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Dessert

Macaroni Pudding

A baked macaroni dish with milk, cinnamon, eggs, sugar, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Macaroni Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA gentle oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding base

  1. Simmer the macaroni in milk with the cinnamon until tender.

  2. Transfer the macaroni to a dish.

  3. Beat the eggs and mix them with the milk, sugar, and nutmeg.

  4. Pour the egg mixture over the macaroni.

Bake

  1. Bake until set, being careful not to overbake.

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 + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Egg + nutmegtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Macaroni
Forms the body of the pudding, giving it bulk and a soft, starchy texture.
Eggs
Set when baked, binding the milk and macaroni into a custard-like pudding.
Milk
Cooks the macaroni and forms the liquid base that the eggs set in.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the richness of the eggs and milk.

The step that matters

Baking until just set. Egg proteins set as they heat; overbaking pushes them too far, squeezing out liquid and leaving the pudding grainy and watery.

“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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