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Macaroni, As Usually Served

A baked macaroni dish with cheese, butter, and milk or broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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, As Usually Served

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Cook the macaroni

  1. Boil macaroni in milk or veal broth until tender.

  2. Alternatively, simmer macaroni in half milk and half broth until tender.

  3. Drain and place in a dish without the liquid.

Make the sauce and assemble

  1. Add butter and grated cheese, then top with more cheese and butter.

  2. Mix a spoonful of the liquid with beaten egg yolk and cream, heat to thicken without boiling, then pour over macaroni.

Bake and brown

  1. Bake in a Dutch oven at 400°F (200°C) for 15 minutes, ensuring the top doesn't harden.

  2. Top with grated cheese and butter, then brown with a salamander.

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. Butter + creamtop 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. Cheese + creamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,655 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Macaroni
Forms the body of the dish, cooked until tender in the milk or broth.
Milk or veal broth
Cooks the pasta and provides the liquid that makes the dish moist.
Cheese
Melts into the sauce to give the dish its rich, savoury flavour and creamy texture.
Egg yolk
Thickens the liquid into a smooth, custard-like sauce when gently heated.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the top brown.

The step that matters

Thickening the egg yolk and cream. Egg yolk sets when heated, so the mixture must be warmed gently without boiling. Boiling can scramble the yolk and leave the sauce grainy instead of smooth.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Macethe original

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