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Macaroni with Brown Sauce

A macaroni dish cooked in a brown sauce made from butter, flour, stock, and Parmesan cheese.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parmesan cheese and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,163 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Macaroni with Brown Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the macaroni

  1. Break the macaroni into pieces about 2 inches long.

  2. Boil the stock or water in a pot.

  3. Once boiling, add the macaroni and cook for 30 minutes.

  4. Drain the macaroni in a colander.

Make the brown sauce

  1. In a frying pan, melt the butter until browned.

  2. Add the flour and mix until smooth.

  3. Gradually stir in the stock and bring to a boil.

  4. Add the Parmesan cheese and then the macaroni, stirring gently.

  5. Let it boil briefly, season to taste, and serve.

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. Parmesan cheese + buttertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,163 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Parmesan cheese + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,322 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  4. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Butter and flour 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 bulk of the dish and absorbs the sauce as it cooks.
Butter
Fat that is browned with the flour to give the sauce a nutty, toasted flavor.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth sauce as it cooks with the butter.
Parmesan cheese
Adds savory, salty flavor and helps the sauce cling to the macaroni.

The step that matters

Browning the butter and flour. Cooking the butter and flour together until browned builds a toasted, nutty flavor. Adding the stock too early or stopping too soon leaves the sauce pale and floury-tasting, and stirring while adding liquid keeps it smooth instead of lumpy.

“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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