Name: Macaroni and Cheese
Ingredients: 2 cups macaroni; coarse sea salt; 2 cups grated cheese; 1 cup cream

Why it works: Cheese and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,655 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Macaroni and Cheese

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

2 cups macaroni
coarse sea salt
2 cups grated cheese
1 cup cream

Directions

Prepare

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

Assemble and bake

Layer macaroni and cheese in a baking dish, finishing with a layer of cheese on top.
Pour cream over the top layer.
Bake until light 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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.

Cheese + creamtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,655 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

Macaroni: Forms the bulk and structure of the dish once cooked and baked.
Cheese: Melts into a creamy, savoury binder that holds the layers together.
Cream: Adds moisture and richness that keeps the baked dish creamy rather than dry.

“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.