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Baked Macaroni and Cheese

A baked pasta dish with macaroni, cheese, and a white sauce, topped with buttered breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread 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 ↓

Baked Macaroni and Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sauce

  1. Boil macaroni in rapidly boiling salted water until tender.

  2. Make a white sauce by blending flour, melted butter, and seasoning.

  3. Add boiling hot milk to the mixture and let it boil for a moment.

Assemble and bake

  1. Drain the macaroni and mix it well with the cheese and white sauce.

  2. Pour the mixture into a buttered baking dish.

  3. Cover with buttered breadcrumbs.

  4. Bake until golden 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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Cheese + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

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

  4. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Elbow macaroni
Forms the bulk and body of the dish, holding the sauce and cheese together.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk into a white sauce that coats the pasta.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the white sauce, giving it a smooth, creamy texture.
Grated cheese
Adds rich flavor and creamy stretch when melted into the sauce.
Melted butter
Adds fat and richness to the sauce and helps the crumbs brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Add boiling hot milk to the mixture and let it boil for a moment.. Adding hot milk to the flour and butter mixture helps it thicken smoothly without lumps. Letting it boil briefly fully cooks the flour, so the sauce loses its raw taste and reaches a silky consistency.

“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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