Skip to main content
Main

English Way of Dressing Macaroni

A simple macaroni dish cooked in milk and topped with cheese and optional breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cheese and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,130 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

English Way of Dressing Macaroni

Ingredients

Directions

Cook and season

  1. Cook the ribbon macaroni in a stewpan with boiling milk, broth, or water for about 15 minutes until tender.

  2. Stir in the grated cheese and salt until well mixed.

Assemble and brown

  1. Transfer to a dish and sprinkle with grated Parmesan or Cheshire cheese.

  2. Brown lightly in a Dutch oven.

  3. Mix all the cheese into the macaroni and top with bread crumbs.

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

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

  2. Milk + cheesetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

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

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Macaroni
Provides the starchy body that holds the sauce and gives the dish its bulk.
Milk, broth, or water
Cooks the pasta through and supplies the moisture that becomes the sauce.
Grated cheese
Melts into the cooking liquid to make the dish creamy and rich in flavour.
Parmesan or cheshire cheese
Adds sharp savoury flavour and helps the top brown when baked or browned.

The step that matters

Cook the macaroni until just tender. Pasta keeps softening after it leaves the heat. Stopping at tender, and not longer, keeps the texture firm enough to hold the cheese sauce without turning mushy.

“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.

More macaroni and cheese recipes

Baked 52Croquettes 10Timbale 8Casserole 6Soup 5with Tomato Sauce 3 See all 313 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes