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Dessert

Sweet Macaroni

A sweet dish of boiled macaroni mixed with milk, sugar, eggs, and flavored with citrus rind or cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,950 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Sweet Macaroni

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the macaroni

  1. Bring the milk to a boil in a pot.

  2. Gently add the macaroni, salt, and lemon or orange rind (or cinnamon).

  3. Simmer until the macaroni is tender.

  4. Add the sugar and boil until the macaroni is soft and swollen.

  5. Drain the macaroni and place it in a hot dish.

Finish and serve

  1. In a separate bowl, whisk the egg yolks and stir them into the milk over low heat until thickened.

  2. Pour the egg mixture over the macaroni and serve immediately.

  3. Alternatively, heat and sweeten the cream, pour it over the macaroni, and dust with cinnamon.

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. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

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 body of the dish and absorbs the milk as it swells during cooking.
Milk
Cooks the pasta and, with the eggs, forms the thickened custard that coats it.
Eggs
Thicken the milk as they set over gentle heat, giving the dish a creamy texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the dish and adds to the flavour of the milk.

The step that matters

Thickening the egg mixture over low heat. Egg yolks set at gentle temperatures; if the milk gets too hot, the eggs can scramble and turn grainy instead of smoothly thickening the custard.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, egg, cream, cinnamon. 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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