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Macaroni with Chicken

A macaroni dish cooked with chicken stock, butter, salt, pepper, and flour, finished with cooked chicken pieces.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Macaroni with Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and cook

  1. Break macaroni into small pieces and wash.

  2. Cook in boiling water for 2 hours, keeping it covered.

  3. Drain the water and add chicken stock.

Finish and serve

  1. Add butter, salt, and pepper to taste.

  2. Stir in flour to thicken the macaroni and boil well.

  3. Before serving, add the cut-up chicken.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  3. Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  4. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Butter and flour 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 absorbs liquid as it cooks, giving it body.
Chicken stock
Provides the cooking liquid and moisture that the macaroni soaks up and flavours the dish.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a looser sauce that coats the macaroni.
Butter
Adds richness and fat for a smoother mouthfeel and savoury flavour.
Cooked chicken
Adds protein and meaty texture to the finished dish.

The step that matters

Stir in flour to thicken the macaroni and boil well.. Flour must be stirred in evenly so it does not clump; it thickens as starch swells in hot liquid, so the mixture needs to keep boiling briefly to cook out the raw flour taste and reach full thickness.

“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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