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Eggs and Macaroni

A baked casserole of macaroni, eggs, milk, flour, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Eggs and Macaroni

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the components

  1. Boil macaroni in a saucepan until tender.

  2. Boil the eggs in a separate saucepan until hard-cooked.

  3. Remove shells from the eggs and slice them thinly.

Assemble and bake

  1. In a pudding dish, layer macaroni and egg slices alternately, finishing with macaroni on top.

  2. Sprinkle the layered dish with coarse sea salt.

  3. Heat the milk to boiling.

  4. Thicken the milk with flour mixed in a little cold milk.

  5. Pour the thickened milk over the layered macaroni and eggs.

  6. Place the dish in a 350°F (175°C) oven to 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. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Macaroni
Forms the bulk of the casserole and holds the layers together when cooked until tender.
Eggs
Add richness and body, setting firm when hard-cooked and layered through the dish.
Milk
Provides liquid that, once thickened and baked, forms a creamy custard-like sauce.
Flour
Thickens the hot milk so the sauce coats the layers rather than running off.

The step that matters

Thickening the milk with flour. Flour must be mixed into cold milk first so it disperses evenly; added directly to hot milk it clumps, leaving lumps in the sauce.

“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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