Skip to main content
Main

Macaroni

A baked macaroni dish with butter, cheese, egg yolk, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Cook the macaroni

  1. Boil macaroni in milk and veal broth until tender.

  2. Drain and place in a dish without the liquid.

  3. For a creamy version, simmer macaroni in half milk and half broth until tender.

Make the sauce

  1. Mix egg yolk with cream and a spoonful of broth, heat to thicken, then pour over macaroni.

Assemble and bake

  1. Add butter and grated cheese, then top with more cheese and butter.

  2. Bake in a Dutch oven at 350°F (175°C) for 15 minutes, ensuring the top doesn't harden.

  3. Top with grated cheese and bits of butter, then brown with a salamander.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Butter + cheesetop 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 + creamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,655 recipes

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

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 tender, chewy body.
Milk
Cooks the pasta and forms the base of the creamy liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour and helps the top brown.
Grated cheese
Melts into the dish for savoury flavour and a stretchy, browned crust.
Egg yolk
Thickens the cream sauce as it heats, giving a smooth, set texture.

The step that matters

Heat the egg yolk mixture gently. Egg yolk thickens when heated, but too much heat can scramble it into lumps. Heat slowly and stir so the sauce sets smooth before it is poured over the macaroni.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleyfits about as well
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Macethe original

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

You might also like

Macaroni and CheeseMacaroni and Cheese102 recipesCheese MakingCheese Making50 recipesVeal PattiesVeal Patties50 recipesCheese FrittersCheese Fritters34 recipes