Skip to main content
Main

Italian Macaroni

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Italian Macaroni

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the macaroni

  1. Break the macaroni into convenient lengths.

  2. Nearly fill a two-quart kettle with boiling water and add 1 teaspoon salt.

  3. Boil the macaroni rapidly for 25 minutes.

  4. Drain the macaroni.

Make the cheese sauce

  1. Heat the milk in a double boiler.

  2. Add the butter or drippings to the milk.

  3. Stir in the macaroni and cheese until thoroughly heated.

  4. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Serve

  1. 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.

  1. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  3. Milk + cheesetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

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

  4. Butter + white peppertop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Cheese + white peppertop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together233 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Macaroni
Provides the starchy pasta body that makes up most of the dish.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, giving it a smooth, creamy texture.
Grated cheese
Melts into the milk to add richness, savory flavor, and a thick, clinging texture.
Butter or drippings
Adds fat that enriches the sauce and carries flavor.

The step that matters

Heat the milk gently in a double boiler. Milk can scorch or curdle when overheated, and cheese turns grainy or stringy if it is exposed to high heat. Gentle, indirect heat keeps the sauce smooth once the cheese is added.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, cheese, butter):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, cheese, butter. 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.

More macaroni and cheese recipes

Baked 52Croquettes 10Timbale 8Casserole 6Soup 5with Tomato Sauce 3 See all 313 →

You might also like

Cheese MakingCheese Making50 recipesCheese FrittersCheese Fritters34 recipesCheese OmeletteCheese Omelette31 recipesRice and Cheese CasseroleRice and Cheese Casserole23 recipes