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Macaroni Rarebit

A macaroni dish topped with a melted cheese sauce and butter, served over buttered toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 Rarebit

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the macaroni

  1. Break the macaroni into small pieces and soak in warm water until tender.

  2. Drain the macaroni and place it in a saucepan with the milk.

  3. Boil for 10 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the cheese, butter, and salt, stirring until the cheese melts.

  2. Remove from heat and pour over buttered toast.

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

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

  3. Milk + cheesetop 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
Provides the starchy body that the milk and cheese sauce clings to.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that cooks the pasta and becomes the creamy sauce.
Cheese
Melts into the sauce, adding richness, savoury flavour and a creamy, binding texture.
Butter
Adds fat that enriches the sauce and gives it a smoother mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Melting the cheese. Cheese is sensitive to heat. If it is overheated or melted without stirring, the proteins can tighten and turn grainy or oily. Stirring steadily while it melts keeps the sauce smooth and cohesive.

“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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