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Dessert

Macaroni Pudding

A baked macaroni pudding made with milk, sugar, egg, and optional flavouring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 88,785 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Macaroni Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Cook the macaroni

  1. Break the macaroni into pieces and add it to a saucepan of boiling water with salt.

  2. Boil for 50 minutes until tender, then drain and cut into half‑inch lengths.

Make the pudding

  1. Cook the macaroni gently in the milk for 10 minutes.

  2. Add the sugar, beaten egg, and your chosen flavouring.

Bake

  1. Place the mixture in a buttered pie dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 20 minutes.

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 + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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
Provides the bulk and chewy body that the milky custard surrounds.
Milk
Forms the creamy liquid base and softens the macaroni as it cooks.
Egg
Sets during baking to bind the pudding into a soft, sliceable custard.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pudding brown lightly at the surface.

The step that matters

Cooking the macaroni gently in the milk. Milk contains sugars and proteins that scorch and stick to the bottom of a pan over high heat. Gentle heat keeps it from burning and lets the pasta absorb flavour evenly.

“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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