Name: Macaroni with Cheese
Ingredients: 2 oz macaroni or spaghetti; grated cheese; pepper to taste; coarse sea salt to taste; water (about ½ pint)

Why it works: Cheese and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,861 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Macaroni with Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Boil the macaroni or spaghetti in enough water to absorb, about ½ pint.
Season with pepper and coarse sea salt to taste.
When tender, serve with grated cheese and vegetables.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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.

Cheese + peppertop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,861 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Macaroni: Its starch absorbs the cooking water and gives the dish its body and bite.
Grated cheese: Adds savoury flavour and fat, giving the dish its richness.

“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.