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Macaroni a Lttalienne

A macaroni dish with cream, flour, milk, butter, cheese, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 a Lttalienne

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the macaroni

  1. Wash and boil the macaroni in 2 quarts of water for 20 minutes.

  2. Drain the macaroni and place it on a serving dish.

Make the sauce

  1. In a double boiler, heat the milk.

  2. Mix the butter and flour together, then stir into the boiling milk.

  3. Add salt, white pepper, cayenne, cream, and grated cheese to the sauce.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the macaroni and 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. Cream + buttertop 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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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 and body of the dish, holding the sauce.
Butter and flour
Flour thickens the milk into a smooth sauce, while butter adds richness and flavour.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce that is thickened into a creamy coating.
Cheese
Melts into the sauce to add savoury flavour and a rich, stringy texture.
Cream
Adds richness and a smoother, silkier mouthfeel to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring the butter and flour into the boiling milk. Flour lumps form if the roux is added unevenly or the milk is not mixed while it is added. Stirring continuously disperses the starch so the sauce thickens smoothly.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, flour, milk, butter, cheese):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Jalapenofits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, flour, milk, butter, cheese. 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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