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Macaroni with Eggs

A simple macaroni dish cooked with butter, eggs, cheese, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Macaroni with Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Break the macaroni into short bits.

  2. Cook the macaroni in boiling salted water until tender.

  3. Drain the macaroni well and place it in a deep dish.

Combine and serve

  1. Pour the drawn butter over the macaroni, mixing in the beaten eggs, grated cheese, salt, and pepper.

  2. Loosen the macaroni to allow the sauce to penetrate.

  3. Serve with additional grated cheese on the side.

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).

  2. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Cheese + peppertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,861 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Egg + cheesetop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,253 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 dish and gives it a firm, tender body.
Drawn butter
Adds richness and moisture, coating the pasta and carrying flavour.
Beaten eggs
Bind with the butter and cheese to give the pasta a creamy, lightly set coating.
Grated cheese
Adds savoury flavour and salty depth to the coating.

The step that matters

Loosen the macaroni to allow the sauce to penetrate. If the drained pasta stays clumped, the butter and egg mixture coats only the outside and cannot reach between the pieces. Separating them lets the sauce spread evenly through the 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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