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Escalloped Beef and Macaroni

A baked casserole of macaroni, beef, and sauce topped with breadcrumbs.

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

Escalloped Beef and Macaroni

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the sauce

  1. Boil the macaroni in salted water until soft, about 40 minutes.

  2. In a separate pan, rub together the butter and flour, then add the water from the macaroni, seasoning with salt and pepper to make a sauce.

Assemble and bake

  1. In a baking dish, layer macaroni, seasoning well, then cover with some sauce.

  2. Add a layer of seasoned beef, then continue layering macaroni, sauce, and beef until all ingredients are used.

  3. Top the last layer with bread crumbs and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.

  4. Serve in the same dish.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Beef + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Flour and butter 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 the layers their body as it softens.
Butter and flour
Flour thickens the butter into a roux, which gives the sauce body and a smooth texture.
Cooked beef
Supplies the savory, meaty filling between the pasta layers.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, browned topping when baked.

The step that matters

Making the roux-based sauce. Flour must be fully worked into the butter before the water is added, otherwise lumps form and the sauce will not thicken smoothly. Stirring as the liquid goes in keeps it even.

“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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