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Macaroni As Usually Served

A baked macaroni dish with milk or broth, butter, cheese, and a creamy egg yolk topping.

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.

Prepare the macaroni

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

  2. Drain macaroni and place in a dish, leaving the liquid behind.

Bake and finish

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

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

  3. For a variation, simmer macaroni in half milk and half broth until tender.

  4. Mix egg yolk with cream and a spoonful of the cooking liquid; heat to thicken without boiling.

  5. Pour the mixture over macaroni, add grated cheese and butter, and 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 bulk of the dish and gives the gratin its body.
Milk or veal broth
Cooks the pasta and carries flavour into the sauce as it is absorbed.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving a smooth, rich mouthfeel.
Grated cheese
Melts into the dish and browns on top, adding savoury flavour.
Egg yolk
Thickens the cream mixture gently as it heats, giving a custard-like coating.

The step that matters

Heat the egg yolk and cream mixture without boiling. Egg yolk proteins set when heated gently, thickening the sauce smoothly. If it boils, the yolk can scramble and curdle, leaving the sauce grainy instead of silky.

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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