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Macaroni and Cheese with Baked Tomatoes

A baked macaroni and cheese dish topped with baked tomatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 and Cheese with Baked Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the macaroni

  1. Boil macaroni in milk and water until tender, using more milk than water.

Make the cheese sauce

  1. In a saucepan, heat cream until boiling.

  2. Add cheese and salt to the boiling cream, stirring until melted.

  3. Mix in butter and cayenne.

Assemble and serve

  1. Arrange macaroni on a hot dish around baked tomatoes.

  2. Pour cheese mixture over the tomatoes and macaroni.

  3. Serve very 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.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Cheese + tomatotop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,896 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Macaroni
Forms the starchy base that the sauce coats and holds.
Cooking cheese
Melts into the cream to make the rich, smooth sauce.
Rich cream
Adds fat and body, helping the cheese melt smoothly into a creamy sauce.
Fresh butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the sauce a smoother mouthfeel.
Milk
Adds moisture and mild sweetness as the macaroni cooks and softens.

The step that matters

Melting the cheese into the boiling cream. Cheese proteins can clump and turn grainy or oily if the sauce boils hard or the cheese is added too fast. Stirring steadily while melting keeps the emulsion smooth.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Onionfits better
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, cream, cheese, butter. 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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