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Bacon and Macaroni

A simple pasta dish of macaroni with crispy bacon, butter, stock, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Bacon and Macaroni

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the macaroni

  1. Cook the macaroni in boiling salted water until al dente, then drain.

Make the dish

  1. In a pan, cook the bacon until crispy, then remove and chop.

  2. In the same pan, melt the butter and add the stock.

  3. Stir in the cooked macaroni and chopped bacon.

  4. Season with nutmeg, salt, and pepper to taste.

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. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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 bite when cooked al dente.
Streaky bacon
Adds salty, savoury flavour and fat that coats the pasta as it renders.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the stock and pasta.
Stock
Supplies liquid and savoury flavour that the pasta absorbs and clings to.

The step that matters

Cooking the macaroni until al dente. Pasta cooked past al dente turns soft and mushy, and it keeps softening after draining and when mixed with the hot stock and bacon. Stopping at a firm bite keeps the texture intact in the finished dish.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, 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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