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A Lunch Dish

A baked casserole of macaroni, roast mutton, tomato sauce, bread crumbs, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

A Lunch Dish

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

Assemble

  1. Nearly fill a pudding dish with cooked macaroni.

  2. Make a hole in the center and fill it with chopped cold roast mutton, seasoned to taste.

  3. Cover with bread crumbs and bits of butter.

  4. Pour rich tomato sauce over all.

Bake

  1. Bake until brown.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Bread + tomatotop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,013 recipes

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

  3. Mutton + breadtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,488 recipes

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

  4. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Tomato + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,469 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cooked macaroni
Forms the bulk of the casserole and holds its shape as the dish sets.
Chopped cold roast mutton
Provides the savory meat filling that the macaroni surrounds.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, browned topping in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat that helps the bread crumbs brown and crisp.
Rich tomato sauce
Moistens the dish and adds acidity and savory depth as it bakes.

The step that matters

Bake until brown. The dish is done when the topping is golden, not just heated through. Browning comes from the Maillard reaction, which needs dry surface heat, so an oven that is not hot enough or a dish covered too long will leave the crumbs pale and soft.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, bread, butter, sauce):

  1. Shallotfits about as well
  2. Tomatothe original
  3. Onionfits about as well
  4. Asparagusfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, bread, butter, sauce. 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.

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