Name: Raised Macaroni Pie
Ingredients: crusty pastry for pie; hot macaroni; fricassee of chicken; grated Parmesan cheese

Why it works: Chicken and parmesan cheese are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,846 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Raised Macaroni Pie

Ingredients

crusty pastry for pie
hot macaroni
fricassee of chicken
grated Parmesan cheese

Directions

Prepare and bake a crusty pastry for the pie.
In separate pans, cook hot macaroni and a fricassee of chicken.
Layer the macaroni and chicken alternately in the pie.
Sprinkle grated Parmesan cheese on top.
Wrap a strip of paper around the edge of the pie to prevent burning.
Use a salamander to brown the cheese.

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.

Chicken + parmesan cheesetop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,846 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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