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Baked Macaroni

A baked pasta dish with macaroni, butter, onion sauce, breadcrumbs, and oiled butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Baked Macaroni

Why it works: Butter and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 42,912 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Baked Macaroni

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Blanch the macaroni in boiling water and drain.

Make the sauce

  1. Heat the butter in a pot with finely minced onion until tender but not brown.

  2. Add the cooked macaroni and moisten with onion sauce or cream.

  3. Mix carefully to avoid breaking the macaroni and simmer for a few minutes.

Bake

  1. Transfer the mixture to a buttered baking dish, adding more sauce if needed.

  2. Sprinkle with breadcrumbs and drizzle with oiled butter.

  3. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 10 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Macaroni
Forms the bulk of the dish and gives it a firm, chewy structure once baked.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and helps the crumbs brown when drizzled on top.
Onion sauce or cream
Moistens the pasta and makes the mixture creamy rather than dry.
Breadcrumbs
Form a crisp, golden crust on the surface during baking.

The step that matters

Mix carefully. Stirring too hard breaks the macaroni tubes and releases starch, making the texture mushy instead of tender and intact.

“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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