Adds fat that enriches flavor and encourages browning on the top layer.
Shallot
Contributes a mild savory sweetness and aroma to the meat and mushroom mixture.

The step that matters

Season the steak with the mixture and layer it alternately with the macaroni. Spreading the seasoning and steak evenly between the macaroni layers keeps the meat cooking uniformly through the slow bake, so no pocket stays underdone or dry.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, cheese, butter, shallot, mushroom, pepper):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, cheese, butter, shallot, mushroom, pepper. 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

Macaroni and CheeseMacaroni and Cheese102 recipesMushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipesCheese MakingCheese Making50 recipesVeal PattiesVeal Patties50 recipes