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Dessert

Sherry Macaroni

A sweet macaroni dish cooked with sherry and water, served dusted with sugar and optional cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Sherry Macaroni

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the macaroni

  1. Break the macaroni into small pieces.

  2. Combine the macaroni with sherry and water in a pot.

  3. Boil until the macaroni is tender and has absorbed the liquid.

Serve

  1. Serve dusted with sifted sugar and a pinch of ground cinnamon, if desired.

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. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Sherry + cinnamontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together649 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Sherry + sugartop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,141 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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 dish's body, softening as it cooks and absorbing the sherry and water.
Sherry
Adds its distinctive wine flavour and aroma to the macaroni as it simmers.

The step that matters

Boil until tender and the liquid is absorbed. Pasta softens as starch gelatinises in hot liquid. If the liquid evaporates before the macaroni is tender, it can stick or scorch, and if the pasta is stopped too early it stays firm and chalky inside.

“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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