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Stewed Macaroni

A simple dish of macaroni cooked in milk with butter, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Stewed Macaroni

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the macaroni

  1. Boil the macaroni until soft.

  2. Drain the macaroni in a colander.

Finish in milk

  1. Return the macaroni to the kettle and nearly cover with milk.

  2. Season with butter, salt, and pepper.

  3. Let everything boil together for three minutes and serve.

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. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Milk + peppertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together26,984 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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 soft, tender body as it cooks.
Milk
Acts as the cooking liquid that the pasta absorbs, creating a creamy, soft texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the finished dish.

The step that matters

Boil the macaroni in milk for three minutes. Milk contains milk sugars and proteins that scorch and can boil over quickly. Stirring keeps the pasta from sticking and the milk from burning on the bottom of the pan.

“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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