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Dessert

Macaroni Pudding

A baked macaroni dish with milk, butter, sugar, eggs, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Macaroni Pudding

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.

Cook the macaroni

  1. Break macaroni into one-inch lengths and boil in plenty of hot water for 20 minutes without a lid.

  2. Drain the water and add milk, butter, and sugar.

  3. Boil until macaroni is tender, about 20 minutes more.

  4. Let the mixture cool.

Make the custard

  1. In a bowl, beat the eggs and stir in grated nutmeg.

  2. Combine the egg mixture with the macaroni and milk.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a greased dish.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until set.

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. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Egg + nutmegtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 24,744 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 pudding and gives it a soft, starchy body as it cooks.
Milk
Provides the liquid that cooks the macaroni and sets with the eggs into a creamy custard.
Eggs
Set when baked, giving the pudding its firm, sliceable structure.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pudding brown lightly at the surface.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving a smoother mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before adding the eggs. Adding beaten eggs to very hot liquid can scramble them instead of letting them blend smoothly. Cooling the mixture first helps the eggs thicken evenly during baking.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, butter, sugar, egg):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Gingerfits less well
  4. Parsleyfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, sugar, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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