Name: Macaroni with Kornlet
Ingredients: 1½ cups macaroni, broken into inch lengths; Salt, to taste; 1 can sweet corn (or prepared kornlet); 1 pint rich milk; 1 tablespoon flour; 1¼ teaspoons coarse sea salt; Butter or oil, for greasing the dish

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 with Kornlet

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

1½ cups macaroni, broken into inch lengths
Salt, to taste
1 can sweet corn (or prepared kornlet)
1 pint rich milk
1 tablespoon flour
1¼ teaspoons coarse sea salt
Butter or oil, for greasing the dish

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

Boil the macaroni in salted water until tender.
Rub the sweet corn through a colander after crushing each kernel with a potato masher, or use prepared kornlet.

Make the sauce

Add the corn to 1 pint of rich milk and heat to boiling.
Thicken the mixture with 1 tablespoon of flour.
Mix the thickened corn mixture with the cooked macaroni and add 1¼ teaspoons of coarse sea salt.

Bake and serve

Turn the mixture into a greased pudding dish and brown in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C).

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.

Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,955 recipes

Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,165 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,345 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

Flour and butter 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 body of the dish, giving it substance and a firm bite once baked.
Sweet corn: Supplies the main flavour and natural sweetness, and its starch adds body to the sauce.
Rich milk: Forms the creamy liquid base that carries the corn and softens into a sauce.
Flour: Thickens the milk and corn mixture so it clings to the macaroni rather than running off.

The step that matters

Thickening the corn and milk. Flour must be stirred in while the liquid is hot and kept moving so it dissolves evenly; otherwise it forms lumps and the sauce stays thin or grainy.

“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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Macaroni with Kornlet