Why it works: Cheese and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,962 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓
Macaroni and Cheese
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
Soak the macaroni in water for 2 hours.
Make the dish
In a saucepan, cook the macaroni gently until it is fully swollen and tender.
Stir in the grated cheese, salt, and butter.
Transfer the mixture to a baking dish and brown the top in a 350°F (175°C) oven.
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.
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Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,962 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 gives it its tender, starchy body.
- Cheese
- Melts into the pasta to add richness and a creamy, savoury flavour.
- Butter
- Adds fat for richness and a smoother, silkier mouthfeel.
The step that matters
Cooking the macaroni gently until fully tender. Pasta cooked too hard stays firm and does not absorb liquid or soften evenly. Cooking gently lets the starch swell and the pasta become tender throughout, so the final dish is not chewy or unevenly textured.
“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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