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Macaroni Quenelle

A baked macaroni and ham mixture with breadcrumbs, eggs, milk, herbs, and butter, served with brown mushroom sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Macaroni Quenelle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the macaroni until cooked, then cut it into small pieces.

  2. Boil the milk and pour it over the bread crumbs; soak for five minutes.

Make and steam

  1. Add the macaroni, herbs, melted butter, and ham to the soaked bread crumbs.

  2. Steam the mixture in a well-buttered basin for one hour.

Serve

  1. Serve with brown mushroom sauce over it.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Bread + hamtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Soak up the hot milk and form the soft body of the pudding.
Milk
Softens the bread crumbs and adds moisture so the mixture steams tender.
Macaroni
Adds bite and body, giving the pudding some structure.
Melted butter
Adds fat for richness and a softer, more tender texture.
Ham
Adds savoury flavour throughout the mixture.

The step that matters

Steaming the mixture for one hour. Gentle, steady steam cooks the soft mixture through and sets it into a moist, firm pudding. Water that boils too hard can make the surface and edges tough or the centre dense, so keep the heat even.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, egg, milk, pepper, butter, ham):

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Cinnamonfits less well
  4. Thymefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, egg, milk, pepper, butter, ham. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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