Name: Mushrooms and Macaroni
Ingredients: ¼ pound macaroni; 1½ cups water; ¼ teaspoon pepper; ¼ teaspoon salt; ¼ pint stock; 1 ounce grated cheese; ½ pound mushrooms; 1 ounce butter

Why it works: Mushroom and butter 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 ↓

Mushrooms and Macaroni

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the macaroni

Boil macaroni in water with pepper and salt for 20 minutes until soft.
Drain the macaroni and place it in a clean saucepan.
Pour stock over the macaroni and add grated cheese.
Stir over gentle heat for 5 minutes and transfer to a hot dish.

Prepare and cook the mushrooms

Wash, skin, and slice the mushrooms.
In a saucepan, cook mushrooms with butter, pepper, and salt for 10 minutes.

Serve

Place the cooked mushrooms on top of the macaroni and 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.

Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,525 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,962 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Cheese + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,015 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together13,580 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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 starchy base that gives the dish its body and bite.
Stock: Adds moisture and savoury flavour that coats the macaroni.
Grated cheese: Melts into the warm stock to add richness and a creamy texture.
Mushrooms: Contribute earthy flavour and moisture when cooked with butter.
Butter: Adds fat for richness and helps the mushrooms brown gently.

“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.