Skip to main content
Dessert

Macaroni Pudding

A sweet baked macaroni pudding with lemon peel, cinnamon, almond extract, and raisin wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Macaroni Pudding

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 macaroni

  1. Simmer macaroni in milk with lemon peel and cinnamon until tender.

  2. Transfer macaroni to a dish.

Assemble and bake

  1. Mix in milk, eggs, sugar, nutmeg, almond extract, and raisin wine.

  2. Lay the pie crust around the edge of the dish.

  3. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven until set.

  4. Optionally, add a layer of orange marmalade or raspberry jam, omitting the almond extract.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + almondtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Almond + raisintop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Nutmeg + almondtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,115 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

Eggs
Set the custard as they bake, giving the pudding its body.
Macaroni
Forms the bulk of the pudding, giving it a soft, tender texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and adds to its tender, moist texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard and softens the macaroni as it simmers.

The step that matters

Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven until set. Eggs thicken as their proteins coagulate with heat. Pulling the pudding too early leaves a runny custard, while overbaking can make it grainy and weepy.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, cinnamon, egg, sugar, nutmeg, almond, raisin):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, cinnamon, egg, sugar, nutmeg, almond, raisin. 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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesCinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipes