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Baked Macaroni

A baked macaroni dish layered with cheese, butter, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Baked Macaroni

Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Baked Macaroni

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.

Prepare

  1. Break the macaroni into pieces half an inch long.

  2. Boil in a saucepan of water with a little salt for 20 minutes until soft but not broken.

  3. Drain the macaroni and layer it in a deep, well-buttered dish.

Assemble

  1. Grate cheese over the macaroni and scatter bits of butter on top.

  2. Repeat layering with more macaroni, cheese, and butter until the dish is full.

  3. Add a few spoonfuls of milk and ensure a layer of macaroni is on top.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in the oven at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.

  2. Serve in the dish it was baked in.

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.

  1. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  3. Cheese + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 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 bulk of the dish and, once boiled until soft, gives it its body.
Cheese
Melts into the layers, adding richness and savoury flavour as it browns.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, coating the pasta and helping the top brown.
Milk
Adds moisture so the macaroni softens and the layers stay creamy while baking.

The step that matters

Ensure a layer of macaroni is on top. Pasta left exposed on the surface can dry out and harden in the oven's heat, so covering the top with macaroni before baking helps keep the surface tender.

“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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