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Boiled Macaroni

Boiled macaroni served with butter and grated cheese.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cheese are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,962 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Boiled Macaroni

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the macaroni

  1. Break the macaroni into short lengths.

  2. Cover with boiling salted water and boil for about 20 minutes until tender.

  3. Drain well.

Assemble

  1. In a hot deep dish, layer macaroni with butter.

  2. Sprinkle with grated cheese three times.

  3. Top with additional grated cheese.

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

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

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 provides the starchy structure that holds its shape once cooked.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, coating the pasta so it tastes moist and does not stick together.
Grated cheese
Melts into the hot pasta to add savory flavor and a creamy, binding texture.

The step that matters

Boil until tender, then drain well. Boiling for about 20 minutes gives the pasta a tender bite, and draining thoroughly removes excess water so the butter and cheese cling instead of thinning into a watery dish.

“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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