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Sour Milk Macaroni

A baked macaroni dish with butter, ham, sour milk or cream, onion, and sage cheese.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Sour Milk 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.

Cook the macaroni

  1. Boil the macaroni in salted water for 20 minutes.

  2. Drain the macaroni and add the butter, ham, sour milk or cream, onion, and sage cheese.

Bake

  1. Mix well and transfer to a baking dish.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 45 minutes.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + cheesetop 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. Onion + sagetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Macaroni
Forms the bulk and starchy body of the dish that holds the other ingredients.
Sour milk or cream
Adds acidity and moisture, helping the dish stay tender as it bakes.
Sage cheese
Melts into the sauce and browns on top, adding richness and savory flavor.
Butter
Adds fat and richness that carries flavor and keeps the dish from drying out.
Ham
Contributes salty, savory meat flavor throughout the baked dish.

Swap the sage

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Sagethe original

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