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 ↓
Baked Macaroni
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Prepare the macaroni
Cut macaroni into small pieces.
Boil macaroni in salted water for 20 minutes.
Drain and rinse macaroni with cold water.
Assemble and bake
Butter a pudding dish and layer macaroni, butter, pepper, salt, and cheese until all ingredients are used.
Cover with milk and bake at 300°F (150°C) until heated through.
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.
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Butter + milktop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,962 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Cheese + milktop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,426 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Pepper + cheesetop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,861 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
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Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together85,593 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
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 as its starch softens when cooked.
- Cheese
- Melts into the layers and adds richness and savory flavor.
- Butter
- Adds fat for flavor and helps keep the macaroni from drying out.
- Milk
- Provides moisture that soaks into the pasta and sets as it bakes.
The step that matters
Boiling the macaroni for 20 minutes. Pasta keeps softening while it bakes in the milk, so boiling it fully can make the finished dish mushy. Cooking it until just tender leaves it firm enough to hold its shape after baking.
“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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