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Creamed Macaroni

A macaroni dish topped with a cheese and cream sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Creamed Macaroni

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pasta

  1. Boil macaroni in salted water for 20 to 30 minutes.

Make the sauce

  1. In a separate pot, bring milk to a boil.

  2. Stir in butter and flour to form a paste.

  3. Add salt, pepper, cheese, and cream to the milk mixture.

Combine and serve

  1. Drain the macaroni and pour the sauce over it.

  2. Serve immediately.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  4. Milk + cheesetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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, giving it a substantial, chewy body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, which thickens as it is combined with the flour paste.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and, combined with flour, forms a paste that thickens it.
Flour
Thickens the sauce by absorbing liquid when mixed with the melted butter and milk.
American cheese
Melts into the sauce, adding creaminess, savory flavor, and a smooth texture.
Heavy cream
Adds richness and body to the sauce through its high fat content.

The step that matters

Stirring the butter and flour into the hot milk. Flour clumps if it hits liquid unevenly. Forming a smooth paste with the butter first, then combining it with the hot milk, helps the sauce thicken evenly without lumps.

“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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