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Meat and Macaroni

A simple dish of macaroni served with a seasoned canned meat mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,890 recipes. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

Meat and Macaroni

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the macaroni

  1. Boil enough water to cover the macaroni.

  2. Add the macaroni and cook until tender.

Make the meat

  1. Finely chop and mince the meat.

  2. In a stewpan, combine the meat, stock, cinnamon, salt, and pepper.

  3. Heat the mixture until hot.

Serve

  1. Serve on a round of toast, with the macaroni arranged as a border.

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. Cinnamon + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,890 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  2. Meat + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,777 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Meat + cinnamontop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together827 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Macaroni
Forms a starchy border that holds its shape and adds bulk to the plate.
Canned meat
Provides the main protein and savory body of the dish.
Stock
Adds moisture and savory flavor to the minced meat as it heats.

Swap the cinnamon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, pepper):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Rosemaryfits better
  4. Cinnamonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, pepper. 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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