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Creamed Macaroni with Cheese

A creamy macaroni dish made with cheese, milk, butter, flour, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 ↓

Creamed Macaroni with Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the macaroni

  1. Break the macaroni into pieces about 1 inch long.

  2. Drop the macaroni into boiling salted water and boil for about 20 minutes.

Make the cheese sauce

  1. Heat the milk in a double boiler.

  2. Rub together the butter and flour.

  3. Add the mixture to the boiling milk and stir for 2 minutes.

  4. Add the salt and cayenne pepper to the sauce.

Combine and serve

  1. Drain the macaroni and add it to the cream sauce.

  2. Stir in the grated cheese until dissolved.

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. Cheese + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 dish and gives it its chewy, pasta-based body.
Cheese
Melts into the sauce to give it rich flavour and a smooth, creamy texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, carrying the flour and melted cheese.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and combines with flour to form a thickening roux.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce that coats the macaroni.

The step that matters

Add the butter and flour mixture to the milk while stirring. Flour thickens the milk only when it is well dispersed and heated; adding it in lumps or without stirring leaves a grainy, uneven 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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