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Boiled Macaroni

A simple boiled macaroni dish cooked in milk, butter, and cream, finished with cheese, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Boiled Macaroni

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the macaroni

  1. Pour boiling water over macaroni and let it stand for 30 minutes.

  2. Drain the macaroni and place it in a custard kettle with boiling milk or a mixture of milk and water to cover.

  3. Cook until tender, then drain again.

Finish and serve

  1. Add butter and cream, and season with salt and pepper.

  2. Grate cheese over the top 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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  4. Milk + cheesetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

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

  5. Cream + cheesetop 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 body of the dish and absorbs the milk as it cooks until tender.
Milk
Cooks the macaroni and softens it while adding a mild, creamy base.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the finished macaroni.
Cream
Adds fat and body, making the dish richer and silkier.
Grated cheese
Adds savory flavor and a salty, melting richness on top.

The step that matters

Cook until tender, then drain again. Pasta keeps cooking from residual heat, so stopping at the right point matters. Draining well removes excess liquid, keeping the finished dish from turning watery and loose.

“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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