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Macaroni a LA Creme

A macaroni dish cooked in a creamy sauce made with milk, flour, butter, and egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 a LA Creme

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the macaroni

  1. Cook the broken macaroni in boiling water for 10 minutes.

  2. Drain the macaroni.

  3. In the same pot, add 1 cup of milk and ¼ teaspoon salt.

  4. Cook until the macaroni is tender.

Make the sauce

  1. In another saucepan, heat 1 cup of milk.

  2. Thicken the milk with 1 teaspoon of all-purpose flour.

  3. Stir in 1 tablespoon of butter.

  4. Stir in the beaten egg.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the macaroni after it is dished.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 and absorbs the milky sauce as it cooks.
Milk
Provides the liquid base for both the macaroni and the thickened sauce.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the heated milk into a smooth sauce by starch gelatinization.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, glossy mouthfeel to the sauce.
Egg
Enriches the sauce and helps it set slightly when gently heated.

The step that matters

Stir in the beaten egg. Egg proteins can scramble and curdle if the sauce is too hot when added. Remove the sauce from direct heat or temper the egg first so it blends smoothly.

“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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