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Deviled Macaroni

A baked macaroni dish with a creamy yolk sauce, parsley, peppers, and bread crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Deviled Macaroni

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the macaroni

  1. Boil the macaroni in salted water for 25 minutes.

  2. Drain the macaroni and chop finely.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan. Mix in the flour.

  2. Add the milk and stir until boiling.

  3. Press the hard-boiled yolks and whites through a sieve. Add the pressed yolks and whites to the saucepan.

  4. Stir in the chopped parsley, red pepper, sweet Spanish pepper, nutmeg, and grated onion.

  5. Mix well with the macaroni.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the mixture into individual shells or cases.

  2. Cover with bread crumbs moistened with melted butter.

  3. Brown in a 400°F (200°C) oven.

  4. Serve with tomato ketchup or chili sauce.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 a firm, chewy body.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and helps the bread crumbs brown on top.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth white sauce that binds the dish.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, giving it creaminess.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add richness and body to the sauce as their yolks and whites are pressed in.

The step that matters

Bringing the milk to a boil while stirring. Flour thickens liquid only when heated enough to swell its starch. Stirring prevents lumps and scorching on the pan bottom, so the sauce turns smooth and binds the macaroni.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, milk, egg, parsley, pepper, nutmeg):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, milk, egg, parsley, pepper, nutmeg. 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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