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Macaroni a l’Italienne

A baked macaroni dish layered with butter, cheese, and breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Macaroni a l’Italienne

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.

Prepare the macaroni

  1. Boil the macaroni until tender.

  2. Layer macaroni in a hollow dish, keeping it moist with the cooking liquid.

Layer and top

  1. Add patches of butter on top of the macaroni.

  2. Sprinkle a layer of cheese over the butter.

  3. Repeat layering until all ingredients are used.

  4. Top with fine bread crumbs passed through a colander.

  5. Drizzle a few drops of melted butter over the bread crumbs.

Bake

  1. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until golden brown.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Cheese + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

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

  3. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 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 bulk of the dish and absorbs moisture from the cooking liquid as it bakes.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that helps the top brown and keeps the layers moist.
Cheese
Melts between the layers, binding the pasta and adding savoury flavour.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden topping that browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Keeping the macaroni moist while layering. Pasta that dries out before baking becomes stiff and absorbs less of the sauce-like liquid, so the layers stay soft and cohesive only if it is kept wet with cooking liquid.

“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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