Skip to main content
Main

Macaroni with Cheese

A simple pasta dish with macaroni, cheese, butter, milk, salt, and pepper.

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

Why it works: Butter and milk 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 with Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pasta

  1. Cook the macaroni according to package instructions until al dente.

Make the cheese sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt butter over medium heat.

  2. Add milk and cheese, stirring until the cheese is melted and the mixture is smooth.

  3. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Combine and serve

  1. Combine the cooked macaroni with the cheese sauce and mix well.

  2. Serve hot.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  3. Cheese + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

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

  4. Cheese + peppertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,861 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. 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
Provides the starchy body that the sauce coats and holds onto.
Cheese
Melts into the sauce to give it richness, flavour and a smooth, creamy texture.
Butter
Adds fat that carries flavour and helps the sauce feel silky and rich.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding moisture and creaminess as it melts the cheese.

The step that matters

Melting the cheese into the milk. Cheese melted over high heat or added too fast can turn grainy or oily. Gentle, steady heat while stirring lets the proteins and fat emulsify into a smooth sauce.

“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

Cheese MakingCheese Making50 recipesCheese FrittersCheese Fritters34 recipesCheese OmeletteCheese Omelette31 recipesRice and Cheese CasseroleRice and Cheese Casserole23 recipes