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Cheese Macaroni

A cheese-based macaroni dish cooked with water, butter, pepper, salt, egg yolk, and milk or cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Cheese Macaroni

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cheese sauce

  1. Scrape the cheese into a saucepan with the cold water.

  2. Bring the mixture to a gentle boil for 30 minutes.

  3. Strain out the cheese.

Cook and finish

  1. Add the macaroni, butter, pepper, and salt if needed.

  2. Simmer the macaroni gently until tender and all the liquid is absorbed.

  3. Beat the egg yolk with the milk or cream.

  4. Stir the beaten mixture into the macaroni until lightly set and cheesy in appearance.

  5. 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  3. Cheese + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

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

  4. Walnut + peppertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,039 recipes

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

  5. Cheese + walnuttop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together410 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cheese
Melts into the water to give the sauce its rich, savoury flavour and body.
Macaroni
Provides the starchy base that absorbs the liquid and becomes tender.
Egg yolk
Sets gently with the heat, thickening the mixture into a lightly set, creamy texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Stir the beaten mixture into the macaroni. The egg yolk can scramble if the mixture is too hot or stirred over high heat. Keeping the heat gentle lets the yolk thicken the dish smoothly into a light set.

“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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